The news that the Shaanxi man buried his paralyzed mother alive made the author's three views crackle and shatter.
From ancient times to the present, China has been circulating the idea of "raising children and preventing the elderly", just like every family has an imperial throne to inherit, and it is necessary to have a son in order to pass on their own "Jiangshan".
However, can raising children really prevent old age?
The classic Japanese film I'm going to talk about today, "The Kaoya Kao of The Mountain", will answer this question incomparably cruelly.
Located on Honshu Island, Japan's largest island, Mt. Nichiyama is named after the trees that are dotted with linden trees.
The story told in the film takes place in the shogunate era of Mt. Nichiyama.
During the shogunate era, Mt. Nichiyama was a very primitive agricultural society. The villagers live on a narrow plain in the middle of the mountains and have been farming for generations.
Because the ratio of men to women is extremely uneven and productivity is low, in the family of The Mountain Village, usually only the eldest son can marry and have children.
Moreover, in order to alleviate the survival pressure of young people and make the barren village as much as possible to reproduce, there is also a very terrible creed in the village: as long as the old people in the village live to be seventy years old, they must go to the mountain to worship the god (zi) (sha) accompanied by their families.
In order to show the backwardness and suffering of The Mountain in an all-round way, the film does not fully focus on a certain protagonist. Instead, through the tragedy of three families, it shows the poverty and humanity, death and rebirth on the mountain.
In this way, the audience witnessed a game of survival and civilization.
The Mudun family's Ah Ling Po is sixty-nine years old, and three generations of grandchildren live together. Decades ago, her husband disappeared for some reason, leaving her and her two sons behind.
Although the eldest son, Tatsuhei, was gentle and down-to-earth, his wife died of illness, and he became a widower.
The second son, Liping, has a skull-eyed, stench that always emits a strange smell, and his brain is also a bit stupid, so he is often bullied by the people in the village.
Although the industrious and kind Ah Lingbo has reached the age of going up the mountain to worship the gods, her body is very good, and her teeth are also very good.
However, because of this, she was often ridiculed by her eldest grandson, Yuanfuji.
It turned out that the elderly and well-kept people were to be despised in the village.
Moreover, Yuanfu ji is the age when the love sinus first opened, and he has a sweetheart, Asong, if his grandmother does not die, he will not be able to have children with Asong.
Ah Ling Po knew that she was going to go up to the mountain to worship God, but her children and grandchildren still made her feel at ease.
Chenping, who lost his wife, was only 45 years old, and she couldn't bear to let her son die alone, so she inquired everywhere and wanted to arrange a marriage for Tatsuhira.
At this time, a man named Yanwu Yazi found Ah Lingbo and said that there was a widow in the next village who could marry her husband once the 100-day mourning period had passed.
Yuanfuji and Asson were in love but had no right to procreate, so they resented Grandma and often sang some songs, saying that Grandma had thirty-three teeth, which meant that Grandma was cursed for not dying.
This made Tatsuhei very sad and disappointed.
Ah Lingbo was also very upset, so she took the stone and tried to knock her teeth off, but at first she didn't have to get her hands on it.
But on the day that her new daughter-in-law, Ayu, came to the door, she was fierce and used a millstone to knock her teeth off.
However, even if the grandmother loses her teeth and takes the initiative to let her son carry her up the mountain, the big pine nuts cannot start a happy new life with Asson.
Because the Rain House family where Asong is located is a notorious family of thieves, even Asong himself is a thief.
She falls in love with Yuanfuji, and while asking Yuanfuji to help her pick bracken, she takes the opportunity to steal food from the Mudun family, and is found many times.
It didn't take long for the villagers to raid their homes. To everyone's surprise, the Rain House, which usually has nothing to do and is idle, actually steals and has a lot of food.
This angered the villagers, so, late one night, the whole family of the Rain House was bundled into sacks by the villagers, and more than a dozen people were buried alive.
