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When it comes to the 90s, what we can think of is that a song "Start Again" was repeatedly broadcast by major TV stations, "laid off" and "class" ran through the middle and late stages, public sentiment was printed into publications popular book markets, and when the Sino-US trade war went on intermittently, "China Can Say No" became the champion of the major book market rankings.
Behind these appearances, we don't see the essence of the 90s, even if it is so close to us.
As the scar narrative of the Great Layoff continues to be created over the years, we finally realize that the nineties were a huge wound in the Chinese, and over time, the once severe pain slowly became a dull pain, but it never really healed and continued to torment us.
In particular, works like The Long Season give us an opportunity to revisit the 90s.
According to the classification of American scholar Boym, nostalgia is divided into two types: "Restoration nostalgia is manifested in the complete reconstruction of past monuments; Reflective nostalgia, on the other hand, lingers on the ruins, on the rusty stains of time and history, in dreams in another place and in another time. ”
Both of these nostalgia are unnecessary for us, because history never needs nostalgia, but it needs to be real, it needs to know what happened, or at least how to shatter something far away with a snap of fingers.
Thus, in that tragic history, the entire Chinese society was reorganized according to the needs of neoliberalism, and the fate of many people was changed as a result.
Hello everyone, I am Brother Feng, today I will tell you about the history of the 90s.
Collapse, so to speak, is basic common sense in the 90s.
The first is the collapse of state-owned enterprises, which, for its members, have not only lost their economic resources and welfare guarantees, but also lost the meaning of life and hope for the future.
The withering of the working class and the social struggle in the jungle have redistributed power in society, and one mountain sculpture after another has come to a new era, such as Liu Yong in Shenyang, Qiao Si in Harbin, Chen Guojun in Tonggang, and Zhang Mingjie, Qu Wanting's mother.
Then came the collapse of the countryside, the land was struggling to feed more than a billion people with its ultimate carrying capacity, and the entire rural land was almost in a state of running out of oil, and if it encountered a serious illness, it could only live and die.
Under these circumstances, rural people still have to pay public grain, every household pushes small carts to transport grain to the station, and agricultural taxes and "three mentions and five unifications" are also a heavy burden.
The social turmoil of that era was far beyond your imagination.
All kinds of car bandits road blockers, a few people with a powder gun dare to rob the entire long-distance car people, on the outskirts of the city, often find frozen heads in the early winter morning, it is not news.
Bai Baoshan, a bold and ruthless extralegal fanatic, is found all over the country, and Guangzhou's speeding party and chopping party are speeding through the streets and alleys.
In social chaos, everyone is at risk, a careless person will become the prey of criminals, the rich and the poor are divided, the sky is silent, and the weak can only survive in the chaotic world as grass people.
Behind these phenomena is the reorganization of Chinese society for one reason or another and in some way.
In the 90s, many people expected the emergence of the so-called "middle class" in China's social development process, so they regarded the emergence of private entrepreneurs or the expansion of the "white-collar class" as the beginning of this trend. However, the reality that Chinese society has undergone portends a different trend, which is not becoming North American, but more and more like South America.
A powerful elite group of political and economic power resources began to form in society, and they determined the course of the entire country.
The elite's capital accumulation is quite fast, and some people have started from tens of thousands of yuan in a few years and have more than a billion yuan in assets. In the late 70s and early 80s, a large number of self-employed people appeared in China's cities, mostly engaged in commerce and services; In the 90s, most of these self-employed people were still engaged in their original industries, and the expansion of business scale was extremely limited, which was called the phenomenon of "small self-employed".
Because the elite monopolizes social resources too much, most of the resources that may have been occupied by the growing middle class are monopolized by overall capital, and as a result, the overall elite not only curbs the formation of a real middle class, but also infringes on the interests of other social classes.
As a result, while the wealthy classes with overall capital quickly became rich, most of the rural population and some urban populations became poor social groups.
The emergence of this new class of business elites outside the system once made the elites in the system very suspicious and afraid, and it was difficult to communicate with each other, and some of the major events that occurred in that era were in fact directly related to this mentality. But in the 90s, the relationship between the elites within the system and the elites outside the system changed significantly, and complex alliance-like relationships began to form between them.
They recognized that "instability" was not conducive to both domination and power, nor to commercial activity, and that stability was in the common interest of both sides, so the "discourse of stability" became the basis for the alliance between the two sides.
In the movie "Tree Big Move", there is such a plot.
At night, Ye Guohuan and his brother were paying homage to their dead brother on the water, and the ship's engine suddenly sounded. Suddenly, in the deep darkness of the night, a large wave of boats sailed in the distance. He hurriedly pulled his AK out of his bag and shouted at the ship's home.
