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Transferred from: Peking University Tsinghua Lecture, October Magazine
Author: Huang Deng (Female, Deputy Director of the Department of Finance and Media, Guangdong University of Finance, Ph.D.)
Although I have always been wary of the underlying writing, the unforgettable feelings still make me worry that the voice of this world will become incomparably pleasant, and when the children and grandchildren of a family like my brother will no longer be able to get any voice opportunity, and the narrative of this family naturally cannot enter the public eye, then the humble sadness about them will lose the witness of the experience of those present, and thus the possibility of historicization forever.
And everything I have written today is, in the opinion of a witness, as a peasant daughter-in-law, to record the fate of the relatives I met with them.
New Year 2006, family portrait
01
All the tentacles of reality reach out to this family
Writing or not writing these words, entangled for a long time. The daily survival of my brother, sister-in-law and their families came into my sight after marriage. For so many years, life has been a harsh and solid survival for them, an inescapable fate and choice, and as an intervener, I have always thought that words are an affront to their survival. But precisely because I was an unavoidable intervener and had been internalized as a member of the family, no matter how calm I was, I could not restore to a completely bystander mentality.
Over the years, we have faced, handled, and even encountered many family chores together, and these real situations are closely related to the prospects of rural old-age care, left-behind children, rural education, medical care, and farmers that intellectuals and academics talk about. In this article, I am willing to reply to the description of the event as much as possible as a witness, in order to sort out the inner confusion, provide a case presentation, and explore the possibility of giving back to the countryside.
My husband's family is in a village in Xiaochang County, Xiaogan, Hubei Province. When he returned to his house for the first time in 2005, he was most impressed by his sister-in-law. The sister-in-law was short, dark-skinned and had a rough appearance. I secretly asked my boyfriend at the time, "Although my brother is not particularly handsome, why did he find such an ugly sister-in-law?" "Later, I found out how rude and rude this kind of problem was, and for a poor family in the countryside (not to mention that my brother also had a family genetic disease, and later learned that my father and second sister had died prematurely), it was fortunate to be able to find a woman of the right age to start a family."
In fact, beauty and handsomeness in the rural marriage relationship, its weight is far from being comparable to economic conditions and family status. My sister-in-law's family situation is not good, I don't know the specific situation, I have known her for ten years, and I found that she rarely returns to her mother's house and rarely talks about family affairs. My sister-in-law has a cheerful personality, simple and no intentions, and I see the same, she is only a few years older than me, so the first time I went to pay tribute to the old people in the village, it was natural that we actually held hands.
At that time, the mother-in-law was in good health, about 75 years old, the little nephew was 14 years old, and the little niece was 12 years old. In those years, the brother and sister-in-law have been following the fourth sister and the fourth brother-in-law to work at the Beijing construction site, the fourth brother-in-law is a contract foreman, from the hometown to find a lot of young and middle-aged labor, the township villagers, work is reassuring, naturally, the township villagers can also get the salary smoothly through the brother-in-law, and they trust each other.
Later, it was learned that the fourth brother-in-law had made a lot of money at that time, and even in the late 1990s, he had the foresight to buy land in Xiaogan City and build a four-storey building. Looking back now, these years turned out to be the quietest and peaceful days for the whole family, the husband was still studying, unable to give more financial support to the family as before, the mother-in-law took the initiative to take care of the burden of taking care of nephews and nieces because of her physical fitness, almost eighty years old, still feeding chickens to cook, doing some housework within her ability.
In order to make a living (children's studies, people's contacts in the village, family illness and other necessary expenses), my brother and sister-in-law have been staying at the Beijing construction site, and only during the New Year do they return home one month or half in advance to prepare for the New Year. In this way, nephews and nieces have in fact become left-behind children cared for by their grandparents, but compared with many lonely children at present, because they can get the love of their grandmothers, children do not leave too many psychological shadows.
The situation has changed by 2008, although the brother and sister-in-law have been working outside for many years, but the state of poverty from the beginning to the end of the year has disappointed them, and the mother-in-law and father-in-law are old enough to take care of the grandchildren who have entered the rebellious period, so the sister-in-law decided to stay at home, on the one hand, to take care of the elderly, and more importantly, to discipline the children. My sister-in-law planted vegetables at home, fed chickens, raised pigs, and we sent living expenses to our families on time, so that the family had no diseases or disasters, and their lives were passable.
