Around the eleventh, I returned to my hometown, and it coincided with the rain for several days, and many places in Gansu entered the winter ahead of schedule. The house was unusually cold, and after the fire was made, it was much warmer.
When the charcoal was added, it was found that there was only a small pile of coal left in the corner, which was still last year's inventory, carefully covered with tarpaulin.
Talking with my father about the price of coal, the high is amazing, a ton in the countryside has reached 1700-1800 tons, a normal winter, a household needs about 2 tons. In previous years, the price was about 750 per ton, but this year it has more than doubled.
A complete chain of influence, the epidemic has led to a shortage of foreign products, domestic export products burst orders, electricity consumption has increased significantly, power supply is tight, and thermal coal prices have soared... Feedback to our lives, is the coal explosion, and now urban heating almost all use natural gas boilers or wall hanging furnaces, and the countryside, the land is on the edge of the city, because of infrastructure, heating, still use the simplest and cheapest way, coal is the most direct source of heating.
Perhaps, many people will feel that a winter, just a few thousand dollars, not much change. And as people who come out of the countryside, we know very well that this money, for them, some can not bear.
Coal prices, perhaps, are not a major factor affecting farmers' livelihoods. This is just a small facet of a polyhedra. If, in the countryside, there is natural gas or central heating or other means, this is not a problem.
The current northwest countryside, or many rural areas, are not limited to the northwest countryside. Population loss, infrastructure can never keep up, aging, left-behind children and other problems, you go to see, the road is narrow, the sunny day is dusty, once it rains it is muddy, the daily situation is sewage...
While building the city, our urban main body ignores the surrounding townships and rural areas.
There is a Yellow River suspension bridge in my hometown, which was built and opened to traffic in less than three years by farmers and soil experts in the late 1960s. Still in my hometown, the new Yellow River Bridge was launched in 2015, seven or eight years ago, and it has not yet been built.
The countryside feeds the city, and when the city expands, like a big tree, it continues to draw everything it needs from the surrounding soil (the countryside). As the trees grow, they only throw down a few leaves, and the soil gradually becomes barren and dry. But it does not get the nourishment and replenishment it deserves.
My parents are getting old, my hometown is getting old.