The boat family ran over and said: It's okay, it's a "easy" ship. He was puzzled and asked: What is "easy to attack"? The boat family explained to him: Panyu is "easy to fa", smuggling electrical appliances! People have backers and do business with licenses. A television set sells for 2,000 in Hong Kong and 8,000 in the mainland, earning millions in one trip. Hearing this, Ye Guohuan looked at the AK in his hand, thoughtful, and his expression revealed a trace of loneliness.
Therefore, Ye Guohuan, a generation of thieves, chose to abandon the bandits to engage in business, under the pseudonym Zhang Dabao, he wore glasses, shaved his beard, suit and shoes, and looked like he was angry and wealthy
In the face of officials covered in oil, they need to "spend money on bottles", and in the face of a small secretary of the customs section, they need to send breakfast and red envelopes that are not the same for three consecutive days.
Finally, he finally said that he would meet in the wind and manlou, and temporarily released his pigeon. After meeting, that Ryuko was wearing sunglasses and holding a red wine glass and leaned on the sofa with his legs up, and the shelf was super large. After eating and drinking, Long Ke was drunk and wanted to sing K, and when Ye Guohuan was looking for a phone with a bunch of business cards, Long Ke patted his arm, and the business card fell to the ground.
This small teahouse has become a microcosm of China's government-business relations in the 90s.
Of course, there is more than one chief of customs with this power.
In "The Long Season", Director Song has a lot of power, he can decide who is laid off, who divides the house, such a fate event related to the interests of employees, so the question of whether Huang Liru's Freud can divide the house is only answered by Director Song.
Next, the red high heels stepped into the corridor with a crisp and melodious sound, and the woman walked into Song Yukun's office in the dark.
When the "Angang Constitution" was shelved, when the director of the factory was responsible for making a comeback, Song Yukun almost became the king of the factory, and when the power reached this point, the career future of thousands of people was tied to one person, and the restructuring or sale of the factory was decided by one person, the slow death of state-owned enterprises and the final collapse became inevitable.
Specifically, this ultra-stable alliance is due to the change in the status of members of society.
In the old days, bureaucrats, workers, peasants, and intellectuals constituted the main social groups. In the structure of the elite and the masses, the bureaucracy is the social elite, the workers, peasants and intellectuals are the mass class, and the intellectuals are at the bottom.
The new era reallocated resources, and although political discourse was still monopolized by bureaucrats, economic and cultural power began to be shared with the intellectual and business elites.
This process of distribution is called privatization, and the winner in the privatization process is called the elite of the new era, and the others are outsiders, to put it nicely, the masses of the new era, and to put it badly, that is, the bottom of society.
As the elite expanded and absorbed more identities, the structure was more stable than in the past, and later generations called it the official-industry-academic media, which was a powerful class barrier.
The 1993 film "Stand Straight, Don't Lie Down" completed an image reproduction of the new structural changes in China at that time in the miniature relationship of three families.
In the context of the change, in the coastal cities of northern China, the newly moved Gao writers and two sons became the new neighbors of Liu Cadre and Di Ruffian Daniel Zhang Wu, and with the development of Daniel Zhang Wu, the neighborhood relationship between the three families also surged undercurrent.
In the view of Gao Writer, Liu Cadre was not humble or arrogant about Daniel Zhang Wu's provocation, and had a good impression of him, but as his daughter failed the college entrance examination, Liu Cadre gradually began to be discouraged, and Daniel Zhang Wu engaged in business and fish farming, and successfully made a big fortune, which made him more and more anxious.
He sent his daughter to do underground work and find a way to expose Daniel Zhang Wu, and in the process, he found that Zhang's secretary's salary was higher than his own, and his idea of struggle was instantly shaken, and the small era was shocked, so that he and Daniel Zhang Wu turned the war into a jade and engaged in "Kuomintang-Communist cooperation."
The cowardly and pedantic Gao writer originally stood on the side of Liu Cadre in his heart, but under the envy of Daniel Zhang Wu, he finally bowed to money and lived in a new house promised by Daniel Zhang Wu.
People were surprised to find that in the new era, the incompatible relationship between enemies and friends would be resolved by common interests, high-ranking intellectuals would be easily bought by businessmen, and some elusive and subtle changes had taken place in the hearts of the world.
In the process of "going to the world and modernization", the old man of power shook hands with the new upstart of capital, and the intellectuals became pawns and thugs, and they jointly recognized the new logic of the times, that is, the supremacy of money.
Powerful groups are increasingly influencing public policies, and the formulation of public policies is often influenced by this group. At the grassroots level, powerful groups mainly use "connections" and bribery to influence public policy. At the top, the influence of powerful groups on the decision-making process is often guaranteed by the system.
