Where are interpersonal relationships and the reconstruction of order heading amid the great changes in rural areas?
New Rural Charity Encounters Old Logic
As the Spring Festival approached, I received a call from the former principal of the town's central primary school, inviting me to attend the town's 2015 Spring Festival villagers' forum and education fund council meeting on the fourth day of the first lunar month. The foundation's council members are almost all wealthy people from the town, and their donations are counted in tens of thousands of yuan. As one of the few PhDs in the town and a university teacher, I was not a council member but still had to be invited to attend.
One
The education foundation was established in 2011 and is the first township-level education foundation in the county. Its funds are mainly used for rewarding teachers and aiding students in the town, rewarding students who have been admitted to key high schools or universities in recent years, and giving teachers subsidies for make-up classes. Since its establishment, the foundation's operations have gradually gotten on track, its account is independent, and its charter has gradually been improved and standardized. However, the foundation has still encountered a development bottleneck. Its funds have consistently failed to expand, and the enthusiasm of local notables for participation has decreased rather than increased. During the 2014 Spring Festival, only 8 people attended, only half of the foundation's council members came, and the chairman was also unable to attend. This year, the town's Party secretary and town mayor personally contacted the council members and had village cadres mobilize the “new rich” who had emerged in their villages in recent years to participate in the 2015 gathering, so as to expand the foundation's funds. Therefore, 33 people attended this year, and the invitees were mainly entrepreneurs and cadres at the level of principal section member or above. The meeting was chaired by the town's Party secretary and town mayor, and during it, the county magistrate also came to show support. Under mobilization from multiple sides, some entrepreneurs made on-the-spot decisions to continue donating, while others still showed no movement. Some were even called out publicly and asked to express their goodwill, while others quietly left the venue…… On-site donations reached 690,000 yuan.
It should be said that establishing an education foundation is a good thing and is conducive to cultivating talent for one's hometown. But as a first-time participant, the author noticed two interesting phenomena. First, the attendees differed considerably from the targets that the organizers had previously notified and mobilized; some people who were enthusiastic about public welfare in their villages did not attend. Second, some people donated a great deal to public welfare in their own villages, but their donations to the township education foundation were not high. Why was this?
Two
In this donation activity for the township education foundation, village cadres mobilized one of my paternal uncles many times to participate, but he politely declined. As early as the late 1990s, my uncle went to Shanghai to seek opportunities. Although he was not considered very rich, he had still accumulated considerable wealth. In recent years, he has done many good deeds in his hometown: he built a house free of charge for his poorer older brother; every year when he returned home, he would give money and gifts to the elders of the clan; during the author's school years, he repeatedly offered financial support on his own initiative; and this year, as soon as he heard that the village was going to build an ancestral house, he was the first to promise a donation of 10,000…… Relatives and fellow villagers praised him endlessly for being enthusiastic about the clan's public welfare and generously supporting members within the clan. However, he was unwilling to participate in the activities of the township education foundation. He said: “I know that going means donating money. I'm not very interested. If I have the ability, I'll do something to help my own clan. How can I manage so much else?”
Another villager had worked in the construction industry for many years and had assets of more than ten million. In 2011, he donated 30,000 yuan to the foundation and was also one of the first council members of the township education foundation. At this year's meeting, he did not say a word. After the host called on him by name and he continued donating 10,000 yuan, he quickly left the venue and did not attend the luncheon either. It could be seen that his enthusiasm for donating was not high. But several years earlier, he alone had donated more than 100,000 yuan to build roads in the village. This year, he planned to build 6 connected villas in his hometown at a cost of about 3 million yuan. Three of them were for his own three brothers, and the other three were for three paternal uncles. Aside from one of his own brothers, the others did not have the ability to build villas, but he promised that as long as the others contributed 100,000 yuan each, he would cover the entire funding gap. Obviously, for him, even though it was all public welfare, clan matters outweighed village matters, and village matters outweighed township matters.
Three
This logic of rural charity is in fact also the logic by which most wealthy Chinese people do charity: extending from oneself to the clan, from the clan to acquaintances, pushing outward layer by layer. In short, this is a logic that goes from small private interest to large private interest and then to small public interest and large public interest. This logic is still aptly described by Mr. Fei Xiaotong's “differential mode of association.” Mr. Fei believed that Chinese interpersonal relationships are centered on oneself and that closeness and distance are divided according to nearness and remoteness, like a stone thrown into water, with ripples spreading on the surface and extending outward from the center, ring by ring. This can explain why many villagers are enthusiastic about doing good deeds within the clan and village, but are less enthusiastic about charity on a larger scale.
