Controversy on ＂Low Desire Country Life＂： The plight of urban youth, the country is not the ＂antidote＂

　　Recently, there has been a small-scale discussion on Douban because of rural life. On May 20th, Douban user "Summer Hail" published a long article in Douban Diary, "Why do I choose a low desire life in a mountain village? This is a silent struggle against modern slavery. The author once worked in Hong Kong’s South China Morning Post and a Fortune 500 educational enterprise, but now she has quit her job and lives in a village house in a forest in western Zhejiang. The reason why I fled the city and work is because "I sacrificed my most precious youth, my own time, my physical health and mental health, and finally got into the dark corner of the honeycomb-like office building again and again." "In the process of making screws, I experienced not only labor alienation, but also human alienation."

　　Living in the countryside has given her a happy experience. "After returning to rural life, my life has regained its color. I have enjoyed the bright sunshine, fresh air and pollution-free agricultural products, and my chronic diseases have been relieved a lot. In the city, my stuffy nose is blocked, my throat is not swollen, my waist and cervical vertebrae are not sore, I walk in the country with my dog and reunite with my family every week. ""I am no longer a disposable machine, but I exist as a free and thinking person. "

　　This article has been echoed by many people in the comment area, and it has also met with many objections. On May 22nd, Douban user "X316" also wrote a long article "Good Country Life with Low Desire" in Douban Diary. Is it really as beautiful as it looks? — — From homestay to tea garden, I will talk about my real rural life experience+operability evaluation of returning to the countryside, and question the rural imagination in the article "Summer Hail". "X316" has been working and living in rural areas for more than one year. Before that, she has been writing a series of "Life Records in Southeast Guizhou" on Douban. She recounted her several working experiences in the countryside, such as tea gardens in mountain villages and villagers’ hostels, and complained bitterly. "Three months working in a homestay is harder than any job I have in the city. Waiter+nanny+driver+tour guide+cleaner, do five jobs and get one money. How can this be a good life? " "There is no spirit of contract, and there is very serious emotionality … … Stable quality, stable supply and basically reliable service cannot be achieved, so it is very, very difficult to cooperate with them as customers or help them sell tea as employees. "

　　"X316" believes that low desire does not need to be realized through rural life. "Going back to the village life is completely different from going back to the village for a holiday". "Otherwise, after reading other people’s beautiful WeChat official account articles and having the same expectations, you will only get disappointment and emptiness". The article "X316" has also been warmly echoed by readers, who think that this article "specializes in treating wenqing disease".

　　The same rural life, completely different rural imagination, unable to agree on the value position. Why does imagination tear? Behind the torn imagination, is it the opposite direction or the same goal?

　　"Poetic country" or "cruel bottom"

　　Although Douban’s debate on the countryside has caught up with the subculture upsurge of "low desire", it is still an old problem in essence, that is, the difference between two imagination modes of the countryside: the article "Summer Hail" represents "poetic countryside" and "X316" represents "cruel bottom".

　　"Poetic country" has a long history, from the pastoral school in ancient society to Li Ziqi in the Internet age, and it has always been an important motif in literary and artistic creation. As the pioneer of pastoral poetry, and the first great poet in the history of China literature who integrated agricultural labor into poetry creation, a large part of Tao Yuanming’s pastoral poems aestheticized and poeticized his life. "Planting beans under the south mountain, the grass is filled with bean seedlings. Early in the morning get up early to eradicate the weeds, the night falls on the moonlight carry hoe to return. The narrow path covered with vegetation, and the night dew moistened my clothes. The clothes are not enough, but the wishes are not violated. " Even if he goes out early and returns late, and the harvest is not good, the poet enjoys himself. This is not only because "I wish to keep my promise", but because Tao Yuanming, who has had official experience, can be regarded as a "rich farmer". His devoted life is different from the miserable rural life written by later poets, such as Li Shen’s Two Poems of Compassion for Farmers, Bai Juyi’s Watching Wheat, Du Ling Cuo and Du Xunhe’s Widow in the Mountain.

　　In Wang Wei’s pastoral poems, there is no real life of ploughing in the rural landscape. It is beauty, painting and Zen, and it is the spiritual harbor for the aristocratic class to escape from troubled times and preserve their sanity. The tradition of "poetic countryside" has evolved into modern literature, which is the poetic novels of Fei Ming, Shen Congwen, Wang Zengqi and others. Now, it is the enthusiasm of plums, farmhouse music and homestay. The countryside has become a sanctuary.