In this way, the situation of brother and sister-in-law working outside at the same time has become a state in which the brother goes out to work alone. The brother is not in good health, and is not suitable for going out to do heavy physical work on the construction site, but staying at home, there is almost no additional source, and the children are gradually growing up, the elderly are old, the children are married, and the specific pressure of the parents' good death is in front of them.
Although the house was built in 1998 with the support of her husband, the second floor was almost an empty shelf without any decoration, so that there was no way to accommodate relatives for the Night when returning from the New Year's Festival. But no matter what, after all, the family can still live a peaceful life, and as the children grow up, the days are always moving towards a good day.
Every time my brother learned that we wanted to take our son back during the winter and summer vacations, we always came back from the construction site in advance, killed chickens and ducks, used a motorcycle to take our son to the town market to catch the market, bought all kinds of exaggerated and cheap toys for the son, the father-in-law and mother-in-law were also extremely happy, the eldest sister and the little sister who married out, and the second brother-in-law who died early in his wife would come back to get together, and the family could also feel the warmth of the relatives gathering, only the fourth sister's family, because the brother-in-law stayed in Beijing all year round, almost rarely went back. But this ordinary, stable day did not last long, and some unexpected things happened, and directly affected the direction of the whole family.
One thing was that there was a problem with the fourth sister's construction site. Because the government owed the brother-in-law to pay for the contracted project, a large amount of project arrears could not be put in place, which directly destroyed the brother-in-law's family foundation accumulated for many years, which not only caused the brother and sister-in-law to follow their salary for many years to disappear (this money is almost their entire family foundation, there are nearly 100,000 yuan of labor costs, brother and sister-in-law have been counting on this money to the son to marry the daughter-in-law), and because of the arrears of workers' wages, a large number of debts cannot be escaped, and even look for us to borrow money when it is most difficult.
About the spring festival day in 2009, my husband received an urgent call from the fourth brother-in-law, saying that someone had put a knife around his neck and forced him to repay the money on the same day, begging us to help him solve his urgent needs. In my impression, my brother-in-law has always been economically generous, and the clothes he wears are also neat and polished, and he has the style of a successful person in the countryside.
In a few years, this was the first time that my brother-in-law spoke to us, but at that time I really did not want to borrow money, first, there was no extra spare money waiting to help them, and the down payment owed for buying a house was still waiting to be returned at the end of the year, when our economic state was almost at the most tense stage; second, because they owed their brother and sister-in-law nearly 100,000 yuan of hard-earned money, they were suspicious of them, and they always felt that they did not protect the most basic interests of their relatives.
I explained my meaning to my husband, my husband did not say a word, the fourth sister was forced to helpless, called us again for help, in the face of a critical situation, she also had no way, things are clear, we have no way to retreat, there is no choice, only to cheekily find a friend with good economic conditions to borrow money.
Although the fourth sister promised to repay the money in a few months, I knew that it was not her subjective wish to repay the money, and since the loan of the money, we did not expect to have the day to repay the money. In fact, in the following years, the economic situation of the fourth sister's family did not improve at all, and she did not even dare to go home for a few years, afraid that the villagers in the village who had followed her brother-in-law to work would ask for wages (I later realized that the change in the fate of the fourth sister's family had a direct impact on our economic situation in the following years, because he could not return the wages of his brother and sister-in-law, and the brother and sister-in-law had no other savings.
In 2015, I was studying in Beijing, and I once went to see the fourth sister's family with my husband. They live in an extremely chaotic urban village in Beijing, the village is full of sewage, garbage everywhere, two cramped bungalows at the end of a winding alley, in order to avoid others to force debts, they have cut off any contact with the outside world for several years, the fourth brother-in-law is even more afraid to go home for several years, as an only son, even unable to take care of the old mother at home, nor dare to openly find a job, the family's life depends on the fourth sister washing dishes in the café, the two daughters as tour guides to pay. Thinking of the nineties, when the fourth sister's family was at its most brilliant, the family's life was booming, and I did not expect that when I needed economic support the most now, I had to hide in a hidden corner because the government was in arrears in the payment of project funds.
The second thing, and the bigger blow, was my sister's renunciation. In the whole family, the life of the younger sister is the most comfortable. She was born beautifully, and she has the pungent ability of a Hubei girl, after junior high school, she went to Wuhan to work, worked as a temporary worker in the factory, met a regular worker in the factory and got married. The two developed well, because they got married early, when the house price was less than a thousand, they bought a big house, the daughter was also smart and cute, and the brother-in-law later became the deputy director.
