Travel to Yunnan - Jianshui Ancient City

At the top of Kyushu, to the south of Caiyun, there is a border town with long ancient charm and rich color of the Central Plains. This is the famous historical and cultural city in China, Jianshui. Its ancient name was "Butou", its recent name was "Lin'an", and its current name is "Jianshui". With a longing for it, I came here.

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

It is an ancient cultural city. Temple schools were first built in the Yuan Dynasty, Lin'an Fu School was built in the early Ming Dynasty, and Lin'an Prefecture Confucian schools were built during the Wanli period. Four academies were built in the Qing Dynasty, and the examination sheds are still there today.

The ancient city has four gates, and the city is paved with stone roads. There are more than 50 ancient buildings, and it is called a folk residence museum. There are tourist attractions in the city, such as Zhu Family Garden, Confucian Temple, Chaoyang Tower, Zhu De's former residence, Puying Temple, Zhilin Temple, Academic and Political Examination Shed, Ximen Ancient Well, etc. These attractions are mainly concentrated near Lin'an Street, and buses also pass through Lin'an Street. Due to time and other factors, the Zhujia Garden, Confucian Temple, and Ximen Ancient Well that we originally planned to visit did not take place. But wandering leisurely in the ancient city made me make some new discoveries.

A great feature of the ancient city is that there are many shops selling purple pottery. Jianshui purple pottery is one of the four famous pottery in China, along with Jiangsu Yixing pottery, Guangdong Shiwan pottery, and Sichuan Rongchang pottery.

Walking on the stone road, there will be vendors selling candies and fruits at the street corners. If you are thirsty, you can buy some pomegranates grown by the old farm woman and chat with the old man. Then stroll into a purple pottery shop. There are many shops selling purple pottery. The most popular one is Huijia Pottery Shop. The owners are a middle-aged couple, and their pottery and small tea sets are all made in-house. The tea sets are exquisite in workmanship and elegant in style. When I first went to his shop, the owner was making the original teapot. His skillful technique attracted me. When Dan Mo and I came back together, we were very fortunate to learn about some of the processes involved in making purple pottery. Seeing that we enjoyed it, the host explained it while treating us to drink local green tea. The raw material they use is pottery clay, which is made from red clay from the suburbs of Jianshui. The pottery clay is sold specially. After the clay is shaped, it is put into a foam box to dry in the shade, and then decorated with calligraphy and painting. The calligraphy and painting on the pot are painted by some painters, and then the inverted and yang fillings are carved, and then put into the furnace for roasting. There are two types of furnaces, gas furnace and wood furnace. Burn the stove. Most of them are gas stoves. The furnace temperature is about more than 1,000 degrees. The purple pottery baked in a gas stove is more uniform, while the purple pottery baked in a wood-burning stove has a natural and simple beauty because the plant oil evaporated in the firewood adheres to the pot. But not many people use wood-burning stoves for roasting anymore. 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. The master immediately told us that it would shrink during the firing process. The master took out the pot lid before and after firing and compared it, and found that it had indeed shrunk a lot.

Here I chose a Xishi teapot, which is small and exquisite, with incised patterns on it.

While sipping the master’s tea and listening to his wonderful explanation, a heavy rain suddenly came, as if a goddess poured a basin of water from the sky. Oh, God has allowed me to get married with Zitao. It turned out that it was difficult to go to the Zhu Family Garden. Well, stay calmly and enjoy the time of drinking tea, admiring pottery and listening to the rain.

The artist painted on this Xi Shi pot after it was formed, but it has not yet been baked.

When I left the hotel and went to Jianshui Station, the taxi driver, Master Wu, was also a purple pottery enthusiast. He told me that if I had time, I could go to Zitao Village to stay for a few days, where I could shop for pottery. Find something you like that is cheap. I really appreciate what the master said: "What you like is the most expensive." Yes, although many expensive things have their own reasons for being expensive, that is not necessarily your own evaluation standard. Choose what suits you best and what you like most. Not in vain.

