Reasons to enter the mountain
Lu Hong (first from the right) leads the "Farmers in the City" to experience the fun of farming.
Photo courtesy of the interviewee
Huang Qunsheng and Lei Yu are making paint pads.
Photo by our reporter Li Runzhao
Huang Qunsheng and Lei Yu used a stove for heating in the courtyard of the studio.
Photo by our reporter Li Runzhao
Lan Xin makes lacquer in the mountain studio and enjoys solitude.
Photo by our reporter Li Runzhao
In the whole of China, there are many mountains called "North Peak".
The one in Fujian is nothing special.
In the 1990s, lacquer painter Tang Mingxiu and poet Lu De'an built a house in Beifeng Mountain and became early mountain dwellers.
Since then, this mountain, which is 15.4 kilometers away from downtown Fuzhou, is more than 360 meters above sea level and has been implicated in art and aesthetics.
Residents come and go, and today, there are lacquer, pottery, and land cultivators in Beifeng Mountain.
Like the Tang Mingxiu at the time, these "young people who have moved into the mountains" are still fresh talks for the surrounding villagers and even the people in the city.
In fact, the mountain is still that mountain, and it will not be changed by the arrival of residents.
Life is still that way, even if the environment and form are changed, the substance will not change due to the mountain dwelling.
"We" in the mountains
Driving north from downtown Fuzhou, along the national highway, passing countless sharp bends, Tang Mingxiu's "lacquer garden" is hidden in the jungle.
Thirty years ago, there was a wild mountain with torrential water.
In summer, the flowing water will turn into a waterfall, jumping from the top of the mountain, hitting the rocks, and making a thunderous sound.
Thirty years later, the current has decreased, but at any time of the day, you can still hear the sound of the water beating against the rocks uninterrupted.
In the early years, the poet Lu De'an came back from the United States to drink and chat with Tang Mingxiu, and the two together went to the mountains to build a house with heaven and earth.
Once climbing a mountain, Tang Mingxiu felt thirsty. When he was drinking water by the stream, the red leaves drifting in the wind made him determined to build a "lacquer garden" by the stream.
That creek is the Wulu creek of Beifeng.
The red leaf is the leaf of the lacquer tree, and it is the material source of Chinese lacquer art.
Later, Lu Dean also settled on the other side of the mountain across the water.
Working, staring in a daze, writing poems, and painting are their daily lives in the mountains.
Flowing water, stones, moving clouds, and farmhouses are the roots of their creations.
Someone joked that Tang Mingxiu and Lu De'an had already lived in a "villa" in the mountains when most people were saving money just to buy a house in the city.
So far, this behavior is still regarded as an "avant-garde" social experiment, but in Tang Mingxiu's view, it is just a sincere self-selection: in order to satisfy life's desire for time and nature.
In the courtyard of the "lacquer garden", the lacquer tree still stands upright.
From withered leaves to full of leaves, from full of leaves to full of red and beautiful trees, from full of red and beautiful trees to withered leaves...In the days of living in a mountain, the cycle of the four seasons and the cycle of life are directly presented in front of Tang Mingxiu. .
Because you are close to nature, you can write about nature.
The natural paint made from the viscous emulsion collected from the bark of the sumac tree will change from deep to bright over time after being used in the creation of lacquer paintings.
In the "lacquer garden", there is a huge lacquer bowl with a height of more than two meters and a mouth diameter of 6.7 meters. Year after year, Tang Mingxiu paints it layer by layer.
The texture in the bowl also changes year after year.
Tang Mingxiu said that living in the mountains makes his works a natural gift.
The lacquer bowl is not only lacquer, but also the mighty time.
"Qiyuan" has no TV, no computer, only a small radio.
Many people suspected that Tang Mingxiu's long life in the mountains would be boring, but he obviously didn't think so, "time is not enough."
"We always belong to the land first, and then the land belongs to us." These are the words of the American poet Frost.