In fact, over the years, in addition to her husband, my sister has also taken on many of the heavy responsibilities of taking care of the family. Nephews, nieces, mother-in-law, father-in-law's clothes, daily necessities, almost all of them are brought back from Wuhan, brother, sister-in-law in Wuhan for several years, housing problems are also helped to solve. But in recent years, my sister believed in Buddhism and began to eat vegetarian, and in the summer of 2012, she took her niece to Guangzhou to play, and often promoted the benefits of vegetarianism with us.
Just a year later, one day in September 2013, her husband suddenly received a call from his brother, saying that his sister had left home and decided to divorce, leaving no way out for himself. Although from the perspective of faith, she can fully understand her personal choices, but in fact, when this kind of thing falls on the family around her, it is still unacceptable.
My sister and I were born in the same year, at the most stressful stage of life and family, the brother-in-law is busy with work, the niece has just entered the first year of high school, her mother-in-law is old, and her parents are also eighty years old. The sister suddenly made the decision to become a monk, leaving the whole family like falling into an ice cellar. In order to persuade her to be vulgar, my husband took a leave of absence from Guangzhou to feel Wuhan overnight, and rushed from Wuhan to the nunnery, but in the end he was not moved, until the death of his mother-in-law, I also failed to see my sister at the funeral.
Until now, why the sister who loves the worldly life suddenly gave up the red dust has always been a mystery that haunts the hearts of her relatives (I only occasionally listen to my sister talk about the complicated situation of her husband's family, about her father-in-law's cold violence against her, about the cowardly and timid mother-in-law's dependence on her, and always hugs her and cries when she is helpless), but since she has made a decisive choice, the family has no way.
As soon as the sister left, it was the niece who was directly affected, and the niece's original introverted personality became more isolated, only to read the first year of high school, forced by the pressure of social public opinion, and hastily suspended from school. Remembering the reunion of the family in the Spring Festival in 2006, when her niece was picking vegetables in the field, she followed other cousins and cousins to run wildly in the field, the red bow swayed behind her head, a look of living and jumping, at that time, she was the only little princess born in the big city among all the children, and she was loved by thousands of people, and she did not expect that seven years later, because of her mother's decision to become a family, she became the most pitiful child.
In addition, the deepest hurt is the mother-in-law, the mother-in-law because of the daughter's departure, how can not understand, as long as someone in the family comes, began to chant, the original tough body collapsed, after a stroke, has been bedridden, before death also failed to see the side of the little daughter. The father-in-law (stepfather) has become mune, his sister is his only biological daughter, and the daughter's renunciation has also completely lost his most important emotional sustenance, swinging aimlessly in the village all day, and it is difficult to see the joy that came from the heart on his face.
The bankruptcy of the fourth brother-in-law and the renunciation of the little sister directly crushed the hopes of the two families, and also affected other brothers and sisters, especially the brother's family, the original economic foundation was quite fragile, and after five or six years of labor costs, it was even more foundationless. Since then, the whole family has never had a real reunion like the Spring Festival in 2006. In the past, there was a sister to help share the burden of the family, and as soon as my sister left, we had to take on more.
In addition, the sadness hidden in the dark of the family can be seen everywhere, and every time I go back to my mother-in-law's house, I can always hear something depressing in the chat with my brother, sister-in-law or sister-in-law. At the end of 2013, the nephew and a girl in the county got married on the Internet, and the brother and sister-in-law were extremely happy. However, after the girl married, she always had an awkward relationship with her sister-in-law, and her personality was extremely eccentric, and later learned that her family situation was also extremely unfortunate.
I heard that her mother, after giving birth to her, was caught and sterilized by the township government, and as soon as she returned, she became crazy, she had no ability to take care of the children at all, and she beat people violently, always tearing her clothes, there was no way, her family had to lock her in a house, everyone knew that this tragedy was related to sterilization, but no one had the strength to complain about the truth of the tragedy, but let the fate arrangement act in the most cruel way to an ordinary peasant family.
I once asked my niece-in-law, "Have you ever gone to the township government to report the situation?" She looked dazed, unaware of how much a responsible ligature had hurt her life. Only to say that when I was a child, no one ever hugged, and I grew up in the room. I kept asking her for more information to see if I could help them defend their rights, but I didn't expect to learn that her mother had died in her madness and was only in her forties.
