Zhaoguantun Village: "Intangible Cultural Heritage plus Industry" motivates great change

In the southwest direction of Tangguantun Town, Jinghai District, Tianjin City, Zhaoguantun Village is inlaid like a pearl on the shore of the blue waves of the south canal. When the morning fog first dissipated, the reflection of the blue brick and gray tile houses swayed in the sparkling light, and there were still moss marks on the stone ancient wharf steps that were rounded by the years. Walking along the road to the top of the embankment, a towering stone gate lies like a giant dragon - this is the Jiu Xuan Gate, which has been the lifeline of Jinmen water conservancy for more than 100 years.

In Zhaoguantun Village, there is a hundred-year-old sauce factory --Qingxiangyong, which is continuing this taste legend with its unique sauce fragrance. As the confluence of rivers , creating a unique water charm business vein. In order to inherit and carry forward this history, Zhaoguantun Village cooperated with the Tianjin Intangible Cultural Heritage Association. After in-depth visits and research, detailed information review and rigorous historical verification, they created an immersive theme performance of "The Story of Jiu Xuan". In the process of promoting the development of cultural tourism in Jinghai District, Zhaoguantun Village has carefully planned and built a series of boutique cultural tourism routes, striving to promote the flourishing development of the tourism economy while inheriting the red culture and achieving a win-win situation. The immersive party class of "The Story of Jiu Xuan" cleverly integrates history and reality, so that the participating tourists seem to travel through time and space, return to the eve of The Beiping-Tianjin Campaign , experience the ups and downs of the plot, and interact with the actors to interpret their own legendary stories.

While deeply digging into the Intellectual Property of "The Story of Jiu Xuan", Zhaoguantun Village also carefully built a multi-dimensional cultural and tourism experience matrix with the canal culture as the axis. The winding canal ecological trail connects the rowing site and the ecological landscape. Visitors can not only enjoy the rippling water pictures, but also listen to the pulse of the thousand-year-old rowing through the digital guide system. As a finishing touch, the village activates the use of provincial intangible cultural heritage resources to transform the century-old intangible cultural heritage brand "Qingxiangyong" ancient sauce brewing skills into an immersive cultural experience that tourists can not only observe the different process cycles of "spring preparation, summer making, autumn sun exposure, winter sauce", but also participate in the turning of curd materials, sun exposure and night dew. 

The road to industrial revitalization in Zhaoguantun Village has written a harmonious chapter of the integration of tradition and modernity. In the face of the dual challenges of consumption upgrading and market iteration, the villagers not only adhere to the ingenuity inheritance of a hundred years of craftsmanship, but also open up a diversified development path with innovative thinking. Zhaoguantun Village has built a "intangible cultural heritage plus" characteristic industrial ecology. Through in-depth exploration of the connotation of seasoning culture, it combines 600 years of brewing skills with immersive cultural tourism experience to create an industrial complex integrating ancient method workshop, sauce culture exhibition and DIY research. At the same time, we keenly grasp new consumption trends and develop a series of new products such as low-salt organic and portable small packaging, which makes the traditional noodle sauce fashionable and charming.

The popularity of Zibo barbecue in 2023 has brought unexpected opportunities to this hometown of seasonings. With its mellow and fragrant unique flavor, Tianjin Jiuhuan sauce has quickly become an excellent choice for barbecue dipping sauce. Zhaoguantun Village collectively seized the opportunity, not only establishing an E-Commerce live broadcast base to achieve an average daily sales of 10,000 orders, but also jointly built a research and development center with universities to launch a series of special barbecue composite sauce products.

In the process of promoting the comprehensive revitalization of the countryside, the Zhaoguantun Village Committee team, with a strong effort and tenacity, built a strong branch, changed the style of work, touched on problems household by household, talked about policies, made guarantees, efficiently promoted the completion of 43,000 square meters of buildings, and coordinated with many parties to solve the problems of collective heating and 24-hour water supply, and obtained the villagers unanimously praise. At the same time, they actively raised funds to build a 1.2-kilometer ring road, harden a 1.7-kilometer lane, build a village cultural center, a canal wharf, and a leisure apricot flower embankment, and build a day care center for the elderly to provide three meals for the elderly free of charge, creating a new scene of beautiful countryside with village beauty and peaceful living and working.

On the levee of the South Canal with blue waves, Zhaoguantun Village has painted a new picture of rural revitalization of "industrial prosperity, cultural activity and people's wealth" with the thousand-year-old water as the ink and the inheritance of ingenuity as the brush. From the sound of the years of Jiu Xuan Gate to the long fragrance of Qingxiangyong, from the flourishing of immersive cultural tourism to the cross-border breakthrough of the "Jiuhuan" brand, this ancient canal village is moving forward in the symphony of tradition and modernity with the dual attitude of innovation and persistence. Today's Zhaoguantun is not only a pearl on the map of Jinghai Cultural Tourism, but also a vivid footnote for rural revitalization in the new era. Looking to the future, the picture of the village beauty is still stretching, the fireworks of the collective canteen will warm thousands of families, and the ingenuity stories of the non-heritage workshop will attract more visitors from afar. Under the willow embankment on the banks of the canal, the pace of rural revitalization will always resonate with the times, continuing to write a new chapter.

(TIANJIN AGRICULTURE AND RURAL COMMITTEE, Writer: Du Min Translator: Ma Jiangpeng)