In addition to the eldest son and eldest grandson, Ah Ling Po was also worried about Liping.
Liping is in his thirties but still an old maid, he has nowhere to vent, once attacked the neighbor's little white dog, it is really "beep the dog".
After being discriminated against again and losing even sex with his dog, Lippin angrily went to the crops and even killed his precious domestic animal, the only horse in the family.
Tatsuhira couldn't see it anymore, so he consulted with Ayu and wanted Ayu to accompany Liping for one night.
Ah Ling Po couldn't bear it, so she found Ah Jin Po, who was about the same age as herself, hoping that Ah Jin Po, who had lost her sense of smell, would help her and open the meat for Li Ping.
Akinbo agreed, and Ayu was spared.
In fact, in addition to his sister-in-law and Akinbo, Lippin also had sexual fantasies about the hostess of the neighbor's new house.
The night Lipping arrives at the new house to insult the dog, he learns that the owner of the house is about to die.
Before dying, the man said that his father had killed people for some reason, which had cursed his family, and hoped that his wife Ah Zhi would take turns to accompany every unmarried man in the village after his death to atone for his sins.
Liping had thought that this last wish of the male host would satisfy his long-standing desire for women.
However, when Ah Zhi was accompanying the unmarried men in the village, he deliberately skipped the stinking and disgusting Liping, which made Liping heartbroken.
Therefore, Ah Ling Po went to Ah Jin Po and begged her to open the meat for Li Ping.
Later, some people said that they saw Ah Lingbo's husband who had been missing for many years, and Ah Lingbo rushed to see it, but saw her son Chenping.
Tatsuhira took the opportunity to confess to Ah Lingbo that many years ago, because his father was unwilling to send his grandmother up the mountain to worship the gods, he was very angry and eager to get married, so he killed his father.
Now, when he was old enough to send his mother up the mountain, he could finally feel his father's original pain.
In the end, Ah Ling Po was still accompanied by Tatsuhira and went up the mountain. The white bones and circling crows in the mountains make people shiver.
But the sky fluttered without warning, and according to the custom, it snowed on the day of worship on the mountain, and it was lucky.
Ah Ling Po in the snow sat on her knees on the ground, she was already thin and small, she was covered in falling snow, and her face was gentle and solemn, like the legendary god of the mountain.
The village is like a stage for the primitive desires of human beings, where human actions are no different from those of animals.
To criticize that era of low productivity with a modern eye is feeble and meaningless.
Villages that do not have too many elderly people and are still hungry and hungry can never afford to take on the responsibility of raising an elderly non-laborer. Otherwise, you will fall into the Malthusian Trap.
Population growth is increased according to a geometric progression, while the resources for subsistence are only increased according to the arithmetic progression, and the increased population is always to be eliminated in some way, and the population cannot exceed the corresponding level of agricultural development.
This theory is known as the "Malthusian Trap."
However, in contrast, at the moment when productivity is highly developed, the burial of elderly mothers alive by Shaanxi men and the "herd immunity" policy adopted by the United Kingdom in the face of the new crown epidemic, absurd events are still happening large or small.
The elderly mother was bedridden and incapacitated, so the man sent the mother to an abandoned tomb in an attempt to bury her alive in order to reduce the burden of life.
In the face of the new crown epidemic, the British government's choice of inaction is chaos. Adopting such an absurd policy as "immunization of all" is like a primitive society that is helpless to resign itself to fate in the face of the epidemic.
These things can't help but make people reflect: where is modern civilization compared with primitive society?
The author is not denying the progress of society and the development of civilization, but with a beautiful vision: civilization should not be based on the exploitation of low-level citizens.
Hopefully, one day, social Darwinism, which practises "the law of the jungle," will be eliminated.
The whole society can really do what is said in the "Great Book of Etiquette": "The old have an end, the strong have some uses, the young have some strengths, and the widows, the lonely and the sick have something to support." ”
My wish is world peace.
Contributing author | Crescent Moon