Everyone says Home is good, in fact, I’ve never really liked my rural hometown.
Last year, I saw a news story about a son who was working outside of a certain place and took seven days off to go home to visit his critically ill father. The son asked his father: “Are you dead or not? I just took 7 days off work, is to do the funeral Time are counted. “The old man then committed suicide. The son rushed to finish the funeral within a week and went back to the city to continue working.
I was actually not particularly shocked to see such news. As far as I can remember, this is how it is in the countryside, I just didn’t expect that after all these years, hearts are still so bad.
I lived in the countryside – the kind of real countryside where only agricultural production and almost no industry existed – for 21 years, and didn’t really leave until I graduated from college and joined the workforce.
From past experiences, I have a vague feeling that those who eulogize the countryside are sour literati. The real countryside has no idyllic pastoral and simple folklore, but is full of deceitfulness, bullying, fear of evil, and the weak and the strong.
To put it politely, among the peasants I grew up with, indifference, pettiness, and a distorted mentality due to jealousy are the labels of many of them. As for the phenomenon of brothers killing each other, fathers and sons turning against each other, sisters becoming enemies, etc., it is not uncommon.
In the poor countryside, there are stories of stepfathers sleeping with stepdaughters since childhood, husbands having extramarital affairs, wives stealing men, uncles poisoning their nephews, fathers taking poison and sons not rescuing them, children not supporting their Parents, and elderly parents being driven to live in pig pens …… are all true stories.
There is a program called “True Stories” on a certain station, and my mother loves to watch it. I sometimes tell her that she doesn’t need to see it, and go back home to shoot a drama, a “true story” every day, you can shoot a year, each does not repeat. My mother was very unhappy to hear this, but the real countryside is so absurd and rich in Life.
The poor do not experience dignity and warmth in the countryside, and the poorer they are, the more they are bullied.
Of course, the poorer the more unreasonable, the more brutal and bullying there are, but the protagonist must be the kind of strong character, strong and strong, more is the poorer the more bullying. Rural areas are not rich, and some people either because of inflexible minds, either because of physical defects, or because of personality and poorer than the average person, poor will be inferior, will be cowardly, so easy to be bullied.
In the rural areas I remember, young and old, there are not many cultivated and civilized. Children from single-parent families, children who remarried with their mothers, children of convicts, and children who were not born and adopted were the most likely targets of bullying and abuse. The more vulnerable the Family, the more physically challenged, the more lack of care, the more likely they are to be taunted, teased, and bullied. When I was young, some mischievous children bullied and made fun of disabled, mentally handicapped and single-parent children, and some adults did not stop them or even took the lead to participate.
The village women were happy to talk about right and wrong and spread scandals behind the scenes, perhaps because the village entertainment life was extremely lacking and the circle of life was so narrow that a little bit of right and wrong, parental affairs, could be spread throughout the village in two or three days – the society of acquaintances was sometimes very scary. This was the case in the past, but I don’t know if it’s any better now – after all, I’ve been away for nearly years – maybe it’s evolved now.
So, the memories of warmth and love only come from parents, not the countryside.
The countryside is a society of acquaintances, tied by clan and blood; the city is a society of strangers, living in the same building, but may not know each other across the street, living for a full decade may never set foot in the door of the neighbor. I am more adapted to the society of strangers, less people meddling, do not interfere with each other, enjoy themselves.
The rural people who dislike the poor and love the rich are in the minority, and they are subservient in front of the rich and powerful – so the rich and powerful often think that the rural people are honest – but in front of those who are more disadvantaged than they are, they are high and mighty.
After thousands of years of authoritarian rule in imperial societies, the peasants are afraid of the officials and hate the rich. Usually they are afraid, but when they have the opportunity, they hate to kill all the powerful and rich people. The peasant’s honest and cowardly and cunning and vicious are two sides of human nature, often existing in the same person at the same time.
Why are the rebellions, uprisings and certain mass movements in history so destructive? It is the full mobilization of the peasants in the depths of the violence and evil in human nature, once the outbreak, unstoppable.
