In recent days, the Internet term "small town as a subject", which has been popular in China for a long time, finally came up with the following couplet: "county Brahmins". I have to admit that not only is the text very neat, but this correspondence is also very spicy in real life.
The reason why people react violently to these two terms is because it is easy to sit in the right seats. Especially when most people are from the same background as "small-town problem-solvers", it is inevitable that they want to peek at the hidden group of "county Brahmins". Of course, the core question is still practical interests, whether the "county Brahmins" exist in China? If so, did this group of people have a local monopoly on the distribution of benefits and opportunities?
This topic can become a hot topic, or it is necessary to return to an academic ** "Zhongxian Cadres" written by Feng Junqi, a sociologist from Henan, when he returned to his hometown in 2008. Using a county town as a sample, Professor Feng followed the intricate interpersonal relationships and the rise and fall of the fate of dozens of local political families through years of fieldwork and extensive interviews.
Professor Feng himself is aware of the sensitivity of this topic, so he has been pressing ** not to make it public, because he is worried that once it is concerned by the society, it will affect the normal life of some interviewed individuals. However, such a realistic academic ** was finally pulled out by people with a heart in the sweaty ** pile, which also caused Internet attention and sensation as the author expected.
It is not just an accident or accident that an academic article can be selected and pushed into the focus of the times, but it is a need of social development itself. In the face of the current problems of social development, academics or intellectuals must be the first group to stand up and point out the problems, and then the voice is heard and resonated by the whole society, so as to reach a consensus on changing the status quo from the bottom up.
we might as well look back at how the " three rural issues " became a hot topic in society for the first time . In 2003, the first rural work conference of the Communist Party of China officially proposed for the first time to solve the "three rural" problems as the top priority of the whole party's work, and raised the three rural issues to an unprecedented height. Also in the same year, Chen Guidi and Wu Chuntao completed a long reportage "Survey of Chinese Farmers" based on their long-term research in Anhui, which attracted widespread attention and deep thinking from the society.
Returning to the topic of "county Brahmins", first of all, we must admit that this group is widespread at present, and the appearance of sentient beings described by Professor Feng in "Zhongxian Cadres" cannot be just a problem in "Zhongxian". "Zhongxian" is just an ordinary member of thousands of counties in China, and his particularity lies only in the fact that he happened to be selected by Professor Feng as a survey sample back then.
The intertwined political and family problems in Zhongxian County also exist in the life of other counties, and the problems may be light or severe, and when brought together, they are a realistic portrait of our times. Facing problems and acknowledging reality is the first step taken by our generation to shoulder the responsibilities of the times. As long as you have the courage to face the problem, there is hope to solve it.
However, the term "Brahmin", which belongs to the Indian caste system, is still not appropriate in China. This is tantamount to a disguised recognition of the rationality and long-term nature of the county's political family, which does not conform to the reality of our nation, both historically and in reality. When it comes to Brahmins, it is inevitably associated with the Chinese Wei and Jin dynasties. It was one of the darkest and most chaotic dynasties in Chinese history, a rival to the European Middle Ages. At that time, the prevalent blood privileged class directly led to the chaos and stagnation of Chinese civilization.
The imperial examination system, which was born in the Sui and Tang dynasties, was to weaken the monopoly of the gate lord clan on social resources, provide a channel for the civilian elite to rise, and provide available talents for the best institutions. The imperial examination system, which lasted for thousands of years, directly closed the loop of China's ancient political system, and China's social structure also entered a stable state of the so-called rise and fall of dynasties.
Subsequently, "no more than three generations of wealth" has also become a proverb in the unspoken rules of ancient Chinese society. No matter whether you are an official or a businessman, and no matter how powerful you have been, under the general trend of political power change, it is inevitable that you will be replaced by emerging forces, and very few will end up well. Especially in the Ming and Qing dynasties, where the political system of ancient China was the most perfect, whether it was a giant or a giant, they all lived under the curse of "rich but three generations".
In "Zhongxian Cadres", many of the political families that Professor Feng tracks have already contributed to the country's anti-corruption cause, and the "Zhongxian Report" itself has only been born for more than ten years, and Professor Feng himself has just become a greasy middle-aged person. If you look at it from the perspective of those who are descendants, isn't this change earth-shaking enough?
As for the future of China, whether it belongs to the "small-town problem-solver" or the "county-seat Brahmin", the answer has long been self-evident. "Small-town problem-solvers" are admitted to university through personal efforts and enter the big city to become a white-collar worker, which is itself a miracle of the collision between personal destiny and the torrent of the times. In China's vast urbanization process, ten of the largest incremental opportunities in recent years are in big cities, and real estate and wealth miracles are basically staged in big cities. Many "small-town problem-solvers", through personal efforts, have grasped the opportunities of the times, and have been able to reverse the fate of their own and generations of families who are "facing the loess and facing the sky". Even if you don't get rich overnight, you can make steady progress in a big city, get a good place near the water, and have a middle-class family of three with one house and one car, which cannot be called a failure in any country.
Today, it would be glaring to look at some of the inherited benefits of the so-called "county Brahmins" for nothing, but if we go back to before urbanization, we go back to yesterday when we were not able to get out of the small town. Under the rational comparison, you will find that the disparity between them has actually been smoothed out a lot by the development of the times, but today, you have the courage and confidence to compare with the "county Brahmins" on a standard.
The lessons of history that we have seen are also visible to national policymakers, and they will only be more profound and thorough. Before the expansion of the college entrance examination, the main characteristics of civil servants were the graduation distribution of college students and the transfer of military personnel. The supply of talents with one article and one military force is guaranteed, and the old tradition of "learning and excellence is the best, and those with military merits are obtained" has been continued. After the expansion of the college entrance examination, the diploma threshold became invalid, and the chaos of civil servant recruitment and fighting began to appear in society. As a result, the public examination began to become the entry threshold for the employment of first-class organs and institutions at all levels, and the public examination also replaced the college entrance examination as the national examination. Although the subjects such as the essay and the administrative aptitude test are a little mechanical, they are impeccable in ensuring fairness. These institutional designs are also inhibiting the formation and solidification of "county Brahmins".
China's future cannot belong to the "county Brahmins". From the day you leave your homeland, you are already halfway through your life choices, because you have since gotten rid of the strong influence of the so-called "county Brahmins" on your personal destiny, and everyone will never intersect again like parallel lines. Entering the big city and integrating into the torrent of the times, you are half the battle, because you have tied your destiny to the prosperity of the country and the nation.
although everyone is quite dissatisfied with the existence of the so-called "county seat brahmins" , but if you really give up everything in the big city and go back to the county town to become the so-called brahmin , i am afraid that few people will really accept it . Everyone knows very well that it was a world of yesterday that was left behind by the times, even if some parents and relatives were sheltered, how long could they hold on in the wave of urbanization? The reality is that the "county Brahmins" are instead trying to get out of the small circle of the county town and drill into the big city, and the tragedy is that once they leave their homeland, the so-called Brahmins will have no way to talk about it, and they will also become ordinary in the big cities.
In short, everyone is a little too sensitive to the special existence of the "county Brahmin" in the transition period of China's development process. China's future must only belong to the smart and hard-working "small-town problem-solver", continue to work hard to do the problem!