Out of the Three Gorges, through the valley of Huya Mountain and Jingmen Mountain, where Jiajiang confronts each other, and straight to Jianghan Plain, where Chu is vast and boundless. — When the Yangtze River flows through Jingzhou, it loves the richness and beauty here, circling around, unwilling to leave for a long time, leaving a beautiful footnote of "nine bends of ileum" and rolling eastward.
The city is born by the river, and the river flows around the city. This is a scene of symbiosis between man and nature, and it is also my hometown of attachment.
Watch in the river
Jingjiang River, another name for the section from Zhijiang to Dongting Lake in the middle of the Yangtze River, is named after the ancient city Jingzhou, and it is easy to break its banks because of poor flood discharge, which makes the Yangtze River dangerous.
On the bank of Honghu reach, the main stream of the middle reaches of the Yangtze River, there is a hydrological station that will appear on TV in summer flood season — — Luoshan water station. In 1953, my grandfather changed his career from a Yangtze River boatman to come here, and became a defender of this important national flood reporting station that controls the outflow of Jingjiang River and Dongting Lake.
Wanli Yangtze River is in Jingjiang River. There is a local folk song that "Jingsha is not afraid of swords and soldiers, but is afraid of Nanke’s dream". In the vast waters of Jingjiang River, hydrological stations are like outposts, deserted mountains, canyons with rapid water depth, isolated continents filled with wind and sand, misty lakes, and hydrological people’s homes are everywhere.
Due to the nature and characteristics of work, many hydrological stations are located in mountainous areas or rural areas far away from towns, and some stations are not even surrounded by villages. Away from town, away from prosperity, away from family. Behind the quietness, there is more poverty and loneliness.
In 1980, my grandfather retired and my uncle came to the station to continue to stick to it. My parents worked outside, and I grew up in my grandmother’s house. The little hydrological station was my childhood paradise.
The huge passenger ship passed by, whistling a long whistle, attracting a group of children, screaming and chasing along the river beach until the ship gradually drifted away, and then slapping back. Such a big ship, I don’t know where it came from and where it is going. Since then, I have been full of indescribable curiosity and yearning for the outside world.
When spring comes, the withered and yellow weeds gradually turn green on the embankment of the Yangtze River, like light green pigments carelessly spilled. One piece here and one piece there are slowly impregnated day by day, and then merged into a whole piece, and the river beach has become a children’s paradise.
In summer, the joy that belongs to us really begins. A swimming ring made of a car tire liner, with a big wooden basin on it, lies on it and floats along the water for a whole summer. During the flood season, the water receded, and the silver carp, snakehead and tortoise left in the grass and puddles on the shore surprised us from time to time.
In winter and dry season, the brown riverbed is exposed. The cold wind blows, and the snow is everywhere. Villages, fields, dikes and beaches are all wrapped in silver, and the thick snow can be preserved for a long time without melting. The beautiful snow scene is rare now.
My home is near the Yangtze River, and my memories are not all beautiful. Sometimes when I wake up, the river rises sharply, and I have quietly entered the house without crossing the legs of the bed, and my shoes and stools are all floating on the water. At every critical juncture, the relevant departments require Luoshan Shuiwen Station to report the water situation directly to the National Defense General every 30 minutes by telephone. Forecasting, calculating and analyzing rain conditions … … Jumping data one by one, accurate forecasting again and again, every word is as heavy as a thousand.
"Life is supposed to be constantly injured, constantly restored and constantly created." As described in the poem, the place that was flooded in the past has now undergone earth-shaking changes. The state has invested huge sums of money to protect and harness major rivers and the operation of the Three Gorges Project, which has gradually made "Jingjiang An Lan, two lakes and rich crops" a reality.
An era has an era theme, and a generation has a generation’s mission. After the flood season in 2020, my uncle also retired. I came to pick him up and leave this small hydrological station that two generations have adhered to for 70 years. After locking the gate, my uncle refused to turn around for a long time and bid farewell to his 40-year career as a "sentry" in the Yangtze River.
Driving along the Jingjiang levee, I asked my uncle: Is it worth it? He replied, looking at the lights on both sides of the strait, no matter how hard it is.
The Yangtze River Golden Waterway and the Menghua Railway meet here, and the regional GDP growth in the first half of this year ranked first in Hubei Province. This is the Jingjiang River and the Yangtze River. The pulse of the development of the new era, where people and rivers are close to each other and the city and water are interdependent, echoes in Jingzhou.
Riverside city affairs
The eel bone and chicken rack are boiled into a rich broth, and the noodles with tendons are added with watered pork slices, two noodles and one soup, which is simply life satisfaction. In Shashi District of Jingzhou, people’s day begins with a bowl of breakfast noodles.
