Chapter 21 Mushroom Story

It took a lot of eyesight to find Qingyuan County on the oval-shaped geographical map of Zhejiang.In fact, until ten years ago, many Zhejiang people did not know that there was such a county in Zhejiang Province. Qingyuan is located at the southernmost tip of Zhejiang Province, and it is the top of the oval gourd.It is also the county farthest from the provincial capital Hangzhou in a straight line. In 1984, Qingyuan's population was 170,000, and the county's agricultural population accounted for 94%.If there are any characteristics, it is that the virgin forests all over the mountains are the focus of forestry in the whole province.

There are few people in the mountains, and the land is far away from the road. For the Qingyuan people in the mountains, the outside world is too far away from them. At the east end of Songxi Town, the county seat of Qingyuan County, there is an ancient and beautiful covered bridge, about 50 meters long, quietly across the mountain stream.For nearly a hundred years, this has been the only place where mountain people conduct market transactions. There is a small market every three days, and a big market every seven days.Whenever such a day comes, the mountain people come from hundreds of miles away barefoot to carry the burden.The burdens are home-grown vegetables, bamboo shoots and eggs, and they are exchanged for candles and cloth, which are indispensable for life in the mountains.

For thousands of years, the stream is clear, the mountains are quiet, and poverty has entangled the people of Qingyuan like a mountain vine. However, what is unexpected is that in the last decade or so of the 20th century, Qingyuan people suddenly rushed out of the mountains. , In just a few years, they have caught up with the pace of modern life. Among all the counties and cities in Zhejiang Province, it is the first county to advertise itself on the provincial TV station; it is the first county to send farmer students abroad; A county for a new model of third world rural development. And all of this is brought about by the market born of shiitake mushrooms and round them.

In 1985, a cadre of the Qingyuan County government accidentally collected a newspaper clipping, which was a text message with only a few crosses: Shiitake mushrooms have become a new favorite on the dining table of urban residents. Not long ago, farmers in Putian, Fujian invented the "bag material" "Shiitake Cultivation Method", which has greatly increased the local production of shiitake mushrooms. The cadre's eyes lit up.In addition to trees, Qingyuan County has the most shiitake mushrooms. Why not develop them?The biggest advantage of shiitake mushrooms is their small size, light weight, and high value, which is suitable for Qingyuan, which has poor long-distance transportation conditions.

As a result, a plan to "prosper the county" was launched. The mountain people in more than 20 townships in the county have been mobilized. The financial department does everything possible to provide start-up funds for the farmers. The supply and marketing and industrial and commercial departments have launched various production, supply and marketing demonstration classes. In 1986, three knowledgeable young farmers were sent to study abroad in Shizuoka County, Japan, where modern shiitake mushrooms are developed. Maybe it's because they have been entangled in poverty for too long, any chance to "get away" is so precious to the mountain people. In 1987, the number of farmers engaged in the production of shiitake mushrooms in the county grew to 2,500, and the total output of shiitake mushrooms reached 640,000 kilograms.After the shiitake mushrooms were piled up in front of the house, thousands of mushroom people volunteered to sell them.

And the county government has also used its brains to make Qingyuan shiitake mushrooms famous. In 1989, when they learned that a professor of biology named Zhang Shuting from the Chinese University of Hong Kong had demonstrated that the source of mushrooms in the world was in Qingyuan, they immediately realized that a golden doll had fallen into the mountains of Qingyuan. Thus, there was the "International Shiitake Mushroom Production and Product Seminar" in 1990, the annual "Chinese Shiitake Mushroom Festival" that began in 1992, and the "China Shiitake Mushroom City" that opened vigorously.In order to expand its influence, the county government gritted its teeth and took hundreds of thousands of yuan out of the tight county finances to start an advertisement on Zhejiang TV.For this reason, the then secretary of the county party committee and the county magistrate voluntarily forfeited their wages for three months.

The shiitake mushrooms hidden deep in the valley finally became fragrant, and the fragrance wafted out of Qingyuan, Zhejiang, and then out of China. Today, the annual output of Qingyuan shiitake mushrooms has exceeded 10,000 tons, accounting for one-eighth of the world's shiitake mushroom production and one-fifth of the national output.70% of these shiitake mushrooms are purchased by merchants from Japan and Southeast Asia. Qingyuan has naturally become the largest production and distribution center of shiitake mushrooms in China and even in the world. In 1996, a UNESCO official strongly recommended Qingyuan's experience at an international fungus conference in Hong Kong, calling it a model for getting rid of poverty and becoming rich in backward areas in third world countries.

It is impossible to overstate the magic power of the market for a poor and isolated village like Qingyuan. If there is no market, Qingyuan, a fragrant shiitake mushroom, will still linger alone in the lonely valley for thousands of years. There is such a figure: before the opening of the mushroom market, there were less than a thousand merchants who came to Qingyuan every year.At that time, a few strangers in brighter clothes arrived. It may be regarded as a rare thing by the mountain people and talked about for several days.But now, not only mushroom vendors from all over the country are vying to rush to Qingyuan, but also attract groups of foreigners with big noses and blue eyes.All of this has broadened the horizons and shocked the people in the mountains like never before.

In 1994, a few young people in the mountains of Qingyuan did a very sensational thing.They rented a space from the airline company and expedited the fresh shiitake mushrooms they picked on the day of Qingyuan to Hangzhou, then put them on a plane and shipped them to Hong Kong by air. Fresh champignons. This incident kept reporters inside and outside the province busy for a while. In the eyes of these Dashan sons, Hong Kong is no longer a distant geographical term. The market has finally made Qingyuan a pole of modern civilization, and the great circulation has pulled Qingyuan people into the noisy commercial society.

Everything is so strange, so irresistible. In the past, what people in the mountains lacked most was money, and what they were most ashamed to talk about was money.With their unique simplicity and straightforwardness, it is a shameful thing to bargain with others for a little thing. But now, they have to learn to care about everything.They have to go to distant cities to sell; they have to learn how to deal with people they have never met before and pass business cards; they have to know the market of shiitake mushrooms in other places or countries, and if others have new cultivation techniques, they have to try to get them.

The market messes things up, it makes life in the mountains suddenly hectic and hectic.The idyllic life pattern of working at sunrise and resting at sunset is gone forever. The gains and losses brought by the market to Qingyuan and Qingyuan people are a topic that cannot be explained in one word.However, in any case, it was the market that allowed many people in Qingyuan to use telephones, televisions, and sing karaoke. Today, the ancient and beautiful covered bridge in the county.Still lying quietly on the water crossing. The original bazaar is long gone, and the new, four-lane concrete road passes it by. The covered bridge is like the past of Qingyuan, quiet and lonely. Now, it is just a landscape for people to recall.