To be fair, my brother and sister-in-law's family are the most ordinary farmers, but also the most honest and responsible farmers, they have no luxury in life, and they have never thought of obtaining additional capital through other means. All they can do is do their part and live a little peace.
In the countryside, the situation like the brother's family is very common, staying in the countryside, without any source of income, going out to work, it is possible that even the salary can not be returned, but the basic expenses of the whole family, such as children's study, family, house repair and renewal, the elderly's illness, aftermath, the same can not be less. Although rural areas have been exempted from agricultural taxes and cooperative medical care has been implemented in recent years, it is a drop in the bucket compared with rising expenditures.
It can be said that China's countless wealth and hope do not flow to them in many ways, but the bad tentacles of society, such as the government's arrears in project funds, the confusion of values caused by the crisis of faith, and the rough and irresponsible implementation of family planning at the grass-roots level, always reach out to this ordinary peasant family, and all kinds of silent tragedies always penetrate into their daily survival through various channels.
Mother-in-law and two sons and grandchildren
02
The fate of families with no prospects in sight
On July 13, 2015, her mother-in-law, who had been bedridden for nearly a year, passed away, completing her difficult life at the age of 86.
In the midst of chaos, sadness, and emptiness, I suddenly felt that the strongest bond that held the whole family was broken. Although there are not many days of living with my mother-in-law, her kindness and generosity still make me feel the kindness and warmth of an old man, without the embarrassment and mustard of getting along with my mother-in-law and daughter-in-law (I am more like my grandmother in her emotional identification with her).
Every time she came home, she was extremely happy, especially for her young grandson, who had just been born, bought a lot of candy to entertain the villagers, and always distributed the photos we sent back regularly to the village elders. The mother-in-law's greatest wish is that her son can become an official, and it is best to become a high official. In her eyes, nothing can change the fate of the family more than having the children of officials in the family, and the son and daughter-in-law wearing two doctoral hats are not even better than a township cadre or a money-making contractor, and can solve the actual difficulties of other members of the family.
The old man's humble wishes made me feel the pain and humiliation she had suffered in her life, as well as the torture and doom of endless survival. I know that it is not uncommon for people like husbands to be born in families, change their fate through studying, and finally find a safe place to live in the city, because of the common family burden and pressure, from the spiritual face, class temperament and even have a certain common characteristic, so that in various social groups, they are labeled as a "phoenix man" by women in the city or with better family situations than their spouses, and as a target that cannot be easily married.
I do not deny in the slightest that as an individual choice, the union with this kind of man means to face more, but this moral advantage from the single public opinion of the society still makes me feel the discrimination, helplessness and indifference hidden behind this label, as well as the irreversible survival disadvantage caused by the dual structure of urban and rural areas to the peasants, how to act on the level of marriage and love through intergenerational transmission, resulting in irrecipherable natural contradictions. It can be said that although rural-born readers have been able to change their identity through personal efforts, as long as they are still dependent on various flesh and blood ties with their families, the sense of humility, smallness, and personality that penetrates deep into the bone marrow will penetrate into all aspects of life. The lucky ones who escaped from the mud pit are still like this, and how can the ones who stay in the place have a better fate?
The truth is this, calm down and think about it, the brother's family really does not see too good prospects.
The first is that intergenerational poverty has begun to reincarnate. At the best of physical strength, the brother and sister-in-law left their children to go out to work, and now the nephews and nieces have grown up, and after getting married and having children, as the pressure of survival becomes a reality, it is inevitable to repeat the fate of the fathers and embark on the next round of working life, and the brothers and sisters-in-law, like the father-in-law and mother-in-law, must take on the heavy responsibility of taking care of the grandchildren.
After his nephew got married at the end of 2013, in order to repay his debts, he left his newlywed wife at the end of the year and became a member of the masons with the team of villagers who went to work in other provinces. If you are lucky, you can save more than 10,000 yuan a year, and if you are unlucky, or change a few more construction sites, it may only be enough to buy a train ticket home. After all, compared with his father,000, the nephew could not be as strict and frugal as they were, and in his early twenties, like the young people in the city, he was obsessed with all kinds of smartphones, or some fashionable business, and this expense alone was enough for the family to spend half a year.
