Why do farmers gradually leave the land?

China is an agricultural country; the land has fed us, and farmers are kind and hardworking. But for a long time, the countryside has been the most backward place, and farmers the poorest group of people. Take my hometown as an example: there are no mineral deposits there, no industry, and the limited land, after its potential was exploited to the extreme, no longer increased its grain yields. The old things vanished with a clatter, while the new things were slow to arrive. Farmers could no longer hold on to the land, and they left it step by step.

In the old street I know so well, nine out of ten families have moved to the side of the national highway in recent years. The villages and towns have lost their strong young laborers…… Is this old street soon to disappear? Is the land also to disappear from then on? And can the countryside truly disappear? Are the people I know to disappear so quickly? If they cannot disappear, then what is to be done?

Farmers gradually detaching from the land and leaving it feels like a kind of release for the younger generation, but on the whole it is helplessness. Many things are clear and easy in theory, but reality is heavy and bleak. This is what is meant by the saying that a year is easy to get through, a month is easy to get through, but the days are hard to get through. Every major social transformation concerns the fate of humanity, and this gives writers something to write about; the rural China of today is even more so. At such times we often find it hard to grasp things, and there is more confusion and contradiction.

I know the countryside, the farmers and the land of the northwest very well. The land has fed us everything, and farmers are kind and hardworking. But for a long time, the countryside has been the most backward place, and farmers the poorest group of people. China's reform and opening up began first in the countryside, and after the household contract responsibility system was introduced, the countryside truly underwent earth-shaking changes. Back then, when you went to the countryside, you could feel something vigorous and full of life. But after so many years, more complex problems have appeared in the countryside, and the living conditions of farmers are very difficult. I have been to many villages, and I know the affairs of my hometown especially clearly. My understanding of the countryside, agriculture and farmers is absolutely different from before; I have a kind of sorrow that stays in my heart. I feel anxious and contradictory, yet powerless, and I always want to write about what I have felt.

In the countryside today you can basically no longer see the thriving scene I saw back then. Take the small village where I lived at the time: there was very little grass and few trees, and as soon as grass grew it was cut, to feed oxen, feed pigs, and use as firewood; all the land that could be planted was planted with grain, and it was especially full of life. Going back these past few years, grass and trees have grown abundantly, giving a very desolate, gloomy, damp feeling. The people in their prime and the young have all left to work in the cities, and the village is left with only the old, the weak, the sick and the disabled. Some families' fields lie abandoned, overgrown with weeds half a person tall, without a trace of life.

Rural houses were not like this before; they all had black tiles, red bricks and white walls, warm in winter and cool in summer, very comfortable. But many old houses have been abandoned, either because the whole family moved to the town or the city, or because the owner built a two-story house of cement and steel bars, with white ceramic tiles on the outside, which looks very ugly. Today's cement houses are not as sturdy as the old earth-and-wood houses; in an earthquake they are completely destroyed. But in the eyes of rural people, such houses seem to represent being advanced, impressive and foreign-style. Nowadays the countryside is severely polarized, with some very rich and some very poor. But in a work of writing, such a situation is rather hard to portray; if you write it badly, people will say you are bleak and that your tone is not lofty enough.

The customs and folk ways of the countryside are now disappearing. The countryside used to have some spiritual life, but now it is completely gone. After a tiring day, people just watch TV at home, and families no longer like to visit one another as before. Customs and folk ways are a kind of vitality that radiates from people after they have eaten their fill; they cling to people. It is like cooking in the countryside: if there is no fire, naturally there will be no smoke. This change is like binge eating followed by binge throwing away. Today's countryside lacks a kind of spirit; there are too few people, and it is too cold and desolate. In the same way, the more capable farmers have all left the land.

This year the central government exempted farmers from taxes, and grain prices also rose, so a few more people are farming now, and some who did not make money in the city have come back to farm. This is the new change I saw when I went back to my old home this year. Even at the New Year, there are very few people; fewer households write Spring Festival couplets, the village is not lively, there is no opera troupe, no one performs acrobatics, and you cannot even see a movie. The cultural station, cinema and bookstore in the town have all collapsed, and you can only go to the county seat to see anything. The only life is watching TV.

I feel that the gaps between different regions of China today are very large. Within the same province, the gap between Xi'an and Shangzhou is very large, and there are further gaps between the counties and towns below. The gap between the rural northwest and the rural Jiangsu-Zhejiang region is also very large, and by the time you reach Shanghai there are different changes again. From east to west, I have seen the enormous changes in China's villages, and the changes brought by industrialization being replicated from east to west. This tide seems unavoidable. Under the impact of the tide of commercialization, our original cultural traditions and folk customs have changed, the old simple feelings are drifting away from us, and human nature has become alienated, complex and twisted. On the other side of kindness, people's ugliness slowly shows itself, and desire becomes the driving force of our advance. I feel deep pain over all of this. I think the momentum of China's reform is now uneven, like a bag that leaks air in some places, and the differences in development between places are very large.

When material desire floods the city, we still have somewhere to hide, because we still have our old home, our hometown; that is our Peach Blossom Spring. When we are wounded, we can still go back to our hometown to hide and heal in the poetic, picturesque countryside. But now this homeland we long for is undergoing the same reform, and it has suffered even greater damage than the city. Toward such a reality I feel that I am completely powerless. But this also seems to be something that inevitably happens in China's current development reality. The countryside is not valued now, and the state cannot possibly put a large amount of funds into the countryside to solve the various problems farmers face; the problems of the cities are now the first priority. The problems of the countryside have not yet received attention.