"We belong to the mountain first, and the mountain will belong to us." This is the real life of Tang Mingxiu and Lu De'an, the early residents of Beifeng.
Regret in the mountains
In 2005, Tang Mingxiu was invited to the China Academy of Art to set up a major in lacquer art. It was not until 10 years later that he returned to the "lacquer garden".
Also coming back with Tang Mingxiu were his two students-Huang Qunsheng and Lei Yu.
This year is the sixth year that Huang Qunsheng and Lei Yu have gone up the mountain.
Their studio is located on the top of the hill on the side of the Beifeng Huanxi Central Primary School, but it is named "Wuluxi", which is said to commemorate the days of studying with the teacher in the "lacquer garden".
"Wuluxi" is housed in a two- to three-hundred-year-old Wenkui courtyard in the Qing Dynasty. It was the ancestral home of the "Qiyuan" woodworking master Qian.
In the 1980s, villagers in the mountains started to build their own houses, and the Qian family had a new house, and the old house was inevitably deserted.
The two rented a room on the east side as a studio.
The foyer is an open classroom, occasionally used to give children art lessons.
The room on the northeast side was converted into an exhibition hall, and the three rooms on the southeast side were opened up into a work area shared by two people.
Next to the old house is a small two-story building, with the kitchen downstairs and the living bedroom upstairs.
The dirt road leading to the old house at the entrance of the old house was transformed into a flower path, and a small pond was dug at the entrance.
"The faucet in the pond is just a decoration, and there is no water in all seasons." Lei Yu said with a smile, "The level of water here depends on the amount of rainfall. When there is little rain, it is a mud pit; when there is more rain, The fish in the pond will follow the overflowing water and swim into the flower path on the side."
There is no running water in the village, and the studio is located at a high point in the town center without natural underground water; the mountain road is rugged and narrow, and the well-drilling equipment cannot enter the back mountain behind the old house.
Therefore, since the studio was founded 3 years ago, the lack of water has always been an unsolved regret.
There was a particularly drought last year, and the two could only ride a motorcycle to a nearby friend's house to finish daily washing.
Therefore, the name "Wuluxi" has another meaning-in order to satisfy the yearning for water.
The damp and cold winter is another regret of Shanju.
The wood stove, which is often used to keep out the cold in rural areas, was abandoned early because of the danger of fire in the old wooden house.
Cupping and exercise became the main way Huang Qunsheng and Lei Yu survived the southern winter in previous years.
Not long ago, the two finally made up their minds to spend a huge sum of 3,000 yuan to buy a heater, which together with the studio’s projectors and speakers became the “three big pieces”.
This winter, I finally have some warm hope.
Huang Qunsheng and Lei Yu did not intend to "suffer" by building studios in the mountains.
At first, they went round and round in the city.
In 2016, even for factories in the suburbs of cities, the cheapest site rent reached 20 yuan per square meter.
With the pace of the transformation of the old city, urban villages and old housing areas have become increasingly "scarce" resources. Young art creators who are "poverty" like Huang Qunsheng and Lei Yu are naturally "pushed" into the mountains. .
Even so, the rent and renovation costs of "Wuluxi" almost spent their savings.
Huang Qunsheng said: “The days in the mountains are naturally hard, but the mountains may be able to tolerate the dreams of more creators.”
"Performance Art" in the Mountains
There are many things that Dashan can tolerate.
Lu Hong and Chen Zhiqing, who run a farm in Zenglou Village, are not directly engaged in art, but are regarded as "weirds" engaged in performance art by the surrounding villagers.
The name of the two people's farm is "no plowing", which means "more than plowing".
"How can I live without farming?" This is the common worry of the mothers-in-laws in the village. They tried to persuade the young people from these two cities time and time again: "If you don't make money from farming, you still have to go out to work to support yourself. ." But the two "weirds" were always unmoved.
Compared with "yield per mu", "unit price of crops", and "prevention of pests", Lu Hong and Chen Zhiqing are more concerned about "organic planting methods", "relationship between people and crops", "mountains and people"...
