WeChat *** Space Secret Detective" (ID: mespace007), author: Gao Songyuan.
This Spring Festival, I returned to my hometown, went deep into the town and the countryside, and the place where I once lived, and my experience was more profound, so it became a "homecoming puppet book".
About the house
When I went back this year, the biggest change for my mother was that she no longer nagged to buy a house. In the past 20 years, my mother has talked about the house the most, because the people around her have been "stimulating" her in the past 20 years, how many tens of thousands of dollars have been made from the commercial house bought by so-and-so, so-and-so borrowed money to buy a second house, and so-and-so already has four houses in his hands. Although I also have a house, my mother feels that it is far from enough, and every time I count it, I constantly lose the opportunity to buy more houses and lose the opportunity to make a fortune.
When I came back this time, what my mother said the most was that she couldn't buy a house. How much did so-and-so's house lose, and the ** house was empty again. The example she gave me was still the "bitter lesson" around her: in a neighborhood near the town, my cousin had a house there that fortunately sold in time, and now there is only one family on one floor, and most of it has not been sold. Many owners who have already moved in have piled up sundries in houses that have not been sold, and some have a few dogs directly in the vacant houses. Those who came to see the house sporadically were also collectively "persuaded" by these owners not to buy here, which made the developer very helpless. It is said that this situation exists in many towns and villages. On the one hand, it is the "revenge" psychology of the owners who have bought their houses to be dissatisfied with the drop in the price of their houses, and on the other hand, it is true that fewer and fewer people are buying township houses.
Although my cousin got rid of a house, he had to buy a wedding house for his son in the city. I bought it at the highest point in 2020, and now ** is said to have fallen by half. What makes him most helpless is that the key to the new house has been delayed for a year and has not been obtained. Because the house is finely decorated, the developer has done a good job in infrastructure construction, and there is really no money for fine decoration, so it is dragged on. I inquired, and it turned out that the real estate developer was Aoyuan, which has been in a crisis in the capital chain in recent years. Although the owners have made trouble several times, the finishing work of the house has been delayed. However, compared to those owners who have paid the money and loaned, and the house has not been built at all, what happened to the cousin is really not a big deal.
When the house is no longer a "show-off currency" for rural or small town socialization, the most common thing that relatives talk about is the car. My mother complained that I still hadn't learned how to drive, and that someone else had changed cars a few times. Even a neighbor who works outside 365 days a year, 350 days a year, bought a car, parked it in his yard, and drove it for his relatives during the Spring Festival. If you look at the old streets of the town, it is indeed the same, even the alleys are full of cars, and it is said that they are also driven to come back a few times a year.
My mother said that perhaps because of the recession of real estate, several canal cultural and tourism attractions that were originally planned to be developed around our home have now been suspended, I don't know if it is a good thing or a bad thing?
About the spirit
The spiritual life of the countryside and the small town seems to have been lackluster for decades. My father brought me a lot of newspapers from the town, about a year's worth of them, and a few thick stacks. He felt that after all, I had worked in the newspaper for more than ten years and was full of interest in all newspapers, so whether it was **, or provincial, and all the newspapers in our city were brought back. I counted it, there are a total of 11 kinds, namely "People's **" China Discipline Inspection and Supervision News, "China Emergency Management News", "China Women's Daily", "Farmer **" China TV News, "Jiangsu Workers Daily", "Yangtze Evening News", "Modern Express", "Yangzhou **" Yangzhou Evening News.
So, this holiday I have an extra task to sort out these newspapers. Unfortunately, there are only a handful of contents that are valuable to me, and there is a reason why the newspaper fell off a cliff, and after reading thousands of newspapers, I can only collect a dozen historical anecdotes and supplement pages. There are too many familiar names in the newspaper, of course, not all, the reporters and editors who fought together back then, many of them were sick, died, and imprisoned, which made people unconsciously nostalgic for the ** era of paper media. During the Spring Festival, I met a few old colleagues, and they all felt that the times no longer belonged to them, and most of them just repeated their boredom every day, and the helplessness and pain of being sober, and the evil of self-depravity and mediocrity, there was still an illusion that the world was under their feet.
The spiritual life of the countryside and small town is as boring as ever, and the fathers are still used to playing mahjong, cheating chickens, and pushing pai gow. The only sense of ritual is probably eating, not long after breakfast, I have lunch, and not long after lunch, I am busy with dinner. The most talked about at the dinner table is still the problem of birth, old age, sickness and death in the countryside, and as in the past, every year I can hear too many familiar people die suddenly or commit suicide, and every time my mother talks about it, the case is extremely tragic. It's hard for me to imagine why these amiable elders or neighbors who watched me grow up die in such a miserable way in their twilight years.