He had also considered finding something to do in a nearby town, or opening a shop, but it was not without cost, or without excellent technology, it was always difficult to do. Objectively speaking, it is difficult for rural production to form a virtuous circle, and more often, obtaining basic household expenses still has to be at the cost of dismembering the complete family structure. In this way, getting married, having children, going out to work, and creating left-behind children becomes a de facto cycle of reincarnation. For his brother, the new challenge is that when he is old, he will even face the situation of being old and helpless, after all, none of his children can change their fate through studying, and in his half-life labor, he has only maintained a simple survival, and has not left himself half a bit of pension capital, and the transmission of poverty and poverty has become the fate of this family.
Secondly, the consequences of left-behind children are beginning to show. Nephews and nieces have grown up as the first generation of left-behind children. The niece married at the age of nineteen and had children at the age of twenty through online dating, and her husband was a native boy who was a year younger than him.
Although she is already a mother, her niece is not mentally prepared to be a mother at all, and she does not feel the heavy responsibility of motherhood, during pregnancy, she still maintains her previous lifestyle, eating instant noodles and drinks, mobile phones are 24 hours a day, and the bedside table is full of instant noodle boxes and beverage bottles. After the child was born, even the cotton yarn diaper did not know where to buy it.
I saw her with her daughter who was less than a year old in the summer, and on a hot day, I let her be naked for the most part, and the mud and dirt on her body didn't matter, I told her that she should give the child a little cotton gauze diaper, she began to look dazed, and then she told me happily that she let her daughter start eating popsicles for a few months, and after a few days of tummy, it doesn't matter what she eats now, but in fact, her daughter has been suffering from a high fever for unknown reasons.
Compared with the prudence and meticulousness of the newly motherwomen in the city, the ignorance and roughness of the niece really surprised me. She was originally a child, a child who had been a mother since she was twenty years old, and her playful nature and the heavy responsibility of her mother were placed on her, which seemed awkward and glaring. I asked her to buy two books to read, or when I went online, I stopped by the content of the parenting column, and her youthful face turned to me again, "I'll go out next year, and it's Grandma's business."
The situation of the nephew is not much better, her wife has not had the nourishment and teaching of the mother since she was a child, and she does not know how to treat the child, and as soon as the child cries, she will throw the child who is several months old on the bed, either ignoring it or shouting, it is difficult to have a peaceful mood, not to mention the calm that a rational mother should have. Coupled with the nephew's work outside the home all year round, she and her sister-in-law get along all day, the two are always inevitably bumping into each other because of family chores, so it is difficult to have a good attitude towards the newborn child.
I have to admit that unlike the mentality of my brother's generation being forced to go out, the mentality of nephews and nieces going out to work has changed a lot. Relative poverty is certainly the reason why they choose to go out, but for young and premature mothers, many times, going out to work is the best excuse for them to avoid raising their children. In their thinking and emotional development, the tediousness of raising children makes them miserable, and the harm of going out too early to another child does not enter their sight at all.
Left-behind children's lack of love in childhood, so that they are difficult to obtain the ability to love from an early age, when they grow up to be parents, this lack of love, and will not change with the identity, like divine help to make up for it, the barren intergenerational transmission of love, is the real worry.
Compared with the care and good education of children in normal urban families, it is undeniable that another invisible gap has widened the gap between urban and rural areas. But on the other hand, because of many years of working outside the home, the values of nephews and nieces have been deeply rooted in the current consumption concept. Whether it is dressing up, getting married and buying a house, or daily life, its vane is no different from that of urban children.
Although the nephew did not make much money before marriage, he changed smartphones much faster than we expected (his wife was online dating, comforting his brother and sister-in-law). The wedding ceremony even invited a band, a team, not to mention the three major pieces of gold jewelry (necklace, earrings, and hand circles) popular in the countryside. The atmosphere it creates is not fundamentally different from any wedding held in any high-end restaurant in the city, the only difference is that the wedding is set in a peasant family that is not rich. In the face of such a scene, they have almost no room for resistance, the pomp and circumstance of the wedding, the bride price and equipment given to the girls by the wedding, in their dim lives with each other, it is almost the only chance to shine. The debts borne for this naturally become a heavy starting point for a new family.