Before arriving in Zenglou Village, Lu Hong ran a family farm in his hometown in Zhangping City, Longyan. He planted tomatoes and celery and sent them to the wholesale market for sale after the harvest.
Having a piece of land of his own and enjoying the pleasure of farming is the reason why Lu Hong returned to his hometown after graduation.
But the process of buying and selling made him feel more pressure. He always worried about whether his vegetables were selling too expensive. "Let me grow the land, but it is too difficult for me to sell the vegetables."
When Chen Zhiqing, a high school classmate, invited Lu Hong to Beifeng, it was this sentence that moved him: "Let’s build a garden-style farm in the mountains together, and you just need to be responsible for planting and raising."
Later, the two ran into a wasteland that was originally occupied by reeds, and life in the mountains became endless.
They thought about what this piece of land is suitable for growing, and what is suitable for raising that piece of land. They slowly built an organic vegetable garden, built a co-raising shed, built a savage flower house, and built a mountain camping site.
The red-brick house they lived in was hung up with the house number of "no-farming hut", with hanging straw mats as the top and dead branches as lights, decorating a space with a sense of design.
Lv Hong, who grew up in the countryside since he was a child, does not oppose the theory that "farming does not make money" by her mother-in-law.
The annual rent of 30,000 to 40,000 yuan is only a small part of the farm's operating costs.
Building roads, fetching water, digging ditches, buying flower seedlings...every cost puts this farm, which originally focused on the concept of "organic planting", under pressure to survive.
At the beginning, Lu Hong also wanted to develop some agricultural management projects.
The two used 60% of the loan funds to build greenhouses and greenhouses, but the income from these facilities was less than 5% of the total farm income.
"Composting, composting, processing weeds, artificial pollination... For 3 yuan a catty tomatoes on the market, we have to sell for 30 yuan to barely make a profit." Lu Hong said with a wry smile.
Half a year after the "no-tillage" was built, compared to the original goal of the "garden-style farm", Lu Hong and Chen Zhiqing found that the "garden" was there, but the farm was no longer happy.
It is Chen Zhiqing who is responsible for planning and promotion, and Lu Hong who is responsible for planting and implementing a project that will save lives in times of crisis to allow urbanites to "escape" from the city and enter the mountains.
In the “urban farmers” shared vegetable plot claim plan, nearly a hundred urban residents became “landlords” of “non-cultivation” farms. The “landlords” contracted to claim organic vegetable plots on an annual basis. Lu Hong was responsible for technical guidance and experience. Farming fun.
In the "Savage Growth" nature education program, the farm and surrounding forests became activity bases. Chen Zhiqing, who was familiar with various types of plants, led the families from the city to go hiking in the countryside and conduct plant science popularization.
Chen Zhiqing even moved the pumpkin planted by Lu Hong down the mountain and held a pumpkin exhibition in the park in the city.
Take the people in the city to see the stars, listen to the water, to see the quiet changes of the seasons, to roll in the grass, to dig through the soil to observe another world... Some people say that Chen Zhiqing and Lu Hong are young people yearning for the mountains, but they are ironic. Yes, it is those city people who are ignorant of the mountains and don't choose to live in the mountains to feed them.
Chen Zhiqing disagrees with this view, "The mountains are the'people' that feed us, and our common yearning for nature is the nourishment for'non-cultivation'."
Lu Hong said while feeding the chickens in a chicken coop full of orange trees: "If this is considered a kind of'performance art', it must be a self-sufficient'performance art'."
Social in the mountains
Not long after Wuluxi was established, Chen Jiakai, a pottery maker, also entered the mountain.
Huang Qunsheng and Lei Yu took him around several nearby villages, and finally saw a house on a sloping ground in the neighboring village of Gui, which became Chen Jiakai’s studio "mountain".
What prompted him to make a decision was an ancient Huanxi kiln site in the village that was built in the Song Dynasty and stopped firing at the end of the Yuan Dynasty.