Compared with charitable behavior in Western countries, the charitable logic of Chinese people's “differential mode of association” is often criticized as lacking great love and great public spirit. However, in essence, this difference between China and the West is merely the difference in the cultural soil from which charity arises. Traditionally, China has been an “ethically based” society. For a very long period, when most peasants were in greatest need of help, they mainly relied on the support of clan members and fellow villagers, and those who left the countryside also often relied on assistance provided by their clans and fellow villagers. As a result, if these people could later return home in glory, they would naturally have even more affection for their clan and hometown.
As for myself, when I was about to leave for university, the elders of each household in the clan came to see me off. Some brought eggs, some brought fruit, and some gave tens or hundreds of yuan…… This warm scene is still vivid in my mind to this day. If someone asked me, there are two children who need help, one in my clan and one in a remote area, and your ability allows you to help only one, whom would you choose? From a rational analysis, I also know that the child in the remote mountain area equally needs help, but emotionally speaking, I would unhesitatingly favor a member of my own clan. In fact, if everyone could do “casual charity” around them, even if starting charity from the clan, isn't that also a kind of positive energy? (Chen Feng)
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Half Working, Half Farming: The Self-Balance of Peasant Families
One
When I returned to my hometown for the Spring Festival this time, there were several more new buildings in the village. Young people were all working away from home, so the important task of building houses naturally fell to the elderly. I could not help but sigh that elderly people in rural areas really can keep busy: not only farming and taking care of children, but also building houses. Almost every household in the whole village has built a building, the low ones with two floors and the high ones with four or five floors. Building such a building costs at least 200,000 yuan, and for many it costs 400,000 to 500,000 yuan. Building a house is a major matter for every rural family. Building a house, taking a wife, and having children are the three major tasks in life. Only when a young small family has a house does it have its own little home, and only then can life be comfortable. For a young man in the countryside today to get married, a building is a necessary condition. Girls with better conditions not only require a building in the countryside, but also a commercial apartment in the city.
Uncle Jiegeng is 64 years old this year. He is an old rural carpenter with exquisite craftsmanship. He can also paint and carve, and his brush calligraphy is also quite good. He has taken on nearly 20 apprentices over the years. He said he had built houses three times in his life. The first time was at age 27, when he had just married and divided the household, and he built an earthen house. The second time was in the 1990s, when he built a blue-brick house and added an earthen story on top, two stories in total. At that time, such a blue-brick house was the best in the whole village. The third time was the four-story reinforced concrete building just completed in recent years. The foundation was dug especially deep, and he said it would not collapse even in a magnitude 7 or 8 earthquake.
Uncle Jiegeng's children did not contribute money to build this house. This was a question in my mind. The old couple farmed more than one mu of land, and the income from farming was very meager. What was known was that in the past two years, land had been requisitioned for highway construction, and the government compensated 100,000 yuan, but that was still far from enough to build a four-story building. After talking with Uncle Jiegeng in detail, I learned that from the start of construction to the completion of the frame, this building took two and a half years. Much of the labor that should have been hired was not hired, and Uncle Jiegeng completed it all himself. He used his slack farming time to lay the foundation, carry bricks, and haul sand. As long as he could do it himself, he did not hire anyone. This is half-contract labor.
According to Uncle Jiegeng, in building a building, half-contract labor and full-contract labor can differ by more than 100,000 yuan. At present, much rural house building uses half-contract labor. If you ask carefully, you will know that many rural families' buildings were completed by the older generation using their own accumulated money and then using slack farming time for half-contract labor. In some families, the young people working away from home brought back part of the money, while in others they did not.
Two
For ordinary families, without the help of the elderly, building such a building would be almost impossible. Quite a few young people told me that without the support of the older generation, they would not know how to live. Even if they stayed in the village, it would be difficult for them to accomplish as many things as their parents did: they would have to work in the fields, take care of children, and build houses. If not fully contracted out, just building a house would exhaust them to death! They would rather go out to work.
In most families, children are left at home to be cared for by their grandparents just a few months after birth. If they were brought to the city, not to mention that protections such as education and medical care do not cover the migrant worker group, even if various institutional conditions were in place, bringing children to the city would require at least one person to stay at home specifically to care for them. If the grandparents in the hometown were brought to the city to care for them, not only would there be one less source of income from the hometown, but the younger people's burden of supporting the elderly would also increase by one layer. Income from working away from home is very limited. Although leaving children behind at home is not very good, it is probably the optimal choice for many families under current conditions.