I asked my mother, I remember my father used to like fishing, why does he like to play cards now? Mother smiled and said, "There are fewer clean rivers on our side, and the town next door is said to have 7,000 rivers, but 70,000 people on 7,000 rivers are grabbing places to fish, which scared your dad away."
The whole countryside is still living in the great boredom and emptiness of the past, these years, their spiritual sustenance seems to be more based on vanity comparison, the excitement of the impetuous surface, and eating, drinking, playing cards, winning and losing, there is a kind of paleness in the background that cannot squeeze out the slightest rainbow, and this paleness can sometimes make people fall into despair.
But there is also a positive side, many young people have started to talk about movies. I also took the time to watch two in the town, "Hot and Hot" is a bloody movie, but Jia Ling did shoot the never-say-die temperament in Korean movies, and the symbolism is greater than the movie itself. "Article 20" is comparable to Song Kanghao's "The Defender", and Zhang Yimou probably wants to leave some masterpieces for himself as he gets older.
The way out for rural revitalization
Overall, the task of rural revitalization is arduous, and from my personal perception, it is indeed not so easy to change, but the whole trend is still on the right path. This year's first-class economic work conference emphasized that it is necessary to organically combine the promotion of new urbanization with the comprehensive revitalization of towns and towns.
Personally, I think this is the most important key to rural revitalization, but Rome was not built in a day. In recent years, the separation between villages and towns has been too severe. The reason why the countryside is becoming more and more boring is because more young people are moving to the big cities, and even if they can stay in the small towns, they live in the small towns, and even if they open a small shop in the small towns, they rarely return to the countryside. Even when it comes to major festivals, the children and grandchildren only go to the countryside to go through the motions, and the old people are like a mustard to survive, and their spirits are bound to be painful and struggling. My mother specially counted for me, about 10 unnatural deaths in the township, 3 were accidents, 4 were terminally ill and didn't want to live, and 3 were alive and well, so they suddenly drank pesticides.
One of the root causes of this may be the explosive urbanization process that has lasted for more than 20 years, and all parties are abandoning the countryside. In 1949, there were 2,068 counties in our country, and in 2022, only 1,472 counties remain, and this trend is still spreading. The decline in the number and status of county towns can be called the "central collapse" in the new urbanization chain, which is the main reason for the blockage and unsmooth communication between urban and rural areas.
The weakening of the county plate has led to the disorder of the entire system. On the one hand, the big cities "above" lack the necessary "reservoirs", and the "urban disease" is becoming more and more serious; On the other hand, it has also made the countryside "below" increasingly "hollowed out". The only way to solve this predicament is to organically combine the promotion of new-type urbanization with the comprehensive revitalization of rural areas. Don't expect young people who work and live in big cities to return to the countryside, let young people in small towns return to the countryside first, love the countryside is fundamental.
Our generation may have the most complicated feelings about the countryside, on the one hand, we experienced the best times in the countryside in our childhood. At that time, the river water was clear, there were lobsters, snails and yellow eels in the rice fields, and the people were simple and simple. In the summer, children spend their days in the river pond and bring back a few fish like cormorants when swimming. In foggy weather, a few large hairy crabs can always be found in the cow footprints in the ditch. We fought water fights with children from neighboring villages, played for lights, dug birds' nests, and even fought in groups. On the other hand, we are also actively distancing ourselves from the countryside. As we grow up, the countryside is also gradually degenerating, all kinds of hypocrisy are beginning to be exposed, and more and more people have become utilitarian and sophisticated. You mix well, I can't look at you; You mix poorly and look down on you. All people's relationships seem to be built on pompous money-making sentiments and comparisons. People talk about nothing but the house and the car, and the money earned from the place where they sit, as if everything else is meaningless.
Rural revitalization has a long way to go, and from a physical point of view, to break the separation between urban and rural areas, it is necessary to graft industries and people, which may be a big project. From a spiritual point of view, there is still a lot of homework to be done, and what is modernity and what is humanism may require the continuous efforts of several generations. Therefore, for the cultural tourism industry and rural revitalization, there is no need to be obsessed with the "hot and hot" of floating watches, but to find a way out in a down-to-earth manner. It's for remembering.