Another thing that attracts me about the ancient city is its vegetable market. There is a section of the market that sells various wild mushrooms, which they call fungi. The mountain people put the fungi they collected from the mountains on the stalls. To me, the variety of novelty and variety really stimulated my excitement. When asked about the names of these fungi, due to the language barrier, I only knew that there are porcini mushrooms, chicken bushes, ganoderma lucidum, black tripe, etc. Dan Mo once told me that she once saw a joke on the Internet. A Yunnanese celebrated twice by eating mushroom delicacies. The first time he celebrated because he ate mushrooms, and then he was poisoned and went to the hospital for rescue. After being discharged, he celebrated a second time. This time it is to celebrate physical recovery and to celebrate by eating fungus delicacies. It shows how much they love fungi.

The prices of these fungi range from ten yuan to hundreds of yuan, and many locals buy them.

They are usually stir-fried with chili peppers and are delicious. I once asked the driver, Master Wu, whether there is a risk of poisoning from eating fungi. He said that generally not, both sellers and buyers are experienced, and the fungi should not be mixed together and cooked separately. It is safe.

These mountain people also sell a kind of food ingredient, which surprised me and made me unbearable. It's a bee pupa. Each small hive is filled with fat, white bee larvae, some of which are still squirming. The locals eat them deep-fried, which is indeed rich in nutrition. They cost about one hundred yuan per pound. I can't bear to eat these little creatures.

Jianshui grilled tofu is also a scene in the ancient city. There are many cold delicacies shops in the ancient city. You will see some people sitting around the oven. There is a rack made of wire on the oven, and the browned tofu cubes are scattered on top. The people baking the tofu are constantly turning the tofu. The surrounding diners picked up the grilled tofu and dipped it in the chili seasoning on the small plate. One diner was very good at eating it. Every time he picked up a piece, he tore it apart and then dipped it in the seasoning. The juice seeped into the white tofu. inside. Seeing how delicious he was eating, I couldn't help it. I dipped the burnt, hot tofu cubes in the sauce and took a bite. It was crispy on the outside and soft on the inside. Combined with the taste of the seasoning, I felt two kinds of flavors between my teeth. The different tastes are really special. This tofu does not have the beany smell of old tofu, and is more substantial than soft tofu, and some of them taste a little like stinky tofu. It is indeed special and is the favorite of Jianshui people.

Later, I also saw this kind of tofu in the vegetable market in the ancient city before being grilled. It had been cut into square pieces.

The red East Gate Chaoyang Tower is the landmark of Jianshui Ancient City. Chaoyang Tower was built during the Hongwu period of the Ming Dynasty, which is said to be 28 years earlier than Tiananmen Square. The building is three stories high and has three eaves. Tickets are required to climb the tower. There are old photos on display on the second and third floors. The photos were taken by Fang Suya, the French Consul General in Yunnan in the late Qing Dynasty. The photos describe that turbulent historical period, including beautiful mountains and rivers, simple folk customs, unique architecture, and urban life. There are pictures of wealthy people and also pictures of poor people. In those photos of wealthy people, no matter young or old, they are indeed very good from appearance to temperament.

When I saw photos of ethnic minorities, two of them attracted me. They were two photos of beautiful young girls. They were both topless, with several layers of long necklaces wrapped around their necks. , the necklace hangs over the cleavage to the abdomen, and the ornaments on the earlobes are also shining. In one of the pictures, the girl holds a water jar on her head, one hand holding the edge of the jar top, she smiles brightly, and the strong vitality spurts out from the pores of her skin. And out. The other picture is of a Chinese-Burmese mixed race, also topless, except for necklaces and earrings, and there are many silver bracelets on her arms on her waist. These bracelets set off her beautiful body. Her facial features are very beautiful, even more than those of Western movie stars. Her blurred eyes look into the distance, and her demeanor is naturally noble. Their beauty made me stand in awe and paused for a long time.

Go to the top floor of Chaoyang Building, open the closed wooden windows, and see Lin'an Street at your feet, overlooking the small town.

Come down from the Chaoyang Tower and walk around. On both sides are the Hongwu bells cast in 1392. Look up at the cornices of the building, where small bells hang. When the wind blows, the bells make a crisp sound. The sound, blue sky, and ringtones echoed, seeming to tell the story of the ancient city's past.

Travel Tips

1. Guizhou and Yunnan are neighbors. After visiting Xingyi, Guizhou, take a train to Kunming, and then from Kunming to Jianshui.

2. There are many inns in the ancient city and some hotels outside the city. It is very convenient to have nearby hotels in the city and outside the city.