For example, in the mid-90s, China's economy overheated and the government had to implement an economic austerity policy, resulting in a large amount of real estate investment being trapped. As a result, a series of economic development seminars have been held in various places, all with the theme of advocating the relaxation of monetary policy.
Some economists spoke out at the meeting that the economy was not overheating and that the government should have implemented loose fiscal and monetary policies. Many of these meetings are sponsored or attended by real estate developers, which is a sign that private economic forces are trying to influence national decision-making.
At the same time, a number of vulnerable groups has risen sharply in society.
The peasants, who make up the majority of the population, have become poor as a whole, township enterprises have become scattered, the prices of agricultural and sideline products have fallen, and the peasants' returns have become worse and worse.
In 1978, the ratio of urban to rural per capita income in China was 2.4:1, and in 1983 it shrank to 1.7:1, showing a significant downward trend; but in 1997, the ratio rapidly expanded to 2.5:1 and in 2000 to 2.79:1.
Of course, the urban-rural gap does not cover the gap between rich and poor.
In the late 90s, sudden, large-scale "floods of layoffs" and "unemployment" across Chinese cities and towns were considered the biggest challenge facing Chinese society.
In August 2000, the news from the State Economic and Trade Commission was even more puzzling: "One of the most prominent problems in the reform of China's state-owned enterprises is that the social burden of state-owned enterprises is very heavy, and the redundancies in state-owned enterprises are still as high as one-third."
By the end of the seventies, the proportion of women of working age in urban areas had reached more than 90 per cent, while in the nineties women accounted for the majority of laid-off workers.
According to the Institute of Labor Science of the Ministry of Labour and Social Security, this proportion reached 57.5 per cent in 2000. During the same period, there was another wave of "women going home" in society, and the re-employment rate of women was much lower than that of men, accounting for only 38.8% of the re-employment group.
The meaning of women's work gradually sank from "glorious labor" and "self-reliance and self-improvement" to "supporting a family". Compared with the data of the first and second "Chinese Women's Social Survey", in the decade from 1990 to 2000, the number of women working to maintain family and personal life increased by 13.6%, the motivations of "economic independence", "fulfilling life" and "giving full play to talents" all showed a negative index, and the column of "contributing to society" even fell from 40.1% to 5.8%.
At the same time, in 2000, 37.3 percent of women surveyed agreed that "it is better to do well than to marry well," and even many women who have been leaders and have higher education agree.
Since then, free love has increasingly disappeared from marriage relationships, and such words have appeared frequently, and the relationship between marriage and money equality has been basically stereotyped today.
This social conservatization is a realistic feedback of class solidification.
According to World Bank estimates, China's Gini coefficient has risen from 0.30 in 1984 to 0.415 in 1995.
According to the survey at that time, in five cities across the country, poor families ate meat for an average of 1-2 days a week, and 40% to 60% of households in Wuhan, Tianjin and Lanzhou were not stained with meat; More than 80% of the family's side foods are mainly vegetarian dishes (vegetables), and always buy the cheapest vegetables to eat.
And in 1999, April Fool's Day, "supernumerary investigator" Hu Run of Forbes announced the first Chinese wealth list in Shanghai, and the names and assets of many rich people were presented to the public, and the wealth list also became the forerunner of the life of the Chinese list. The people on the list are half-covered and half-avoided, and the people watching the list are like a hanging river. China has become the only country outside the United States to be specially set up by Forbes for wealth list, and its market position is self-evident.
In 2000, at the turn of the century, "Rich Dad, Poor Dad" became another textbook to guide Chinese economic concepts. Robert Kiyosaki's biological father and friend's father also had a marketable view of money in China, and everyone was busy absorbing rich dad's advice: let money be my slave and let money work for me.
Say goodbye to the Chinese of ideological hyper-debates and embark on their long and determined journey of lifestyle change. It's just that what was gained and what was lost, no one mentioned it anymore.
The confusing 90s were destined to be unreadable clearly, and the answer was because it was too close, and the closer things were, the more difficult it was to describe.
Even for many young people who have personally experienced it, under the filter of barbaric growth and time, the laughter of classmates, the cold eyes of teachers, the old clothes on their bodies, and the poverty of their fathers have all been diluted, and the great shock of the times has launched a roundabout feedback, delayed until the end of summer more than twenty years later, time stops again, stops in the long river of life, and one generation almost repeats the fate of the previous generation.
After getting older, looking back at history and looking at the present, suddenly there was more sadness in the beautiful new world, and then they understood that a snap of fingers in the past had actually shattered the distant future.