One reason why Chen Jiakai entered the mountain is that contemporary young people empathize with him-want to escape the social oppression in the city.
But in the mountains, there is also socialization in the mountains.
At the entrance of Gaocun Village, a blue wooden street sign stood beside the village road.
The road signs have the names of many young artists in the village. One of them diverges and clearly points to the direction of "building a mountain". It is written with the strokes of an oil painting: Chen Jiakai's studio.
Who made the street signs?
Chen Jiakai couldn't tell it himself, he only knew that he was erected during the construction of a beautiful village in the village.
Huang Qunsheng said that Jia Kai removed the street sign twice in a fit of anger.
But I didn't know who it was, and the street sign was re-established.
Lan Xin was also lacquered on the road signs.
The sign was standing less than 5 meters away from the gate of his studio "Qiju".
Without notice or negotiation, Lan Xin's private studio has thus become the first "check-in point" in the village's one-day rural tour route designed to create an "art village".
The "lacquer house" is adjacent to the main road in the village. The front yard is a brick-concrete building, the upper floor is the living area, and the lower floor is the operation room built according to the large lacquer craftsmanship.
Passing through the vast yard, there is an old rammed earth house on the side of the mountain, which had been dilapidated to the point that only a few fragmented walls remained.
After Lanxin's renovation, this two-story ancient house has a tea room and exhibition hall with a Chinese aesthetic.
Lan Xin's original intention of entering the mountain was to give himself a "space where one can quietly think about creation".
He enjoys "the kind of loneliness with excitement" in the quiet night of all things in the mountains, but he did not expect waves of uninvited crowds to come.
On several occasions, Lan Xin closed the door and wanted to disappear for a short time, but was still forced to "welcome guests" by being opened by the "enthusiastic" village cadres and tourists.
During the National Day this year, Huang Qunsheng and Lei Yu also accidentally "greeted the guests."
The reason is that they issued an exhibition preview in the Moments of Friends, but everyone did not see the location of the exhibition clearly, and they all went up the mountain in a swarm.
"Reception is an annoying thing." Huang Qunsheng said. In those few days, more than a dozen people came from "Wuluxi" and consumed his and Lei Yu's few "social energy".
The two people who don't understand the "social rules" in the mountains are also the two who do not understand the "social rules" in the mountains.
Two years ago, "No Farming" organized a mountain dwelling parent-child experience event with farmers around the farm. The farmers were responsible for providing accommodation and earning income.
But this kind of activity was never held for the second time. The villagers felt that the crowds of city people had broken the tranquility in the mountains, so they blocked the city people on the way to the mountains on the grounds of "insecurity". .
"If a person goes further, the mountain will take a step back; if a person takes a step back, the mountain will go further." In Lei Yu's words, socializing in the mountains is a complicated and three-dimensional thing, and perhaps it is difficult for anyone to find the right balance.
Of course, socializing in the mountains is not all annoying.
The tea table at Wuluxi was sponsored by Lan Xin, and the Diyong Jinlian in the yard was dug by Huang Qunsheng from a friend's house on the mountain.
When Chen Jiakai’s firewood kiln had no firewood to burn, he would go to the woods behind Lanxin's studio to find dead trees and chop some dry firewood with a hatchet to help.
Huang Qunsheng and Lei Yu were also frequent visitors to Chen Jiakai's family. When they built the firewood kiln, they came to help build the kiln during the day, and at night, a few people squeezed into the studio to make things.
When the kiln is being fired, they will take turns to study the temperature, humidity and the variety of the kiln soil. They have developed the idea of comprehensively using different materials, and let go of the obsession that "all things must be painted".
In Lan Xin's view, mountains magnify the relationship between people, whether they are close or alienated.
Dependence in the mountains
When he first went up the mountain, Lan Xin often took a knife and a dog to explore the mountains.
He searched for hardwoods with different shapes and textures to make walking sticks, and planned that if one day 100 can be made, the work would be named "Hundred Sticks".