In the early years, dockers working along the Yangtze River liked to eat oily and heavy food. A local noodle shop owner created this kind of noodles with thick oil and delicious soup. Because dock workers often come to eat noodles in the early hours of the morning, it is named "Zaotang noodles".
In 1986, I came to Shashi from a small town near the Yangtze River to go to school and ate this bowl of breakfast noodles. At that time, Shashi was still a shining star city with a GDP of 16 billion yuan, ranking fourth in the country, second only to Beijing, Shanghai and Wuhan.
According to the records of Song Dynasty, Shashi Town is the first of 22 commercial tax fields in Jiangling Prefecture and an important rice market in Jianghan Plain. Around the Wanli period of the Ming Dynasty, Shashi "Shu Zhou Wu Chuan, those who want to get on and off, must trade here, so thousands of boats are lined up, and department stores gather lights."
"A thousand-year-old commercial port, a hundred-year-old ocean wharf". In 1876, Shashi Wharf was opened, and Britain, France, Germany and other countries successively set up consulates and docks here, so it was called "Ocean Wharf". After the founding of New China, Shashi relied on the port advantage to develop light industry, and a number of well-known brands such as Vitality 28, Sha Song refrigerator, Jingjiang thermos bottle and Yuanyang brand sheets were born.
With a pink background and a large peony picture, this kind of "outdated" bed sheet has aroused the nostalgia of countless people in recent years and has been named as "national bed sheet". This is the fist product of "Yuanyang brand" sheets in Shashi, which once swept the country.
My primary school deskmate is Teng Yi, and his grandfather, Teng Jixin, is the founder of the "Vigorous 28" brand. In 1982, Teng Jixin discovered at the annual Canton Fair that a Dutch company intended to transfer a brand-new formula of washing powder, which had strong detergency, low dosage and super concentration. Other washing powder factories don’t believe it, but Fujitsu is very interested in it.
After some investigation, he and the Dutch company decided to cooperate. In the same year, the first super concentrated foam-free washing powder was introduced, named "Vigor 28".
"Vigor 28, Shashi Daily Chemical", a short catchy slogan, stirred up a thousand waves. In 1994, with a sales volume of 90,000 tons, "Vitality 28" occupied 80% of the market share of Chinese washing powder market, and ushered in its highlight moment.
Under the wave of reform and opening-up, the market competition is becoming increasingly fierce, and the glory of "Vigorous 28" has become a thing of the past. Many old brands distributed around the ocean terminal went bankrupt and shut down one after another due to lack of innovative kinetic energy, and problems followed: abandoned factories can be seen everywhere, historical buildings are gradually dilapidated, sewage is discharged directly into the Yangtze River, and shanty towns are arbitrarily built … … Residents "face the river but don’t see it", and the ocean pier has become a conspicuous "scar" along the Yangtze River.
Zhou Hongzhi, a former deputy secretary-general of Jingzhou Municipal Government, believes that after the floods in 1998, Shashi was remembered as a place with serious floods, and there was a lack of large-scale projects to settle down. Gradually, Shashi fell behind.
Chu people worship the phoenix, and the phoenix is nirvana. In the new era, the flood has been lifted, the high-speed rail has been opened to traffic, a series of national strategies have been favored, and Shashi has also regained its vitality.
In 2016, with the start of the tough battle for the protection and restoration of the Yangtze River, the renovation of the ocean terminal was officially launched. Packing plant, Daci Street, Amway Yingxing, Auspicious Flower, Old Waiting Room, Power Supply Company, Old Cotton Machinery Factory … … A number of historical buildings bearing the memories of several generations of Shashi people have been endowed with new era value and renewed their brilliance at the new era node.
The old factory building of "Vigorous 28" was transformed into the exhibition hall of "Shashi Industrial Achievements", presenting the industrial development course of Shashi since the founding of New China. "Vibrant 28" occupies the first floor, with familiar TV advertisements, dazzling packaging bags and named football team … … Time has passed, and you can still feel the trend of the year.
Industrial relics awaken the memory of the city, while creative elements light up the night sky of the ocean pier. Under the shadow of night, food, tide play and light show are dizzying. The songs of taverns and the shouts of night market vendors are in harmony with the museums and modern creative wall paintings transformed from old factories.
"A few years ago, I passed by the Wenchuang Garden of the Ocean Terminal under construction, and I was very much looking forward to what it would look like after it was completed! I grew up on the Yangtze River and had a unique feeling for the Yangtze River, so I came up with the idea of opening a hotel by the river. " Cai Xuan, the owner of Shiye Garden Hotel, said that business has been booming since it opened in June this year, and 50 rooms are full almost every day.
No more dockworkers in batches, and no more noise of machine operation in the factory building. However, with the benefits of the golden waterway of the Yangtze River gradually emerging, Shashi has transformed from a transit base in the past into a comprehensive transportation hub, and the revival of dock culture is no longer a dream.
