Author: wenboling source: wenboling fireworks world (id: wenboling2020)
Recently, I went back to my hometown in Shanxi. I drink every day and my days are numbered.
After coming back to Shanxi for a week, I met many friends, saw a lot of things, and had some insights into the county life. I want to talk with you.
One of the biggest feelings is that it is often said on the Internet that life in the county is very comfortable.
I won’t say it in the morning. It’s the same everywhere. It belongs to the working hours without hesitation. The key lies in the afternoon. In our county, the afternoon starts after 4 o’clock. Except for some units with strict working hours, most people take a lunch break before 4 o’clock.
After four o’clock, when the sun is no longer hot, people will go shopping, open stores, or prepare dinner.
After dinner, it was sevenoreight o’clock. At that time, the sun had not yet set. Because of the large temperature difference between day and night, the temperature also began to become cool. People went downstairs to enjoy the cool and chat in the park or community.
After having fun, everyone went home, got ready to go to bed at more than ten o’clock, and then began the same life the next day.
In such days, boredom is really boring, and ease is also really comfortable. People who live in the county for many years may not feel anything, but for those who go back once a year, it is very healing.
This week, I either drink or sleep. Besides not buying new year’s products, everything else is about the same as the Spring Festival.
Moreover, there are not many people in the county, less than 30000 in total. People who live in the county all year round will precipitate one circle of acquaintances after another in their boring and comfortable life.
Large circles set up small circles, and small circles develop new circles. If you want to do a thing or find a person, you can find the person you want to contact through the introduction of twoorthree circles.
Therefore, behind the comfortable life in the county, it is actually an acquaintance society.
For example, I made an appointment with three high school classmates and ate handlebar mutton in a remote restaurant. As a result, two groups of people changed at the next table. These students know each other and can simply say hello.
This is unthinkable in prefecture level cities or provincial capitals, not to mention the table next to the hotel. Colleagues may not recognize it completely, but it is normal in the county.
In this regard, if you want to live in the county for a long time, you must quickly integrate into a certain circle of acquaintances, and on this basis, quickly meet new circles of acquaintances, otherwise, you won’t be able to stand in the county.
Those who are lonely or curtilage are really not suitable for life in the county. Even if they return to the county for some reasons, they may not be able to open the situation and will be depressed in less than five years.
It is precisely because the comfortable life in the county has shaped the acquaintance society that people are more inclined to “find people” when dealing with affairs in the county, which is solved by some hidden rules formed over the years, rather than by explicit rules.
In their view, business is vital, which is not conducive to the acquaintance ecology of the whole county, and it is not conducive to their own management of the acquaintance circle.
Therefore, on the contrary, the acquaintance society forces everyone to “find people” to handle affairs. After the inertia formed over time, everyone is also used to “looking for people” to handle affairs, and through “looking for people” to handle affairs, the acquaintance society in the county is further solidified.
Take a simple example.
A friend of mine likes to drive around and dares to break the traffic lights. I asked him, how dare you break a traffic light and deduct six points???
The man smiled and said it was OK. He could find someone to eliminate it.
Good guy, it’s OK to rush through the traffic lights, so I asked him how to do it?
He told me that when he was driving at first, he would occasionally break the rules. He was very flustered, so he asked a friend with a wide range of contacts for help, and soon contacted the person in charge of these things in the traffic police team to help him eliminate minor violations.
Later, the two of them became friends. They became more and more daring when driving and were not afraid of running a red light.
This is a two-way interaction between the society and individuals of acquaintances in the county.
Of course, this is not an example. When I took a taxi two days ago, the driver turned left directly into the alley at the red light of the straight aisle. I asked him why he walked like this, and he also smiled: it’s okay
In such an environment, the current county has the attribute of winner take all.
Those who are in the high-end circle of acquaintances can introduce political and business resources to each other, or introduce new people to join, basically taking charge of important public offices and money making projects in the whole county, and becoming the de facto ruler of the county. Their children marry each other, inherit the resources and status of their parents, and start a new round of multifarious life.
The people in the middle-end acquaintance circle are generally people with career staffing, formal workers of state-owned enterprises, teachers, restaurant owners, supermarket owners, etc. they are not as rich and influential as the people in the high-end circle, but because of their large number, they constitute the main body of business and consumption in the county.
