South of Kunming City, cross Dianchi Lake, go to Yuxi, cross Shiping. Along the way, the sun is blazing, the mountains are gentle, and occasionally there is a flash of crimson bare soil, and the heart is warm and stretched. Yunnan, the land on the edge of the sky, has a kind of looseness that is different from Guizhou and Sichuan.

Before sunset, everyone arrived in Jianshui. This small city in the west began in the Song Dynasty, was built in the Yuan Dynasty, and flourished in the Ming and Qing dynasties. In the 13th century, Yuan Shizu's 100,000 army entered Gansu, passed through Sichuan, entered Yunnan, and leveled Dali. Yuan will rule the Han Dynasty with the Han Dynasty, build temples and schools, and move a large number of old and young people to the Southern Song Dynasty. They also renamed it Lin'an, with a hint of banter.

Hundreds of years later, where the hometown is, future generations have forgotten. However, there are still clues to be found in eating and drinking, living and living.

Yunnan food is most famous for three things, mushrooms, rice noodles, and gas pot chicken, the first two are all over the world, but the air pot chicken is born in Jianshui. The chicken is a Chuxiong Wuding line hen, and the pot is a Jianshui purple pottery gas pot. The pot is heated by a hollow tube core, distilled without water, and the soup is as clear as water when the lid is lifted, with dots of oil and flowers, and the chicken is fragrant.

Unlike porcelain and lacquerware, pottery comes from a simple background. It is common to pinch clay and shape it, burn it into a pottery dish, and use it to cook rice. And ordinary things, after years of accumulation, can also give birth to a lot of aura.

The surname Tian is everyone in the Jianshui pottery shop. Tian Bo and Tian Jing are the heads of Tao Chaju and Tian Ji Kiln. Two middle-aged people in their early forties, who have been in a craft for nearly a thousand years. The kiln factory of the Tian family is located in the stone kiln village where the kiln has been fired for generations on the edge of the city, and the path to the village is a whole farm.

Cattle forage in the fields, the small train to Tuanshan passes slowly, and a Yuan Dynasty arch bridge lies at the entrance of the village. The Tianji kiln factory is not large, divided into two areas, there is a green pine in the middle, and the clay is being exposed to steaming under the tree.

Jianshui clay is configured with local five-color soil, and the exploration and mining are equipped with soaking and soaking to expose and practice rot, and after 12 processes for many years, the effort and time are sufficient to complete. Touch a handful of clay essence, the crimson color melts at the fingertips, so fine that the water dries through and there is no floating powder, and the sun shines, as if there is a gold edge.

The mud has the qualification to be formed, and then it begins to be shaped. The factory building is five or six meters high, and the mud embryos in the room are neatly arranged. Men are responsible for waking mud, drawing embryos, and rough repairs, while women are responsible for decorating, filling, and polishing. There are little masters sitting around the masters, teaching by word and deed. After a long time, there was no laughter, and people and mud were quietly waiting for the final moment of peace.

The firing of the purple pottery gas pot is the same as the porcelain making, and it is all quenched at high temperature. The mud that has been tempered by fire is reborn, the pot is repeatedly kneaded, and the seams are tightly sealed; the surface is like baby skin, shiny and delicate, and it is covered with pores; the chicken nuggets are placed inside, distilled through water, and the heat is evenly absorbed, the qi is sufficient, the raw soup is fast, mellow and no peculiar smell, and the temperature is dispersed and very slow on the table, and the local people call this the cultivation of righteousness.

Passing through the city along the main road Lin'an Street, there is a tall red main gatehouse standing on the east side. In the early morning, on the square of the city tower, there are people sitting everywhere roasting the sun, walking birds, playing chess, setting up stalls, and housewives walk through the city gate.

The red mud wall and water well workshop in the alley of the Shuncheng building, turn a few turns, and you will arrive at the inn where you settled. Before she could cross the threshold, a fat girl popped out from behind the shadow wall and took the box with a grin. Walking inside is a courtyard, there are wings in the east, there are cross-courtyards in the west, green trees and red fish, the space is compact and warm.

There were three people guarding the four rooms of the inn. The second child in her twenties, a Yunnan girl, has been pottery since elementary school, tall and thin, lively. Playing miscellaneous fat girls, it's a buddy. It was Uncle Li who was responsible for repairing, sprinkling, cleaning, and watching, making efforts to sell favors, and taking care of the thrush in the middle courtyard.

Born and raised in Jianshui, he is scorched by the plateau sun all year round, and his face is black and red. When he was young, he worked with his brothers, and he was especially good at repairing old houses.

