Reporter | Zhao Yunxian Edit | Yellow Moon
The attention and thinking about the countryside ran through Fei Xiaotong's life. In the 1930s, Fei Xiaotong went to the London School of Economics and Political Science in the United Kingdom to study, and based on his own investigation in the village of Kaixian Bow in Wujiang, he wrote a doctoral dissertation "Gangchon Economy", which was praised by anthropologist Malinowski. This book is an orientalist's observation and reflection on his own society, breaking the tradition of anthropology at that time that "civilized people study primitive people", at that time, the countryside in eastern China was undergoing a major change, and Fei Xiaotong's research on urban and rural issues, especially the countryside, was of special significance. In the decades since, Fei Xiaotong has insisted on observing the changing Chinese countryside, writing books such as "Native China" and "Rural Reconstruction", putting forward views such as "leaving the land and not leaving the hometown" and "urbanization on the spot".
Today, urban and rural issues remain intractable. A large number of migrant workers flow throughout the country, the relationship between the second and third generations of migrant workers and the countryside is far more complicated than their predecessors, leaving the countryside and unable to enter the city, accommodating them is the factory space in the suburbs of big cities and small towns, under the monotonous and depressing assembly line, some people use killing Matt to vent, and some people exile themselves and become the gods of sanhe. What else does Fei Xiaotong's vernacular research have for the present? How far away is the Chinese countryside from his vision?
Peking University and Life, Reading, and Xinzhi Sanlian Bookstore recently held the "Commemoration of the 110th Anniversary of Mr. Fei Xiaotong's Birth and the 'Selected Works of Fei Xiaotong' New Book Launch" at Peking University, where many scholars from Peking University, Tsinghua University, China University of Political Science and Law, and Shanghai University attended the meeting to discuss the gains and losses of Fei Xiaotong's local research. Gan Yang, dean of Tsinghua University's Xinya College, believes that from the perspective of China's social and economic development in the 90s, Fei Xiaotong was a "loser", and the reality ran counter to his ideas. Zhou Feizhou, a professor at Peking University, and Xiao Ying at Shanghai University analyzed Fei Xiaotong's views on the resettlement of the Chinese soul in his later years from a sociological perspective.
It can be said that Fei Xiaotong's thinking on China's economy, social organization, and interpersonal relations is based on the local area. According to Gan Yang, the township enterprises of the 1990s were not only economic organizations, but also social organizations, and Fei Xiaotong has regarded the township enterprises as the key to China's transformation since the 1940s - "it does not take the destruction of the local society as the final goal, but still maintains a certain local society." The so-called maintenance of "a certain kind of local society", that is, the maintenance of the local soil to nourish the soul of the Chinese, the township gentry, the family morality, are planted here, the development of township enterprises, in order to preserve the chinese local character. However, in the 21st century, China has not developed according to the logic of small towns in the previous decade, but has instead seen rapid urbanization and the rise of large cities. In this sense, Mr. Gan argues, Fei "failed," his planned development path, unlike the West, has been abandoned, many of China's cities have moved toward super-large cities, and rural hollowing out is widespread, "I don't know what it would be like for Fei To see," he said.
Zhou Feizhou added that Fei Xiaotong denied his "leaving the land and not leaving the hometown" in the 1990s, saying in an article that he was wrong, and now the peasants are "leaving the soil and leaving the hometown, entering the factory and entering the city." However, in response to Ganyang's statement, Zhou Feizhou questioned whether China's enterprises today are capitalist enterprises in the typical sense, and whether China's rural areas have encountered typical hollowing out, which is still debatable. He pointed out that the countryside looks hollow, but there is a "cyclical bustle" during the festival, "China's urbanization is not a one-way process of population migration, but a process of continuous population flow," and some enterprises in the east have also self-divided and scattered between urban and rural areas. And what is the relationship between people from rural origins and participating in the movement and rural land? Do they want to return to the countryside or move to a city or county seat? It is precisely what sociology needs to study at the moment. According to some current studies, there are generational differences in the attitude of migrant workers to the countryside, and between different generations, the hometown may not be a problem of whether to go back, but a problem of being forced to return and having to return.
Xiao Ying, a professor at Shanghai University, noted that Fei Xiaotong's propositions on local industries were drawn on the one hand based on the living conditions and experiences of the people at the bottom, and on the other hand, they also came from "the historical Confucian imagination of peasant politics and life" and "there is a strong Confucian connotation in it." In "Rebuilding the Countryside", Fei Xiaotong wrote: "There is often a place where there is a famous figure, the so-called opening of the atmosphere, and then there will be a considerable period of talent." Circular breeding, wei is a grand view. Talent does not depart from the grassroots, so that Chinese culture can penetrate deep into the localities, but also make the source of talent abundant and vast. Sociologist Wu Jingchao once criticized Fei Xiaotong's idea of local industry as a kind of "nostalgia", and Xiao Ying believed that the controversy between Fei and Wu was "an echo of the so-called 'laissez-faire' economy with Confucian characteristics in modern times and the path of Russian-Japanese centralization among Chinese intellectuals."