Third, the traditional rural structure has lost its inherent tenacity and kink, and the fragility of the economy has accelerated the withering of rural customs. Taking the old-age care as an example, although raising children and preventing the elderly has been the firmest belief of farmers for thousands of years, this simple desire has been greatly challenged in the face of the harsh reality of survival. He Xuefeng's team once mentioned that the phenomenon of suicide of the elderly in rural Hubei is very serious, "The research center where the author works shows that the Two Lakes Plain (Dongting Lake Plain and Jianghan Plain) and its surrounding areas are an area with a very high suicide rate, especially the suicide rate of the elderly, which is far higher than the normal suicide level." ("On the Types and Logic of Rural Suicide", Journal of Huazhong University of Science and Technology (Social Science Edition), No. 116).
Chen Baifeng once again emphasized this fact in the article "Intergenerational Relations Change and Suicide of the Elderly: An Empirical Study of the Rural Areas of Hubei Beijing", "The high suicide rate of the elderly, the proportion of high suicide, and the rapid growth of the suicide rate and the proportion of suicide are all indisputable facts." The cruelty of this fact is shocking. (In Sociological Research, No. 4, 2009) If you hadn't seen it with your own eyes and heard it with your own eyes, it would be hard to believe that such a cruel situation is so common.
During the period when the mother-in-law was seriously ill, from time to time there were villagers who came to visit and chat, always mentioned that the rural elderly got sick, always dragged, and could get very little timely treatment (sister-in-law because of the daily careful care of the mother-in-law, timely help her turn over, change the medicine, got the village people unanimously praised, became the model of the whole village daughter-in-law), if you have a terminal illness, generally waiting for death, some old people do not want to drag down their children, many will choose to cut themselves off, some children really can not stand this long-term torture, They will also choose to gradually reduce the amount of food given to patients who are unable to take care of themselves, and eventually starve to death.
Chen Yingsong, a writer known for writing low-level literature, in his novel "Mother", with a calm and harsh gaze to look directly at the truth of this existence, made a three-point account of this, when I read this work, I always appear in front of the figure of those old people, feel their calm and calm when facing the end of life.
Life in their eyes, does not have a particularly precious meaning, living, is humble and numb to live, can feel the happiness purely from the instinct and inertia of life, death, is also a natural death, in an increasingly lonely and declining village, this silent tragedy does not cause too many waves in people's hearts.
The tragic fate of the miserable peasants, who are born deaf and dumb, has never been able to get any change from the root and the whole, and the glory of economic development for many years, in addition to allowing them to eat enough, has not allowed them to enjoy the dignity and dignity of the overall strength of the country. The splendor of the big cities, the extravagance of the rich in the cities, the lofty lives of the successful people, and the miserable situation of the countryside on the same land cannot be much related.
Finally, the rural areas are facing the erosion of capital, and the social floating capital that is eyeing the tiger has set its sights on the last resource in the countryside - land - through the collusion of officials and businessmen. Although the privatization of rural land is only in the discussion stage, in practice rural land has been annexed through the operation of capital. The husband's village is in a hilly area, the scenery is not too good, a few small dirt bags that are not too high, and a small river in the village meanders through the village to provide basic irrigation for the farmland of the whole village.
But in the past two years, people from nowhere have enclosed a large piece of land in the village, and the river has been forced to divert and flow into the privately dug pond, imitating the resort model in the economically developed areas, and building some pavilions and buildings that are not compatible with the whole village and houses for the enjoyment of the city people. In fact, because of the lack of tourism resources in the surrounding areas, there are not many tourists driving the village economy, but because the diversion of the river has directly affected the water supply of the farmland, the farmland is occupied, and what consequences will eventually be caused, it is now impossible to predict, and the villagers are indifferent to it. For the children of the nephews and nieces, it is impossible to provide them with a way out of farming anyway, and the farmland is dressed up as a resort, but it can give them a psychological illusion.
If it is not married to her husband, as a member of the family, personally experiencing all kinds of daily chores that cannot be escaped, and witnessing all kinds of speechless truths, it is almost difficult for onlookers to experience how many innate disadvantages an ordinary peasant family will face in the specific survival and struggle, and how much their actual life and the general trend of the entire social development will be broken. All kinds of real pain always make me ask: what is the problem that caused the family to be deaf and dumb? How is it possible to give back to the countryside?
03
How is it possible to give back to the countryside
To be sure, despite the rational analysis, the outlook for the brother's family is filled with gloom and despair. But every time I return to my hometown, the mental state of my brother and sister-in-law is still reassuring and comforting. Although they are always short of money and their brothers suffer from congenital genetic diseases, their spirits are much happier than ours, their brothers never lose sleep, and their sister-in-law never sighs.
