[Yunnan Youjianshui Ancient City]

On the top of Kyushu, south of colorful clouds, there is a border town with a long ancient rhyme and strong Central Plains color. This is Jianshui, a famous historical and cultural city in China. It was called "Dock" in ancient times, "Lin 'an" in modern times and "Jianshui" now. I came here with a longing for it.

Jianshui Ancient City is located in Lin 'an Town, Jianshui County, Honghe Hani and Yi Autonomous Prefecture, Yunnan Province, with a history of 1 170 years.

It is an ancient cultural city, which was founded in the Yuan Dynasty as a temple school, an official school in the early Ming Dynasty and a Confucian school in the Wanli period. Four academies were built in Qing dynasty, and the experimental shed is still there.

There are four gates in the ancient city, all of which are stone roads, and there are more than 50 ancient buildings, which are called residential museums. There are scenic spots to visit in the city, such as Zhujiayuan, Confucian Temple, Chaoyang Building, Zhu De's former residence, Puying Temple, Zhi Lin Temple, Zheng Xue Experimental Shed and Ximen Ancient Well. These scenic spots are mainly concentrated near Lin 'an Street, and buses also pass through Lin 'an Street. Due to time and other factors, Jia Zhu Garden, Confucius Temple and Ximen Ancient Well, which were originally planned, failed to make it. However, I have made some new discoveries by wandering leisurely in the ancient city.

A major feature of the ancient city is that there are many shops selling purple pottery. Jianshui Zitao is one of the four famous ceramics in China, which is as famous as Yixing pottery in Jiangsu, Shiwan pottery in Guangdong and Rongchang pottery in Sichuan.

Walking on the stone road, there will be vendors selling twisted candy and fruit at the corner. When they are thirsty, they will buy some pomegranates grown by old peasant women and chat with the old people. Then walk into Zitao store. There are many shops selling purple pottery, and Jiahui pottery shop is the most attractive one. The boss is a middle-aged couple. They make their own pottery and small tea sets. This tea set is exquisite in workmanship and elegant in style. When I first went to his shop, the master was making a prototype of the teapot. His skillful skills attracted me. When I came back with Mo Dan, who was destined to embark on a journey, I was very lucky to know something about the process of making purple pottery. Seeing what we liked, the host invited us to drink local green tea and explained it. The raw material they use is clay, which is made of red soil in the suburbs of Jianshui. Clay is specially sold. After the clay is molded, it is put into a foam box to dry in the shade, and then decorated with calligraphy and painting. The paintings and calligraphy on the pot were painted by some artists, then engraved in the shade, colored in the sun, and baked in the furnace. There are two kinds of stoves, gas stoves and wood stoves. Most gas stoves are in use now. The furnace temperature is about 1000 degrees. The purple pottery baked by the gas stove is relatively uniform, and the vegetable oil evaporated from the firewood baked by the wood stove adheres to the pot, which has a natural and quaint aesthetic feeling. But there aren't many wood stoves to bake. Finally, it needs to be polished without glaze. The whole process takes about 20 days.

We saw that the pot made by the master was relatively large, and the master immediately told us that it would shrink during the firing process. Compared with the pot cover before and after firing, the master did shrink a lot.

Here I chose a stone pot, small and exquisite, engraved with patterns.

Drinking the master's tea and listening to the master's wonderful explanation, suddenly the rain poured down, as if the goddess had dropped a basin of water from the sky. Oh, God left me attached to Zitao, and it was hard to go to Zhujiajian Island Garden. Ok, stay quietly and enjoy the time of tea, pottery and rain.

This stone pot is shaped, and the painter paints on it, but it has not been fired.

When he left the hotel for Jianshui Station, the taxi driver Master Wu was also a purple pottery enthusiast. He told me that if he has time, he can go to Zitao Village for a few days, where he can find some cheap ones I like. I appreciate the words of the master: "What you like is the most expensive." Yes, although many expensive things have their own reasons, they are not necessarily their own evaluation criteria. Choose the one that suits you best and loves you the most.