As for the bottom circle of acquaintances, although the number is the largest, due to their limited strength, they often drink, play cards and boast together, and enjoy the peace of the years.
In the county where winners take all, those who earn money in the county are not the main consumption force in the county, but those who mainly consume in the county and cannot earn money in the county.
For example, people in the high-end circle, their houses in the county are only used to maintain life, and the large houses and hundreds of thousands of cars bought in the provincial capital are used to enjoy life. Some people are even rich enough to spend 12million to buy a house in Beijing.
For them, the county seat is just food.
The annual salary of ordinary people is almost 50000 or 60000, accounting for nearly half of this group. The annual income of the remaining migrant workers and temporary workers is only 30000 or 40000, not to mention sanitation workers, 400 yuan a month.
Now the Internet says that the stratum is solidified. In fact, you can see from the county seat that the stratum in the county seat is the most solidified.
And now the logistics are very developed, and the consumption in the county is not cheap.
The children’s entertainment park in the mall costs 78 per person for a single consumption. The price is about the same as that in the urban area. Women’s dresses, slightly better ones, are also hundreds or even thousands of.
So what ordinary people face is that their income is not high and their consumption is not low.
The monthly income is only enough for daily expenses. Only by frugality can we have a little savings. We also need to prepare funds for children’s education and medical care for the elderly. The funds really used for daily consumption are extremely limited.
As a result, the market in the county did not prosper. The most shops on the street were restaurants, followed by clothing stores, followed by agricultural and sideline products that set up stalls on the street.
These are the most basic life economy industries.
Those popular entertainment projects in the city can’t start in the county. After all, most talents have reached a well-off level. How can there be excess funds for spiritual entertainment.
Therefore, many children of ordinary families in the county and city are unwilling to go back after graduation from college, because they have no family inheritance after going back, so it is difficult to enter the high-end circle of acquaintances. If they go back to inherit their father’s business, they can’t earn money, and can’t meet the vision they opened when they were in college.
In such an environment, ordinary counties without pillar industries and tourism cannot retain large capital or talents.
In the long run, most ordinary counties will be aging.
Aging here is not aging in the literal sense, but lack of vitality.
At the beginning of the 20th century, when large-scale urbanization was just launched, a large number of farmers entered the county to work, and the county had cheap labor and was able to carry out infrastructure construction. Therefore, during these two decades, the real estate, parks, roads and municipal projects in the county were booming.
In order to meet the needs of migrant workers who have just entered the city, restaurants, night markets, roadside stalls and red light districts have also flourished.
This is the main driving force for the great development of the county in the past 20 years.
And now the farmers who should go to the city basically go to the city, and those who stay in the countryside are the elderly in their sixties and seventies. In other words, the countryside, as the nourishment of the county, has now been emptied.
In the rural area where my grandparents lived, there were more than 200 people in the late 1990s. I asked about it these days, and there were only 26 people left. The youngest was in his seventies, and he couldn’t take care of himself. Just a while ago, an old man with bad eyes was starved to death.
As a result of the hollowing out of rural areas, large areas of farmland were abandoned. I went to many places and found many good fields that used to be full of millet and corn. Now, because there is no race, they are full of weeds.
Therefore, it is certain that in the future, the county will not only have no inflow of rural labor and capital, but also export capital and talents to the city, and there will be a huge food gap, which must be purchased from other places to meet the demand.
This is the biggest dilemma that the county will face in the future.
In the past, the county absorbed nutrients from the countryside. Now, after the hollowing out of the countryside, the county played the role of the former countryside, providing nutrients to prefecture level cities and even provincial capital cities.
Aging and even hollowing are predictable results.
What is the rural area like now, and what is the probability of the county seat in the future.
in general.
At this stage, if you have a relatively strong family background and can integrate into the middle and high-end circle of acquaintances, life in the county is really comfortable. If your family background and circle are not good, then the ease of the county has nothing to do with you.
But judging from the time span of decades, there is no future for ordinary counties without pillar industries and tourism.
When our generation gets old, when we return to our hometown County, we may see a county where all industries are depressed, a small group of people are high, and most people are bored.