It's just that it has been completed so far, and it is less than one-tenth of the total.
Lan Xin is used to the slow pace of creating only one or two works in three to five years.
The lease term of "Qiju" is 15 years, and he said that maybe the lease will expire when "Baizhang" is completed.
As for whether to end the life of the mountain dwelling or what to do, Lan Xin has no answer.
"If you don't rent it, return the studio to Dashan." He said, "This may be the uncertainty of art."
For Huang Qunsheng and Lei Yu, what they want to return to Dashan is the work.
In the second half of 2019, Huang Qunsheng would ride a motorcycle to the lacquer garden almost every day, up the stream, to “turn mold” the stones.
There used to be an old stone yard, but there are still large stones scattered there.
The surface of the stone fell off due to weathering to form a special texture, which was called "stone skin" by Huang Qunsheng.
During that time, Huang Qunsheng brought all kinds of tools for making lacquer to the stone field. He wanted to show these "peeled" stones out of lacquer and make them into tools.
This is the original creative form of Huang Qunsheng's work "A Shadow of a Roast".
Lei Yu's work is called "Dormant", which is a black, curved, thorny, huge human spine made with lacquer craftsmanship.
Because of working at the desk for a long time, she got lumbar disc herniation.
The mountains are very humid, and Lei Yu's waist will suffer severe pain in winter and summer.
"Dormant" shows the relationship between her and the mountain.
The creative environment determines the artistic context.
Collecting different information in the environment of the mountain dwelling, combining this information with oneself, and then presenting all this to the creation is the logic of their creation.
Lei Yu believes that in the huge uncertainty of art, mountains can be their support.
Next year, Lan Xin plans to bring his wife and young children who are teachers in a public elementary school in Shangrao City, Jiangxi Province to the mountains. This makes him have to think about his wife’s work and children’s schooling.
No matter how difficult it is, they also look forward to a reunion.
After all, family members are a rare “certainty” in life.
Recently, Lu Hong feels that "no farming" is not as beautiful as when the garden was opened.
The two-story open "viewing platform" designed by Chen Zhiqing for the farm and the "Japanese-style commissary" built of wood that could only accommodate one person were required to be demolished, citing the "occupation of cultivated land."
"We have feelings for the land." Lu Hong felt helpless.
In order to protect the farming layer on the cultivated land, the viewing platform is vacated and set up, and the distance from the ground is two fist heights; there is no wooden floor in the canteen, and no hardening of the land, even in a year. Sell a few items.
In the eyes of Lu Hong and Chen Zhiqing, these are just "decorations" in the garden-style farm.
Due to the repeated impact of the new crown pneumonia epidemic and the difficulty in recruiting designers willing to enter the mountain, Chen Zhiqing went to the mountain to set up a studio in the past two years to plan and promote online and offline activities for "non-cultivation" farms. He has less time to go up the mountain.
No matter where the "no-tillage" is old or broken, Lu Hong, who only knows how to cultivate, can only temporarily find a few wooden boards, spread a few piles of thatch, and "facelift" the farm.
Even so, Lu Hong and Chen Zhiqing are still looking for new land in the mountains to expand their "farm dream".
Although there is a studio in the city, some activities will be moved to the foot of the mountain in the future, but the two have not forgotten that the mountain is the soul of "non-cultivation" and "is our hope."
More than 30 years have passed, and some people are still curious about what Tang Mingxiu is doing in the "lacquer garden".
Walking the dog, drinking tea, sweeping the floor, doing sanitation... Tang Mingxiu said that he still doesn't know what "avant-garde" means. He is just doing what he wants to do, just living.
Early in the morning, Tang Mingxiu picked up a fallen leaf in the paint garden, looked at the sun for a while, then picked up more leaves, folded them into a pile, and stuffed them into the drawstring of the bell.
He pulled the bell rope, be, be, be...this became the beginning of a new day of life.
(Illustration: Zhao Chunqing)