The oil mill in Tangxi village

On the other side of Tangxi Village, next to the ancient trees of Long Rong Feng, there is an old oil mill that is still being squeezed. In the oil mill, the smoke cage is foggy, the dull stone hammer is ringing, and the oil fragrance is floating. In ancient times, there were more than twenty old oil mills along the river bank. In early winter, villagers gathered here with harvested tea seeds to extract oil and enjoy a bumper harvest. They blocked the dam in the stream with river stones, introduced the stream into the oil mill to drive the waterwheel and millstone, then pressed the steamed and crushed tea seed oil into a round cake with rice stalks, put it into the oil layer chiseled by big trees, and squeezed the tea seed oil with a stone hammer and a wooden wedge. Nowadays, most of these old oil mills are abandoned and collapsed, and the rickety millstones and stopped waterwheels are like a black-and-white memory film fixed in time and space, which is displayed in front of us. This simplicity and vicissitudes are telling the rise and fall of ancient village Camellia oleifera, leaving a string of nostalgic and thoughtful sighs.