Jiang zhi hui Bei
In early autumn, 2023. At the beginning of the shower in Jingjiang section of the Yangtze River, the dim light melted into a fuzzy and soft light mass in the dense air. In this light, the elk galloped, the baiji jumped, and the water droplets scattered, warm and joyful. Who can imagine that Swan Island was once a part of the rolling Yangtze River?
In the last century, the Liuheyuan River Road of the Yangtze River was naturally bent and straightened, and it became a 2.5-kilometer-long new channel in the shape of the main stream. This is the best preserved wetland in the old channel group of the Yangtze River, and it is also a national nature reserve for baiji and elk.
In spring, the floodplain Chinese milk vetch merges into a sea of flowers; On summer nights, the sun and the moon shine together at the junction of water and sky; The turning green in autumn grows gradually from the slowly fading water; Reed flowers in winter are flying freely on the open river.
In 2007, I went to Shishou Swan Island Baiji Dolphin National Nature Reserve for an interview with researchers. The ship was driving on the old water surface. Suddenly, about 300 meters away from the ship, a gray-black arc curve jumped up and quickly entered the river surface. Then, it followed, and also drew a beautiful arc in the field of vision … … This kind of "contact" is far more exciting than the finless porpoise seen in the dolphin museum.
Since then, many interviews on the banks of the Yangtze River have made me deeply feel the change of ecology.
Honghu Lake on the north bank of Jingjiang River reproduces the beautiful scenery of "beating waves".
"It’s better to be reliable than to be reliable." The wealth in the great lake is inexhaustible, and it is filled with the good times of the elders.
In the 1960s and 1970s, everyone rushed to develop Honghu Lake. In the 1980s, artificial farming started in Honghu Lake, and fish were raised by lake grass, and purse seine farming gradually appeared. In less than 20 years, the area of Honghu Lake has been reduced by more than half from 1.14 million mu, scarred and devastated: there is no "wave to wave", only "pole to pole". The water body is turbid, the water quality is declining, waterfowl is scarce, lake grass is exhausted, and species are sharply reduced.
Honghu people realize that if this continues, the land of fish and rice, which has been proud for generations, will be completely destroyed. Since 2005, Honghu began to dismantle the purse seine and restore the ecology. After more than ten years of hard work, the most beautiful Hong Hushui has finally returned — — The natural wetland area has been gradually expanded, the bird population has been restored to 138 species, the national second-class protected plants, wild soybean and water fern, have been rediscovered, and the wild lotus has been restored to tens of thousands of mu … …
In September, Honghu Lake can’t see the "hundred battles" at the peak of summer tourism. The lake is empty and lonely, and there is no end in sight. "Boatman" Zhang Shengyuan said that now summer migratory birds are flying away one after another, and winter migratory birds have not arrived yet. By the end of the year, waterfowl who come here for the winter will cover the sky again.
Zhang Shengyuan used to be a famous bird hunter. Under the repeated education of the staff in the reserve, Lao Zhang changed from a birdman to a birdman and patrolled the lake every day, rain or shine. After retiring at home, Zhang Shengyuan is still concerned about the wild birds in Honghu Nature Reserve, and he likes to go to the lake area in his spare time. The patrol diary treasured around us records the dribs and drabs of ecological changes in Honghu Lake.
Honghu Wetland is a natural reservoir, which can store 1.96 million cubic meters of water every year, provide drinking water for 600,000 people along the lake and satisfy 1.3 million mu of farmland irrigation water. Tonghu brand Monopterus albus, clear water hairy crabs, caviar, white lotus, water chestnut, lotus root powder, lotus leaf tea and other products in Honghu Lake are all feedback from nature to mankind.
"The most important thing in raising crabs is ‘ Three not greedy ’ 。” Wang Guijin, the "Three Generations of Crabs", talks about his own "Crab Breeding Classics" — — Not greedy for breeding density, not greedy for shrimp and crab polyculture, not greedy for cheap feed! Last year, the yield of crabs he raised exceeded 300 Jin per mu. "If the lake is good, it will grow well and sell well. If we add less burden to the lake, the gift from the lake will be more generous."
On the lakeside of Jingjiang Lake, You Xingquan, who has been fishing for 30 years, responded to the call of the Yangtze River to ban fishing and retreat, delivered the boat ashore, started crayfish farming, and applied to be a fish keeper. Five years after landing, You Xingquan lamented: If the ecology is good, the business will be good, and the "rice bowl" will be stable.
Jingjiang is changing, and the aerial photos of drones are taken by the citizens, which is becoming more and more beautiful; Jingjiang is changing, changing in value and changing in concept.
The river runs, not giving up day and night.