The streets and alleys of Jianshui are neat, the ancient houses are dotted, the huge Confucian temple rests on the top of the mountain, the carved dragon pillar, and the expansion of the previous dynasties has reached 50 times. The Zhu family garden, which was once the richest man, has a mansion of more than 420,000 meters in length and width, and there are more than 200 halls and houses. On the historical stage, high-rise buildings and banquet guests, brick and tenon, all rely on the inheritance of craftsmen from generation to generation.

In the early autumn sun, the alleys are covered with black canopies, and in the shade men gather together to smoke, tease birds, and gamble cards. Uncle Li ate at home, walked to the inn, greeted all the way, and did not stop. Only to a 500-year-old Yellow Emperor Temple, you always have to go in to help the eyes, and the younger generation who is responsible for repairing it is introduced by him.

In the inn, it can be called box dishes, and this old rule is most common in the late Qing Dynasty and early Republic of China. It is the store that helps the guests to go to the big hall to order takeout, blindly produces exquisite products, codes in lacquer boxes, and delivers them to the inn. The shopkeeper deliberately made room for a table, set up a table, and added a few more dishes to allow the guests to have a night banquet without leaving home.

Not far from the inn, there is the best cooking pot shop in Jianshui. Jianshui cooking pot, between the shabu-shabu pot in Beijing and the warm pot in Jiangsu and Zhejiang, is a typical taste transplanted into Yunnan with the Han civilization. The copper pot is hot with charcoal, and it is stacked with tofu, ham, local chicken, lotus root balls, and yellow cabbage...... The knife is neat, hot and fragrant.

Walking through the alleys of the ancient city, you can see the well in three or five steps. Unlike most of the abandoned old wells in Suzhou and Hangzhou, the wells that built water are still vivid. In the early morning, as long as the weather is good, you can always see three or two housewives washing clothes and vegetables by the well, and the small plastic bucket is thrown into the well upside down, and it is a pool of clear water when you bring it up a few times.

There are many wells, and the use is also meticulous, the Huanyi well is salty, and the sweet well for making tea is the least. The head of the wells, is the Pu Bo Spring next to the west gate of the city, the wellhead is huge, the walls and the ground around are covered with stone slabs, under the washing of the years, mottled and smooth coexist, the old moss in the gap does not see the new green, a thin layer of blue color under the sun, the pond water is refreshing.

The partition wall is the Ximen tofu shop, the house full of female workers each guarding a large pot of well water point tender tofu, quickly wrapped in gauze, a small side, air-dried and fermented for three or five days, golden and soft, fat and tender fragrant. No one can count how many pieces of Ximen tofu they have to eat in a day in Jianshui City. There is only one way to eat, grilled.

Grilled tofu is never on the table, but it is not an ordinary traveling businessman, it is mostly a one-meter-square baking tray, placed in the patio of Tai Kwun, baked by a false fire below, and the top is full of golden tofu, which is guarded by special personnel. In the afternoon, before dinner, diners gathered at the side of the stall and curled up on small plastic stools.

In SC Johnson's eyes, roasting tofu is definitely a meticulous job in the eyes of the six roads, the black iron bars are grilled to shine, the stall owner takes care of every corner, and the tender yellow tofu is slowly roasted to a swollen goose yellow. The old customers here don't use chopsticks, their fingertips lightly press the tofu, the feel is elastic and soft, regardless of the heat, they pinch it directly, dip it in the sauce, tear their teeth, and a hot breath wraps the bean fragrance, and they can't stop eating dozens of them.

The stall owner over there remained silent, counting by buds, and it was not bad at all. After a long time, the host and guest gossip, and the fireworks in the small city turned into appetite and swallowed up.

There are hawkers selling rice noodles in the west of the bridge, there are butchers opening a meat market in the east of the bridge, and the peddlers and pawns want to eat enough in order to save money, and they learn the appearance of the Mongolian shabu shabu pot.

Buy loin from the meat market, buy rice noodles with hawkers, enter the small restaurant and slice them into thin slices, buy a big bowl of piping hot broth for a few words, blanch the thin meat slices, mix in chopped green onions, coriander, leeks, and chili peppers, and put down a small bowl of rice noodles, and eat a big bowl of hot rice noodles thoroughly. Cheap and delicious, it gradually spread, people crossed the bridge, rice noodles also crossed the bridge, and became rice noodles across the bridge.

Although it originated here, there is a set of noble processes in various places, but no matter how others pass it on and how it is changed, the authentic cross-bridge rice noodles have never gone out of Jianshui, just because there is a vegetarian code and grass sprouts.