About this journey
Travelers say that Li Zhenhao's 'Shanxia Studio' is not only a handcraft studio and café, but also a wonderful Yunnan plant specimen museum. What is even more special is that all the specimens are collected by her, so each plant has its own story. Old Shuai from the cycling group said that our cycling time needs to be advanced by half an hour because some people, when passing by Li Zhenhao's place, cannot move on and stay for half an hour. (His cycling activity 'Cangshan and Erhai | Visiting Villages and People' passes through the village at the foot of Wuwei Temple, which is the village where Li Zhenhao's studio is located.) Moreover, the enthusiastic Li Zhenhao always prepares tea and snacks for passing guests, allowing them to rest there and look at various strange fruit and plant specimens. It is truly pleasant.
“I am Zhenhao. I often travel with friends to various places in Yunnan. Most of the time, I search for plants and their fruits, collect them to make specimens, and present them in different forms. This is a great joy of my hiking trips.”
This is a mini forest of mushrooms, plants, and fruits. To create more interesting things, we upgraded the mushroom lamp.
The reason for this upgrade came from guests who had already done handicrafts here. Everyone had their own ideas, but the previous mold was too small, and imagination was limited by the space.
This new upgraded mushroom forest night light has more than doubled the space while retaining the childlike fun of the night light. But it is no longer just a miniature landscape of mushrooms and plants; it can be a magnificent throne, a borrowing little person like Arrietty, or even Patrick Star's underwater world, or a crazy primitive tribe.
Part of the plant handcraft micro-landscape | Mushroom Forest Night Light works sharing:
After the rainy season arrives, mushroom specimen activities become richer, with more types of mushrooms and more people joining to preserve collected mushrooms.
For plant materials picked up during other outdoor activities that you want to preserve into handicrafts, you can make plant handicrafts the day after the activity. On the first day, you can bring the plant materials to the studio (near Sister's house, where we eat during mushroom observation).
Experience time:
13:30-15:30, 2 hours
Activity content:
Using lichens from Cangshan and the Dali area, mushrooms collected in summer, and gathered plant materials, create a miniature mushroom forest world with your own hands.
Main materials: Mushrooms, lichens, and plant fruits from Cangshan and surrounding areas.
Li Zhenhao's life and work record blog
If you happen to be here and have extra time, you can visit the nearby Wuwei Temple. This was a royal temple during the Dali Kingdom period, where several emperors became monks. It is said to be the prototype of Tianlong Temple in Jin Yong's novel 'The Demi-Gods and the Semi-Devils'. You climb up a stone path along a stream to reach Wuwei Temple, which is simple, quiet, and surrounded by forest.
Snapshot of the studio:
Summer in Dali is the rainy season, which is also the season for mushroom growth and the busiest time for the guides. The mushroom-picking group gets up early every day and often hikes in the rain. Despite this, everyone is very excited. When they find new mushrooms, they share their daily harvest after descending the mountain.
Picking mushrooms is as joyful as searching for treasure in the forest. I want to keep every kind of mushroom I encounter, or at least keep one to commemorate this experience.
Some mushrooms picked in summer:
Some lichen materials collected from hiking trips.
Photos