Another attraction of this ancient city is its vegetable market. There is a place in the market that sells all kinds of wild mushrooms. They are called Junzi. The villagers put the fungi they collected from the mountain on the booth. For me, variety shows are novel and diverse, which really stimulated my excitement. Ask the names of these fungi, because of the barriers of language communication, I only know that there are boletus, chicken clusters, Ganoderma lucidum, black tripe and so on. Mo Dan once told me that she once saw a joke on the Internet. A Yunnan native once ate mushroom food twice to celebrate. I celebrated for the first time because I ate mushroom food, and then I was poisoned and went to the hospital for emergency treatment. He was discharged from the hospital and celebrated for the second time. This time, is it to celebrate his recovery or to eat mushroom food? You can see how much they love mushrooms.

The price of these auricularia auricula seeds ranges from ten yuan to several hundred yuan, and many locals buy them. It's usually fried with Chili. It's delicious. I once asked the driver, Master Wu, if eating mushrooms would lead to poisoning. He said generally not. Both buyers and sellers are experienced. Don't cook mushrooms together. It's safer to cook them separately.

These mountain people also sell a kind of food, which surprises me and makes me unbearable. It's a bee pupa. There are white and fat bee larvae living in the small hive, and some are still crawling. The local people stir-fry to eat, and the nutrition is really rich, 100 yuan a catty, and I can't stand eating these little creatures.

It is also a sight of the ancient city to build water and cook tofu. There are many cold food shops in the ancient city. You will see some people sitting around the oven, with shelves made of wire on it. Brown pieces of tofu were scattered on it. The people baking tofu kept turning over the tofu, and the diners around picked up the baked tofu and dipped it in the Chili sauce on the small plate. One diner is very good at eating it. Every time they pick up a piece, they tear it off and dip it in seasoning, and the juice seeps into the white tofu. Seeing how delicious he is, I can't help it. Dip the burnt hot tofu in the sauce. Crispy outside and tender inside, it tastes like seasoning. It's really special to experience two different flavors between your teeth. This kind of tofu has no beany smell of old tofu, which is more real than tender tofu. Some of it tastes a little smelly, which is really special and is the favorite of Jianshui people.

Later, I saw this kind of tofu before baking in the vegetable market of the ancient city, and it has been cut into square pieces.

The red East Gate Chaoyang Building is the landmark building of Jianshui Ancient City. Chaoyang Tower was built in the Hongwu period of Ming Dynasty, which is said to be 28 years earlier than Tiananmen Square. This building is three stories high and has three eaves. You need tickets to climb this tower. There are old photos on the second and third floors, which were taken by Fang Suya, Consul General of France in Yunnan in the late Qing Dynasty. The photo describes that turbulent historical period, with beautiful mountains and rivers, simple folk customs, unique architecture and street life. There are pictures of the rich and the poor. Photos of those rich families, old and young, are really good from appearance to temperament.

Seeing photos of ethnic minorities, two of them attracted me. These are two pictures of beautiful young girls. They are all naked and have several long necklaces around their necks. The necklace hangs from the cleavage to the abdomen, and the ornaments on the earlobe shine. In one of the photos, the girl has a pitcher on her head and a hand on the top edge of the pitcher. She smiled brilliantly, and exuberant vitality emerged from the pores of her skin. The other is a Chinese-Burmese mixed-race, also semi-naked. Besides necklaces and earrings, she also wears many rings of silver bracelets on her arms, which set off her beautiful body. Her facial features are beautiful, even surpassing those of western movie stars. Her blurred eyes overlook the distance and her manners are natural and noble. I have been in awe of their beauty for a long time.

Go to the top floor of Chaoyang Building, push open the closed wooden window, and Lin 'an Street is at your feet, overlooking the town.

Coming down from Chaoyang Tower, Hong Wuzhong cast by 1392 is on both sides. Looking up at the eaves of the building, there are small bells hanging. As soon as the wind blows, the bell makes a crisp sound, and the bell echoes, as if telling the past of the ancient city.

Travel tips

1. Guizhou is adjacent to Yunnan. After visiting Xingyi, Guizhou, take the train to Kunming, and then from Kunming to Jianshui.

There are many inns in the ancient city and some hotels outside the city, which are convenient in and around the city.