Even in the most difficult stage of the mother-in-law's bedridden, the sister-in-law still did everything she had to do without any shame, and there was no depression or depression of critically ill patients at home. The more openly and desirelessly they live, the more they have no sense of the predicament of their personal destiny, and the more they do not have too many extravagant hopes for life, the more I feel how cruel this destined existence is, and why there are always people in this world who have to possess so much. And how to give back to the family, for family members who jump out of the dragon door, almost becomes a natural emotional choice.
Calm down and think about it, regarding the return to the countryside, even if the country's economic strength is so strong today, in the rural family model, since ancient times, it has actually stayed in the mutual assistance between families. My parents were like this, and I am still like this in my generation, and my feelings are really unforgettable.
I think of my parents, for half a lifetime, just because my father was a village teacher and had a public office, and my mother had to accept the endless responsibility of helping her relatives because she was capable and her family was slightly better than others, and for decades, almost half of her energy was used to deal with the help of relatives.
Mom's summary of her life is "no one to help, a lot of trouble", a simple sentence, is really her decades of facing poor relatives on both sides of the real sigh. The whole impression of my childhood is not that my father's half-brother sat at home and did not move, and would not go out without getting money, or the uncle who died early in his wife came to find his father as soon as he had something, or the shy but resolute help of the sick little uncle, or the half-aunt who would come to her mother's house regularly after a period of time to complain.
These relatives are kind, simple, and warm (before the aunt died, she knew that her father went to see him, and they all struggled to catch her hen and let him bring it back to the child to eat), not to deliberately trouble their relatives, how much to take advantage of, it is the tragic fate of living in the countryside, so that they can hardly find any way out when they encounter trouble, and asking for help from brothers and sisters who are in a better situation at home has become the only way. Decades later, although the banner of reform and opening up has been displayed for decades, the country's wealth has increased tremendously, and there is no food and clothing among the relatives, with the emergence of new embarrassments, my husband and I are facing the same situation as our parents.
In the article "I am the son of a peasant", Moro once lamented, "All farmers instinctively hope to change the fate of the family through their sons entering the city, but all these efforts are just a copy of the popular 'you retreat, I cover' story mode popular in the movie, leaving as a backing vulnerable blow, although it is inevitable to die, the escapee is even more powerless in the face of the fall of their relatives, and they can only cry out in pain."
As the daughter-in-law of a peasant family, I can really feel the helplessness in this pain. Husband, like any rural child who changes his destiny through study, life in the city has never been premised on the pursuit of enjoyment, and even the normal expenses used on him are a kind of guilt in his view, and the innate family shadow penetrates deeply into his daily life, he does not smoke, drinks, does not have much communication, let alone a special hobby, the only interest is to read, living a simple life that seems to others to be boring.
He is silent, does not like to say much, the more he is silent, the more I can feel the pain and depression imposed on him by the past family, he is like a very lucky fish, through his own efforts, finally swam out of this desperate family, but this escape of luck can not bring him heartfelt happiness, the original family he was born is like a long shadow, as long as there are still family members in misfortune and pain, the escaped individual can not enjoy the ease and pleasure that life should have, A flesh-and-blood pain that always fails to blind him to the plight of his own siblings who have memories of growing up together.
Although he was burdened with the pressure of house slaves and child slaves, he always felt that it was an unshirkable responsibility to repay the original family, not to mention that the daily life of the old father and mother in the family was actually more taken care of by the brothers and sisters who stayed behind in the homeland. Therefore, anyone in the family turned to him financially, and there was never any thought of refusing except to accept it silently.
Over the years of marriage, in the stretched economic situation, I have always felt heavy pressure for the huge family behind my husband, and sometimes even have a deep sense of despair, but compared to the economic embarrassment, what is more uncomfortable is emotional torture. It is hard for me to avoid the basic fact that if even we don't care about him, even his dearest people can turn a blind eye to the pain he suffers, then who else will help his brother and sister-in-law's family? However, those who have escaped from the countryside and established themselves in the cities also face all kinds of real difficulties.
Yang Qingxiang in "After 80, What to Do?" For the post-70s generation, although the situation is not so tragic, it is actually just a matter of seizing the luck of the house price just getting out of control and becoming a "house slave" in time. The help that can be given to the family is nothing more than to save a part of the cost from the limited salary, so how much can the meager force change the fate of the family?
