How many farmers today still take pride in working the land
Old farmers, like ordinary folk, will eventually become obsolete words. While the leisure class and the middle class weave romantic fantasies about agricultural life, the farmer's heart still drifts without purpose.
Today, "farmer" has already become a rather unfamiliar term. Only in remote villages can one truly feel a hint of it: this is the farmer's territory. New farmers, migrant workers, new urban residents, drifters…… these words are gradually becoming the mainstream of society, replacing the term "farmer." When one thinks of "farmer," what comes to mind is no longer "face to the yellow earth, back to the sky."
I have five uncles. Now only one still holds fast to the countryside, living the life of working the land. The other uncles, over the course of more than 20 years, have one after another become merchants, employees and craftspeople living in county towns. They have become citizens in the process of urbanisation, or strictly speaking, farmers who possess a citizen's life: they can drive on city streets and shop in malls and supermarkets, but their thinking remains deeply rooted farmer thinking.
Against this backdrop, watching the TV drama "Old Farmers" has a special flavour. At first I did not understand why the word "old" had to be added before "farmer." Now I understand: just as "old" is added before "ordinary folk," only old farmers and ordinary folk are the foundation of every era, the ones from whom resources are drawn upward, the sacrificers who give the most and share the least. The "old" used specifically to describe them refers not to age nor to character (honest), but to a label seared onto them that cannot be torn off.
Leaders call old farmers "farmer brothers"; schools teach primary and middle school students to call old farmers "farmer uncles"; city dwellers call old farmers "mud legs"; film and television dramas call old farmers who cannot grasp reason "wooden heads"…… Farmers have always been passively defined and classified in this way. In "Old Farmers," Niu Dandan, played by Chen Baoguo, and Ma Renli, played by Feng Yuanzheng, are standard old farmers in appearance and speech, yet in their way of thinking and their capacity for action, they break free from the shackles of being farmers and restore the inherent dignity of "farmers are people too."
How to treat farmers as people is not difficult for creators. With what kind of gaze you view farmers, whether you observe farmers from a perspective of equality, that is what the farmers presented in your writing or images will look like. Farmers cannot grasp the weapon of literature and art; they can only serve as objects to be shaped. The farmers in Zhao Benshan's "Country Love" series are shaped in this way. That viewers are amused by the characters in the drama is partly because the characters cater to viewers' imagination of farmers. The farmers in "Country Love" are real, but this is certainly not the whole truth. Lacking the obscured portion of farmers' stories, the farmer image can only be an incomplete, fragmented, entertained group.
In novels, films and TV dramas, farmers have been out of contact for a long time. Therefore the broadcast of "Old Farmers" can be taken as a sign that farmer dramas are once again becoming a major focus. Its creation strives to strip away the stigmatisation of the farmer image built up over so many years. It calls to mind "Ordinary World," published many years ago and written by the author Lu Yao. The farmers they portray likewise possess a succulent sensitivity and likewise possess the thinking techniques commonly used by intellectuals. When these farmers lie prostrate in the dust and are run over by the wheels of the times, they too raise their heads to the sky and cry out in pain, and raise their fists in resistance.
Old farmers are easily associated with being uneducated. The tragedy in farmers has two sources: one is being uneducated, the other is lacking resources. Thinking about it truly is "terrifying upon careful thought": who made farmers uneducated? And who extracted the resources that should have belonged to farmers? The character Niu Dandan attempts to interpret this question. In appearance, Niu Dandan is loud and rough, cannot argue reasonably, and is utterly oblivious to the political climate of the small village. In the past, he would easily be labelled uneducated. But judging from his acts of defending the jujube tree on the ancestral grave from being cut down, chasing and beating the rebel faction's wife who caused a person's death, and hiding in a cornstalk stack for a night to lodge a complaint with the prefectural party secretary, the principles he follows are clearly the most worthy part of traditional culture to defend. To say he is uneducated truly underestimates the farmer's perseverance and wisdom.
Ma Renli transformed from a landlord's son into a farmer, so he possesses both intellectual and farmer temperaments at once. As the somewhat educated person in the village, Ma Renli is timid and cowardly, protecting himself first when trouble arises, yet he reads the times and understands strategy and tactics. As Niu Dandan's good friend, the two have complementary personalities, and as a pair in the drama they further set off the completeness of the farmer's character. What is the farmer's greatest goal? For thousands of years, that goal has probably been three words: "keep living." In order to keep living, generations of farmers have treated scratching a living from the soil as the final inviolable bottom line. Yet how to let farmers live with dignity remains an old unsolved problem even in the so-called internet era and new media era.
Farmers place all their hopes on their children. From the restoration of the college entrance examination to this day, urging children to leave the land and go to big cities to work and live is the dream of the vast majority of farmers. My uncles, whether still working the land now or already having become citizens, are always spurring their children to leave home and make their way in the outside world. One of the standards for measuring a child's achievement is seeing who travels farthest. We used to have a misconception: "farmers love the land." No one was willing to admit that farmers actually do not love the land that much. Otherwise, a survey could be done: how many farmers still take pride in working the land?
The relationship between farmers and the land, and the earth-shaking changes in farmers' values, can be traced to causes in the series of stories told across more than 60 years in "Old Farmers." The changes that occurred in Chinese farmers over these more than 60 years exceed those of the past one or two thousand years. But how much of the farmers' story do we know, and how much can we tell? Lacking a true understanding of farmers, people can only lie on the culture and piles of grain created by farmers, living in drunken dreams. Without restoring the truth of the farmer's world, those labourers on the land can only be the falsely beautiful images depicted in rural prose.
If you have truly lived in the countryside, you will know the hardships behind those beautiful landscapes; if you have blood-and-bone ties to farmers, you will know how much sorrow, helplessness and humiliation is hidden in that "old" before "farmer." Old farmers, like ordinary folk, will eventually become obsolete words, and the words used to give them a new identity are not yet clear. While the leisure class and the middle class weave romantic fantasies about agricultural life, the farmer's heart still drifts without purpose.