In recent years, megacities such as Beijing and Shanghai have focused on population evacuation regulation, while second- and third-tier cities have emphasized talent absorption and local urbanization. In an interview with The Paper, Zhan Yang of the Hong Kong Polytechnic University mentioned that China's urban development logic has always had "pendulum changes" and that "the strategies of small city development and large city development often alternate." Whether Fei Xiaotong's vernacular theory can find vitality in this context depends on the new discoveries and interpretations of scholars in various fields.
In his later years, Fei Xiaotong shifted his focus on the countryside from economic and social problems to people's inner problems. Yang Qingmei, a professor at the China University of Political Science and Law, stressed that while talking about Fei Xiaotong's local research, we should see that he is a "cosmopolitan scholar" who walks among different civilizations. That is to say, the countryside is not only an introverted thinking toward China, but also Fei Xiaotong's response to the impact of Western civilization in the 20th century.
Yang Qingmei explained that Fei Xiaotong divided the issue of the spiritual resettlement of Chinese into two sides, one facing the peasants and workers, and the other facing the intellectuals. In his later years, Fei Xiaotong read a lot of the works of historians such as Qian Mu and deeply felt the need to inherit classical Chinese culture, and at this time, the local theory was closer to cultural self-consciousness, and this burden mainly fell on the heads of intellectuals, workers, peasants and merchants were responsible for the rationalization of ordinary social life, and intellectuals never allowed themselves to be separated from workers, peasants and merchants. He Xuefeng, a professor at Wuhan University, also said when discussing Fei Xiaotong's cultural self-consciousness that the countryside is more like Fei's "entrustment" to Chinese readers after his death.
But the reality is that the countryside is constantly suffering from erosion, and Fei Xiaotong wrote in the article "Erosion of the Countryside": "Modern education, from the theory of local society, is suspended and unrealistic. The countryside sent their children out to be educated, and as a result, even no one could get them back. On the other hand, do today's Chinese readers have a corresponding imagination for the rural China that relies on the countryside? The book "The Rising Earth" combs through the "vernacular China" imagination in literature. In a book review titled "Can Literary Imagination Be Used as a Method to Open the "Chinese Countryside"", the author Liu Dong pointed out that the interaction between literature and sociology was once an important way for Chinese left-wing literature to open up the "countryside", but today literature and sociology are seriously disconnected from the writing of the countryside, and our understanding of the countryside is seriously lacking, and the rigidity even spreads to the imagination of small towns and counties.
Qu Jingdong, a professor at Peking University, interpreted Fei Xiaotong's cultural consciousness from a more microscopic perspective. In his view, the words that can truly embody Fei Xiaotong's cultural self-consciousness are the reminiscences he wrote in his later years. "If a person has no memories of the person closest to him, and no memory of the person who is enough to shape his own intellectual and emotional world, what kind of cultural self-consciousness is he talking about? In Fei Lao's article in his later years, I think he is continuing to self-knowledge through these. I think Chinese self-perception actually comes from this. Qu Jingdong said. In this sense, Qu Jingdong believes that good sociology is not to study established topics, we must not understand the object of study as an objective entity, good problems should arise from our most personal feelings, and we should also see ourselves when we look at others.
Gan Yang believes that Fei Xiaotong's early thinking on Eastern and Western cultures has limitations. He used to say that the West attaches importance to the relationship between people and things, China attaches importance to the relationship between people and people, China should learn from the West on this point, and then see the problems brought about by the change of interpersonal relations under economic development, and then turn to thinking about mentality. At this time, society has undergone a great transformation, people have been atomized, if Chinese intellectuals can pay attention to this problem earlier, pay attention to it, and put ideas into practice, perhaps today's society will be different.
However, some of Fei Xiaotong's thoughts on the issue of spiritual placement still seem to be sharp at the moment. Zhou Feizhou said that Fei Xiaotong said that China can have such a huge population flow without chaos because "everyone has a home in their hearts." Chinese to live a realistic life, to solve spiritual problems, first of all, we must live a good life. Qu Jingdong added that although township enterprises and families have experienced demise and change to varying degrees, Fei Xiaotong clearly proposed "expanding boundaries" in 2003, that is, "embedding cultural principles or spiritual principles within the original things." Now the second and third generations of migrant workers do not want to return to the countryside is very willing, but Zhou Feizhou pointed out that most of them still go back, "China's large-scale population flow is to flow according to the course of life, the youngest time to go to the farthest place." "Many migrant workers who return to their hometowns do not really return to the peasants, but go to the industrial belt of the county economy. Many people buy houses in their hometown county, buy and do not live, is to get married, the money is usually paid by parents, he called it "a new form of urbanization that has been alternated from generation to generation", "the family is open between urban and rural areas" - in this sense, Fei Xiaotong's "leaving the land and not leaving the hometown" actually has its continuity.
Resources:
"Round Table| Who Can Stay: The Living Situation of Young White-Collar Workers, Migrant Workers and "Talents""
https://www.thepaper.cn/newsdetail_forward_10331742
Can Literary Imagination Be a Way to Open up "Chinese Vernacular"?
https://www.thepaper.cn/newsdetail_forward_9557026