Only by developing rural areas well can we truly resolve homesickness

“Who among you comes from a rural area? Not a single one?” After looking around and finding that none of the reporters nearby responded, 60-year-old Ke Bingsheng said loudly, “I do.”

On the morning of March 3, as soon as he stepped into the delegation residence, Ke Bingsheng, a member of the National Committee of the Chinese People's Political Consultative Conference and president of China Agricultural University, was surrounded by a crowd of reporters. In the intervals between hot-button issues such as genetically modified food, milk powder safety and agricultural subsidies being raised one after another, he unexpectedly began talking about homesickness.

Not only Ke Bingsheng.

Every time she gave an interview, Li Xinrong, a college graduate village official from Guangxi and a deputy to the National People's Congress, had to repeatedly answer reporters' questions: “What is your homesickness?”

The intense attention paid to homesickness by deputies and committee members stemmed precisely from “A Doctoral Student's Notes on Returning Home: In Recent Years, Feelings Are More Timid, What Do You See When You Go Home for Spring Festival,” which went viral on social media during the Spring Festival.

The article's scenes of rural decline, including cooling human relations, the loss of traditional farming civilization and a sense of the powerlessness of knowledge, drew widespread attention.

“This article partly reflects the current situation in rural areas.” Zhang Qiuxiang, a post-80s deputy to the National People's Congress and deputy director of the Culture, Radio, Television, Press and Publication Bureau of Siyang County, Jiangsu Province, admitted frankly.

In 2007, she had just arrived at Shaodao Village, Sanzhuang Township, Siyang County, Jiangsu Province, to serve as a college graduate village official. At that time, rivers and ditches around the village were filled with garbage, most young and middle-aged people had gone out to work, and everywhere she passed was desolate. Of the village's 967 households, as many as 303 were poor.

Gu Jiu, a member of the National Committee of the Chinese People's Political Consultative Conference who goes to the countryside for research almost every year, was deeply impressed by the decay of rural areas: people in their sixties were going into cities to work, leaving behind women, children and elderly people who could not move; rural areas had little garbage back then, but now garbage was everywhere; the most fertile seedling fields halfway up the hills were fields that ancestors had not allowed to be touched for thousands of years, yet now large numbers of houses were being built on these fields; once the houses were built, the elderly were unwilling to move in, and young people who went out to work were unwilling to return, so the houses were left idle, while the elderly still lived with their children in the old houses.

Clearly, today's rural areas can no longer carry the homesickness of this director of the Guizhou Provincial Research Institute of Culture and History: “When I was little, the moon had warmth. Everyone lay on bamboo mats looking at the moon, telling the story of Chang'e flying to the moon, looking at the osmanthus tree. If you tell today's children that, will they believe it?”

More often, he regarded this loss of homesickness as “pain in progress.” “Everyone should not feel too pained by this kind of decay. We still need to look at this process of development comprehensively. No one is willing to go back to the era of hunger.”

Committee member Ke Bingsheng did not agree with the description of rural decay in the “Notes on Returning Home”: “The powerlessness of knowledge is only one aspect. Rural areas have many changes: roads are wider and smoother, thatched houses have become tile houses and then buildings.”

But he also admitted frankly that the river water was no longer as clean as before. In his memory, the stream beside his home when he was little was especially clear: “The photos taken looked like scenic spots. Now you cannot take photos there; it is full of garbage bags and plastic bottles.”

Ke Bingsheng stressed that this was only a process, and that complex problems such as population and the environment would emerge; how to solve them required facing them squarely. The urbanization process was a historical trend: “If we still had 80% of the population in rural areas, this country's modernization could never be achieved.”

While people of her age around her were frantically sharing the “Notes on Returning Home,” Li Xinrong, a deputy to the National People's Congress, had her own view: “The article's tone is rather sorrowful. I think it cannot be evaluated from only one side.”

“In the process of urbanization, all kinds of social relations are changing. A certain degree of decline in rural areas is unavoidable, but I have always believed that modernization and tradition are not contradictory. In the process of development, a balance point between urbanization and rural civilization can always be found.” Li Xinrong said. In her view, the various problems appearing in rural areas could not be avoided and solved by not developing.

How to solve them?

Zhang Qiuxiang gave an answer through her own practice. As the village's first college graduate village official, Zhang Qiuxiang worked hard for a full five years. By developing vegetable planting and high-efficiency agriculture throughout the village and encouraging farming households to start businesses, during those five years, in high-efficiency agriculture alone, more than 20 young households in the village returned home one after another to start businesses.

At the same time, distance education courses for villagers gradually took shape, and cultural facilities such as cultural stations and village libraries grew increasingly popular. New ideas gradually took root in people's hearts over five years.

With the push of the same cohort of 45 college graduate village officials as Zhang Qiuxiang, as well as more and more rural young people, formerly poor villages successively “took off their hats” of poverty. The elderly were freed from heavy housework and farm work, and the lively Huaihai opera again resounded in the village, while the traditional folk custom of “running donkey” again became active.

Having taken root in the countryside for 6 years, Li Xinrong had been working hard to get more young people involved in cultural inheritance. She was happy to see that among the village's Zhuang brocade weaving team there were more young “weaving women” and “weaving men,” and that young men and women were also tireless in the regular ancient mountain song singing competitions.

“Only with change can homesickness be retained.” Zhang Qiuxiang looked forward to more knowledgeable and ambitious young people devoting themselves to rural areas.

Committee member Gu Jiu hoped that more young people would use video and writing to ask the elderly to tell the stories of those years and preserve the rural cultural genes of the past. “After they have money, they will think of homesickness, and they will think of the things of their grandparents, letting this group of new farmers restore it on a higher material foundation and cultural level. This kind of restoration is called the ‘negation of the negation,’ rather than saying we should not develop. That is impossible.”

“What is the beautiful countryside in your mind?” At the crowded scene, a reporter raised this question.

“To put it plainly, it is a place where local people are willing to live, and outsiders are also willing to visit, willing to stay there, willing to travel and vacation there.” Committee member Ke Bingsheng described it this way.