Last month, I went back to my hometown with my cousin, an unremarkable central county.
My cousin said, let's go have a cup of coffee. I thought to myself, I don't know what county coffee tastes like?With curiosity, he and his cousin came to a commercial street located in the development zone, and he said that this is the most "trendy" place in the county.
When I arrived, I found out, **What kind of county coffee?It is full of chain brands, both domestic and foreign. I also double-checked the strokes of the kanji and the spelling of the words to confirm that it was not a copycat. Then, just like my daily Xi, I opened the mini program, received two coupons, ordered, waited, and received meals, which was no different from buying coffee in a big city.
After taking my seat, I looked around, and it seemed that the consumers in the county town were similar to those in the big cities, and they were dressed in the same way as the Celina and George I usually saw in the office buildings, and even spoke the same dialect. Of course, I really didn't see it when I took out my laptop to catch PPT, after all, it was a county seat, and it was still casual and comfortable.
This is probably not an isolated phenomenon, it is said that now the major coffee brands are sinking into the county, because the urban market has become saturated. An international coffee brand even claimed that it had covered 800 counties, nearly a third of the target. The petty bourgeois markers that appeared in TV dramas in the early years are now everywhere in the county.
As an ordinary consumer, I can't say anything about the giants competing for business, so I can only buy two cups of coffee and make a small contribution to their business layout. But I do feel happy for my brothers and sisters who stayed in the county, my relatives did not have the opportunity to live in the city, but their living space is now similar to that of the city, both physically and spiritually, coffee, which originally belonged to the cultural symbol of the city, has become so common and disenchanted here.
When I was a child, I especially liked to go back to my hometown, where there were dogs, ducks, herds of animals, and many brothers and sisters, everyone played chess and glass balls together, and they could jump into the river to swim without saying a word. But gradually, I lost my interest in my hometown, and that was when the gap between the city and the county widened. The city has more facilities and more entertainment, while my hometown county is as monotonous as ever, and even the river has dried up.
But now, I find that the county seat is gradually getting closer to the city, at least from the level of artifacts, the development zone in front of me is no different from the new area of the city. I even saw an influencer filming with a tripod in front of the coffee shop.
I can feel that the boundaries that were once invisible have become blurred. That was the original distinct identity mark of the city and the county, but now this label is not so important - just like the Internet celebrity in front of me, in her, I can't tell whether she is from the county or the city, she is just a young person who enjoys being pursued, and thousands of young people.
It should be said that thanks to the popularization of infrastructure construction and technology, the distance between cities and counties has been shortened. In the past, going back to my hometown was a very important thing for me, but today it is no longer the same, it is more like I take the subway to a farther place.
More importantly, in terms of spirituality, I no longer feel that going back to my hometown is "going back to the village", it is going to a "heterogeneous space", and going back to the county is so natural that even coffee coupons are universal.
Of course, this does not mean that the county seat does not have problems. In the county of my hometown, the population is almost no longer growing, and the loss of young people is also serious. It is conceivable that the development of the county will still face many challenges in the future.
But no matter what, I still feel relaxed and relieved by the coffee shops that can be found everywhere in the county. The popularization of these commercial symbols in the county will also bring about the urbanization of cultural Xi, social rules, and thinking patterns. For example, young people in my hometown have become Xi to going to coffee shops to talk about things, not just at the staggered wine table.
These have laid the groundwork for the future of the county. Even if the demographic situation here is not optimistic, it can be more closely around the city and perhaps find a new self-identity. Just like my cousin, who is seriously considering going back to his hometown to open an aesthetic clinic. "There's definitely something wrong with that. He said confidently, holding his coffee.
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