Moro asked the question 11 years ago, "Is it necessary to change the fate of the peasants through emergency policies or do we need more complementary reforms of the social and political systems?" If peasants do not enjoy better educational resources, if they do not enjoy the so-called national treatment in an equal political framework, if they do not defend their rights with their voice and strength in an open social system, then who can guarantee that their fate will be changed? Who has the power and conscience to be their savior? ("I Am a Farmer's Son," in Tianya, No. 6, 2004) To this day, there is still no answer, and there is no day when the answer can be fulfilled.
I think of a group that, through individual efforts, enters the city, is able to change its destiny, has the corresponding power, and under the temptation of reality, eventually leads to the road of corruption. I thought that for them, for a person who has been deprived of material things from a young age to the extreme, he must have a more inflated desire after having the opportunity, because he knows a cruel truth from the difference in identity, and some writers have expressed the true thoughts of such characters through literary works, "Since there are so many opportunities, then hurry up and catch a few, otherwise, after the end of the period of interest differentiation, the society will be re-stabilized, and the period of social stratification will end, and it will be difficult for the lower classes to jump to the upper class." ”
This is the case, if the family members who escape cannot change the fate of the family through personal strength, then it is almost impossible in this life. In the village, I often see abandoned houses, and when I inquire about it, it is usually a family that moves to the city with a family and can never return to the countryside. In my hometown in Hunan, where I was born, there was also an officer who had changed his fate only by joining the army, using various connections to get out all the children of brothers and sisters on both sides, and even his brother-in-law, who had not yet graduated from junior high school at the age of 27, could get him to become a soldier in the army, and then through his relationship after changing careers, he was arranged to the public security bureau.
Compared to them, my husband and I are really the least contributors to the family. There are hardly any opportunities and resources that can fundamentally change the fate of relatives, and even the eldest niece graduated from college, and even finding a good job for her could not help much. Because she realized the importance of power, the mother-in-law's biggest regret before she died was that his son did not become an official, and her old man used her imagination to exchange the title of doctor for a visible official position, but did not know the actual living conditions of this group. The guilt of not being able to help my loved ones has made me feel more and more the structural dilemma of rural families that it is difficult to change their destiny. At this point, Moro's sentiment resonated deeply with me, "In the process of so-called modernization, the peasants have paid a very heavy price. I can no longer expect those brothers and sisters to change their fate in the process of continuing modernization, and their fate tomorrow will only be as harsh as yesterday's fate. In the context of big government and small society, being a lowly stepping stone is the only fate of the vulnerable. ”
Since mutual assistance between family members cannot reach the level of helping disadvantaged families to live a better life and change the fate of the family of the brothers left behind in the countryside, the best way is naturally through education at the national and government levels. The fact before us is that the educational resources in the countryside have withered to the point where they cannot be looked at directly, and nephews and nieces have no way to persist in completing even junior high school in the extremely simple conditions of rural middle schools.
The husband has counted the same age as him, and there are no less than seven or eight who have gone to college in the village, but to the nephews, nieces, and children of the same age as them, if the parents do not send their children to the county town or the junior high school in Xiaogan early, it is difficult to even enter the high school, even if the educational conditions in the countryside can be comparable to those in the city, the congenital lack of left-behind children, and the difference in the quality of their parents make them an irreparable disadvantage just at the starting point.
The structural disparities in society have been fulfilled in this family, and for brothers, sisters-in-law, nephews, nieces, and their children, through study, society can no longer provide them with the opportunity to change their destiny like husbands, and the simple and simple desire to escape from the countryside and join the city will eventually be like a mirage in the next generation. If we do not fundamentally promote a more sustainable development, and our relatives who once breathed together and shared a common destiny, they will surely be completely thrown into the dust in the torn social contest, and there will be no way to resist, and there is no sound.
Finally, I would like to say. Although I have always been wary of the underlying writing, the unforgettable feelings still make me worry that the voice of this world will become incomparably pleasant, and when the children and grandchildren of a family like my brother will no longer be able to get any voice opportunity, and the narrative of this family naturally cannot enter the public eye, then the humble sadness about them will lose the witness of the experience of those present, and thus the possibility of historicization forever. And everything I have written today is, in the opinion of a witness, as a peasant daughter-in-law, to record the fate of the relatives I met with them.
The sister-in-law brought back her son back to the village in the vegetable garden