Chapter 2 in songzhuang

In the winter of 2005, as the golden leaves of ginkgo drifted down, it became cold, and I was still thinking about the soft sumac tree in my heart. The scene of red clouds on the hills was always yearning.I planned many outings, but I couldn't leave because of the busy schedule.Today I finally wanted to go out for a walk. I was undecided. I just picked up the phone. There was an earthquake in Jiujiang. The earthquake was felt in Hubei. Some buildings were cracked. My newly bought house is on the seventh floor. I don’t know if it was cracked or not. , there is no one to live in, and I can't inquire about it, so I don't want to write for a while, so I might as well go out for a walk.I found out the map of Beijing and decided to go to Pinggu. I heard that the "Dachai Kua Stewed Fathead Fish" by the Jinhai Lake in Pinggu tastes very good. You might as well try it. After riding the Jianlong 125, I went to the big family motorcycle store to buy dog ​​skin knee pads and put them on. Go out of town.

The sun is warm, there is no wind, and it is a good winter.I think winter, with the warm sun and no wind, is a good winter in the north. You can squat on the base of the wall to bask in the sun, talk nonsense, drink Anxi Tieguanyin, play chess, or play pig and sheep.But when people sit for a long time, they don’t want to sit too much. If they go out for a ride for a bump of one or two hundred kilometers, they will feel that they have seen the world and their spirits are uplifted.But today I mistook the direction again and rode straight along Xinhua Avenue. At the end of the street, there was a road to the construction site and a road to Songzhuang, so I turned the car to the left and went to Songzhuang.

Songzhuang is a town. I passed by it a few times and wanted to live there for a while, mainly because I wanted to communicate with the painters in Songzhuang. Since the Yuanmingyuan Artist Village was moved to Songzhuang, Songzhuang is the exclusive place for Chinese avant-garde painting art. symbol.There are not many vehicles on the road in winter, and fallen leaves are piled up on the side of the road. After shifting to fourth gear and twisting the accelerator a few times, we will arrive at Songzhuang, which is only five kilometers away from Tongzhou City. However, I came here in a big circle. The odometer shows 12 kilometers.Suddenly, I remembered that I didn’t bring King Kong’s phone. King Kong lived in Songzhuang for more than half a year. He mainly wrote about the avant-garde art of Songzhuang. Please ask King Kong to take me to Songzhuang. I want to write about Songzhuang painters from the perspective of the driving force of avant-garde art and the original ecology of culture.I'll just keep going. From here, I will also go to Jinhai Lake in Pinggu. Beijing has two major characteristics. One is that all roads can lead to the destination; the other is the name of the water body, which is the largest water area in Beijing. It is called a reservoir, the smaller water area is called a lake, and the smaller water area is called a sea, such as Shichahai and Zhongnanhai.

I saw an open space on the street, a group of people surrounded a farm vehicle, and a pile of new, old, and broken aluminum pots on the ground. What are they doing?I rode over, stopped the car, and saw a middle-aged craftsman turning sand and casting pots on the spot. , Smash the old pot, aluminum, casting, sand cleaning, deburring and other whole processes were photographed. The craftsman casts a flat aluminum pot. The diameter of this pot is about 50 cm, the height of the pot is about 15 cm, and the weight is 2.5 catties. Thick, Beijingers also call this kind of pan a cake pan.I asked the craftsman your name, and he warily asked me what I did. A farmer who came to process pots or watch the fun, he said on his own that I was a painter.In addition to farmers, this place is probably a painter. The telephone poles on both sides of the street are full of advertisements: Songzhuang Cultural Festival.I think this cultural festival is aimed at Songzhuang's art exhibition. I heard earlier that it is not easy to approve the art exhibition in Songzhuang. For some reason, their art exhibition may be turned into an international art exhibition. Can a small town hold an international art exhibition? ?They also have a kind of poster, simply printed: Songzhuang, China.It seems that Songzhuang has really become international, like a small town in the countryside of Stockholm.Therefore, I just said: I am a painter.But a young man in a light gray suit immediately asked me: Which village do you live in?He has been watching the casting pot and playing with a Samsung mobile phone from time to time. He has no tie on his collar, a pimple that is fading on his forehead, and a square face.It seems that the painters in Songzhuang lived in far more than one or two villages.I couldn't make out the name of the village, so I randomly pointed out that it belonged to the village over there.In order to prevent him from further questioning, I went on to say that I have photographed tinkers, pot tinkers, bowl tinkers, tile inspectors, and umbrella repairers. This is the first time I have seen potters. After industrialization, these crafts will be disappeared.When I said this, the young man became angry, and the pimples that were fading turned red. He said, I have seen at least three or four art exhibitions!Turned around while speaking, and repeated, I have seen at least three or four times the art exhibition!Well, what does watching an art exhibition have to do with shooting pottery?Oh, I see, he felt that if I didn't tell the truth, if I didn't tell him my real address, I was classifying him as a person who didn't understand art, right?However, he didn't ask me any more.