I heard from my grandmother’s generation that when they fought against the landlords, they were vicious to the death.
The peasants in the imperial society, usually easy to rule the submissive people, once incited, is the most terrible mob, no evil, no bottom line.
The quarrels of the village women are a great collection of the most vicious curses in the world. I grew up listening to the quarrels of village women and watching the villagers fight. In the fields, over a bit of water, they can swear and fight.
Fighting and cursing is one of the essential daily entertainment in the countryside. For a small profit, the villagers can start a knife fight. Farmers who are honest and don’t dare to say a word in the city can be extremely vicious in the face of their brothers from the same clan. In order to fight for an inch of the house in front of the house behind the home base, adjacent to the ownership of a chicken, ducks and geese, they can fight. When brothers live next to each other, one side forbids the eaves of the other’s house from dripping over the center line of the drainage lane – this is not a story, this is a true story.
During the rice planting season, the issue of water storage in the paddy field – whose paddy field has more water, whose paddy field is affected by the others, and the issue of piling up the ridge – two paddy fields are adjacent to each other, and some people like to dig the middle ridge to their side so as to take up more The problem of ridge piling – when two paddy fields are adjacent to each other, some people always dig the middle ridge to their own side to take up more area – can lead to countless scoldings and a dozen fights. Nowadays, most people in rural areas go out to work, and there are fewer people working in the fields, so similar incidents may have decreased significantly.
It is said that respecting the old and loving the young is a fine Chinese tradition, but sometimes it is not so justifiable to say so. Perhaps it is only human nature to love the weak, and it seems that China does not do better than other countries in this regard. Love for the young is widespread, but abuse of the young and harmful to the young also occurs, as for various forms of abuse of the old and harmful to the old, it is really shocking to look deeper.
The elderly in rural areas, especially those from poor families, live a humble and undignified life. Many people see the elderly as a burden and a liability, and in their hearts they want the elderly to die early, and some even declare it in their mouths. In rural areas, the death of an elderly person over 70 years old is as common as the death of a dog. The year before last I had a relative who died of illness, came to mourn the people, there are a few people without the color of grief, not even want to pretend to pretend, and actually laughing at the funeral ceremony, playing poker and games.
The death of the elderly in the home, is considered a bad luck thing, so, the elderly mobility or illness, often driven to the old house to live, no old house, a hut temporary accommodation, is also common. Many of the elderly in the old house or hut lonely, cold boiling days, until death.
Escaping from the disgusting countryside was an important motivation for me to study. To this day, I still believe that the countryside is only suitable for viewing from afar, not for going deeper; it is only suitable for vacation, not for permanent residence.
There are a lot of comments on the glorification of the countryside, and there are a thousand sides to the countryside, so maybe I am only seeing some of them. But in general, the more developed the economy is, the more civilized the human behavior is. The ancients said: “The granary is solid and knows propriety, the Food and clothing is sufficient and knows honor and shame. It is true that I am not deceived.
This article does not want to stop at criticizing the uncivilization of the countryside. I think it is in line with human nature and the law of economics that there are more uncivilized phenomena in rural areas than in cities. Resources in rural areas are more strained than in cities, and in order to compete for the resources on which they depend, peasants have no incentive to be civilized; they have to pay every cent. Spending limited resources on people who can produce benefits – usually the young and the young – is merely the normal choice of rational economic people.
Ten years ago, people over 65 in the old country were rarely taken to the hospital for treatment when they were seriously ill; 15 years ago, they were largely absent – why? Because children think that if they can’t be productive at this age, they should die. Instead of sending them to the hospital and wasting money, they would rather save the money to improve the lives of their children and grandchildren when they get seriously ill. In recent years, the popularity of rural cooperative medical care, cost reimbursement settlement is also more convenient, the elderly are sent to the hospital after the disease, but also gradually more up.
Sometimes I think about it, I can’t blame the farmers too harshly. Morality requires material protection, and speaking of morality apart from reality is just empty talk. Perhaps, all uncivilized, the root cause, are poor, it.
Only if you think this way, you will not be too disappointed with human nature.
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