The mold for founding sand is on the carriage, and the aluminum furnace is on the ground, so when working, the craftsmen go up and down for a while, and the sun in winter is a bit southerly, and it shines obliquely at noon.His small blower is driven by electricity from a battery.There is a tall wooden pillar on the left side behind the driving building, and a relatively large horn is tied to it. Now that the business is very busy, the horn is at rest.Casting pots, the time is mainly spent on melting aluminum, and the work is mainly on making sand molds. The craftsman's model is a thick-walled iron drum about 80 cm. The upper mold is shallow, and the lower mold is deep. There is a pin between the two molds. , the craftsman first covered the lower mold with sand, buckled his standard pot, compacted it, then closed the upper mold, buried a plastic pipe with a diameter of 5 cm, filled it with sand, and held a square at the front and a long one at the back. With a tamping tool with a wooden handle, hold the sand flat with both hands and tamp it down, pull out the plastic tube, which is the casting port, and use a chopstick-diameter steel drill to insert an air hole on the opposite side (this hole is used for exhaust during casting).The most professional and graceful posture of the craftsman is that he lifts the upper mold, repairs the casting hole, leans on his back, and blows off the floating sand on the upper mold with a 25 cm long and 8 mm diameter copper tube. Blowing on the copper tube, shaking his head, the floating sand was gone.The craftsman has short straight hair, a red face, and a bushy mustache that is slightly yellowed. He has a deep Wang pattern on his forehead, big eyes, and a calm and confident expression, like Lu Xun who is one size older. pattern.The craftsman was silent for a while, then told me that his surname was Hou, I called him master Hou, and asked him where he came from, he said he was from Handan.Handan is far away. He said that he will arrive there in one day by car. As for the income, he can cast 10 pots a day, and the processing fee for each pot is 10 yuan, and the processing fee for casting kettles is 15 yuan. 100 yuan.But he added that the daily expenses would cost thirty or forty yuan!I asked him, such a cast pot can be used for at least 10 years, right?so thick!Master Hou said, at least 20 years!

While talking, Master Hou went to pick up the steelyard to weigh the aluminum. Most of the people who came to cast pots brought an old pot with a bottom, a few kettles with a bottom, some cans, aluminum wire, and some people brought half an engine. A cylinder head, a section of aluminum door and window profiles, an aluminum antenna for a TV, all aluminum waste products can be seen.Master Hou has to weigh more than 2.5 kilograms before he can cast a pot. When melting aluminum, there will be some impurities. I have seen some old ladies use wooden sticks to hit the impurities that Mr. Hou scooped up to see if there is pure aluminum in it.For customers who do not have enough casting materials, Master Hou takes out his own aluminum ingots from a large textile bag. The silver and bright aluminum ingots are shaped like steamed buns.Seeing that the master made two pots, and felt that the rice was ready, he went to the nearby restaurant. The signboard had the words "mutton soup pancake", so let's have a lamb soup pancake.

Sitting in the big shed of the restaurant, waiting for the mutton soup, waiting for the big cake, looking up at the caster, I suddenly remembered that I did a lot of aluminum casting when I was young, and brought back the piston from the factory , The carburetor smashes the aluminum, and casts the military belt buckle.The outer frame of the casting mold is nailed with wooden strips. It is a rectangular frame the size of a brick. There are two upper and lower parts. It is authentic, bare plate, not authentic, but with five stars and eight one characters, the difficulty of casting is higher than that of Master Hou's casting pot.It is difficult to melt aluminum. You have to melt it on your own coal stove while adults are at work. Careful adults can count coal.The aluminum container adopts the bicycle bell cover. The bicycle bell cover is not taken at home, but picked up from the bicycle on the street. So at that time, people parked the bicycle outside, and after locking the car, they had to unscrew the bell cover and the key together. Put it in your pocket and screw on the bell cap before you ride.The main thing is to pick the bell covers of Yongjiu and Feige bicycles. The volume is large enough, but soon there will be anti-theft bicycle bells, and the bicycles with this bell are easier to sell... If I also come to Zhuguo, I guess it will not be worse than Master Hou , Thinking of this, I can't help but "puchi" smile, time, years, my many creative impulses... But now, I am more concerned about cooking.

The mutton soup is here.In the suburbs of Beijing and Hebei, what is called mutton soup is sheep offal soup, including lamb liver, lamb lung, lamb tripe, etc. The offal is fried in a pan, and the water is added to a large iron pot with a coal stove and simmered over a long fire. The soup is as white as milk, with coriander and pepper, which is extremely refreshing.The mutton soup is here, and I want another plate of fried cakes. The fried cakes are shredded flatbreads, served with mung bean sprouts, cabbage leaves, and minced garlic. Fresh vegetables, swallowed with pleasure, take two mouthfuls and then drink hot lamb soup, the warm sun in the winter afternoon seems to shine in the heart.I ate slowly, thinking that if I came out anyway, I might not rush back to write an article in a hurry. I took hundreds of photos of cast pots today, but it was a harvest. The survival of the people is thousands of things. Can live, this is the most primitive processing industry in the industrial age!My Jianlong 125 is on the side. It meets the Euro II emission standard. What else can I think about?I don't have King Kong's phone number, and I don't want to ask other friends. Isn't Master Hou's casting pot not a performance art?There are new, old and old aluminum pots, large and small, on the field, a rusty Shifeng three-wheeled agricultural vehicle with horns standing upright, and an aluminum furnace with red flames... Many people are warm in winter Watching in the sun, he calmly pulled out silver pots from the sand. How many ordinary years will it boil?I paid the money and rode the Jianlong 125 towards Tongzhou City. The sun had already set in the west.