　　Liziqi is the most typical cultural landscape in the current "poetic countryside". In the form of short video, she recorded the seclusion of one day, two people (she and grandma), three meals and four seasons. Different from other vlog in rural life, Li Ziqi shows the whole process of food from sowing to harvesting to the final table, and she herself does not miss any step of labor. Since her popularity in 2016, Liziqi has continuously attracted a large number of fans. At present, her Weibo fans exceed 27 million. At the same time, Li Ziqi is also one of the hottest domestic video bloggers overseas, and has repeatedly set the Guinness World Record for the "YouTube Chinese Channel with the Most Subscriptions" created by her. The core feature of Li Ziqi’s short video is the aestheticism, poetry and romance of "poetic countryside".

　　Corresponding to "poetic countryside", it is the imagination of "cruel bottom", and the countryside has become a backward, poor and stupid wilderness. During the May 4th Movement, in response to the banner of "science" and "democracy", a group of advanced intellectuals took enlightenment as their career, discovered and reformed people, and liberated the people from the shackles of traditional Confucian culture and small-scale peasant civilization. As Lu Xun said, "Speaking of ‘ Why ’ Do a novel, I still hold the ‘ more than ten years ago. Enlightenment ’ , thinking it must be ‘ For life ’ And to improve this life. " A series of local literature such as The True Story of Ah Q, Blessing, Hometown, Kong Yiji, Medicine, etc. focus on excavating the national inferiority, and "mourn their misfortune and be angry". As a master of modern local novels, Lu Xun’s creation has profoundly influenced the creation of local novels in modern and contemporary literature.

　　In the era of literature loss, there are two important opportunities for the countryside, which is the "cruel bottom", to enter the public view again on a large scale. One is the popularity in 2015 of "A Doctoral Student’s Homecoming Notes: What to See at Home during the Spring Festival", which triggered the upsurge of writing homecoming notes for several years; The other is the rise of short videos represented by Aauto Quicker, and all kinds of rural local flavor videos have entered the public view, which has triggered such feelings as "Cruel Story at the Bottom: A Video Software for Rural China". When the countryside exists as a "cruel bottom", compared with the countryside written by Lu Xun, it seems that its mental outlook has not changed substantially, except that it may be richer materially: moral corruption, money worship, mutual bullying, lack of contract and the spirit of rule of law … …

　　This has formed a torn rural landscape. Sometimes it is picturesque, the Garden of Eden for modern people; Sometimes it’s "a unruly into the badlands", and it’s a barren wilderness. The debate about rural life in Douban has not escaped from this framework as a whole, and the direct disagreement is the struggle for the right to interpret the countryside.

　　Bankruptcy of "Low Desire and Good Country Life"

　　Whether it was against Li Ziqi before or against the "summer hail" this time, the usual strategies of critics are motivation theory and moral accusation. For example, I think that Li Ziqi is just a online celebrity who made a short video and realized it. She keeps creating all kinds of "false" country life to meet the spiritual needs of anxious modern people, and then tries to take more money out of their pockets — — She made a lot of money by opening an online shop.

　　This time, in response to the "summer hail", "X316" wrote at the beginning of the rebuttal article, "She is earning money from working in the city (just not having to work) and taking a holiday in the country … … I admire her for being so excellent that she can get so much money by freelance work. And ordinary social animals may not have so much money to work hard in the city, so they are encouraged to go to the countryside ‘ Enjoy life ’ I think it’s really why not eat minced meat. "

　　In the polarized public opinion environment, this kind of motivation theory is very marketable and encouraging. Both Li Ziqi and "X316" first fall into the dilemma of self-incrimination, as if they have to suffer from poverty or not make money, which can prove that their motives for building rural life are good. However, this theory of motivation may be ineffective in discussion, because if we expand infinitely, is Wang Wei’s pastoral poetry also "hypocritical" and "why not eat minced meat"?

　　The refutation of motivation theory has its flaws and should not be a prerequisite. This time, the construction of "Good Rural Life with Low Desire" of "Summer Hail" went bankrupt, mainly from the other two levels.

　　First, it is self-contradictory. The "low desire" in this paper is not the low desire of "low desire society" or "lying flat and studying" as we used to understand. On the contrary, it is the "high desire" based on considerable financial freedom and spiritual freedom. As the author said, "Low desire is a kind of low physical desire, which removes the desire stimulated by capital but has no intention of the individual itself. My low desire is precisely to pursue my own life itself and a lifestyle close to nature. People can’t have no desire, but the desire I pursue is different from the desire given by society. What I pursue is precisely the spiritual high desire. "

　　The author only lives in the countryside, but he has not given up the pursuit of individual realization and some kind of "success". "I have more time to play my specialty and do what I want to do, especially when I have time to make commentary videos in English, interview ordinary people who are not concerned by the mainstream media and make documentaries, but I have gained more recognition and more opportunities for cooperation and exhibition." She exposed one of her award-winning certificates in the article. The countryside mainly exists as evidence of her low desire material, but not the countryside has brought her more spiritual satisfaction, and the countryside is not a sufficient or necessary condition for her spiritual freedom.

　　Secondly, this is a common problem in "poetic villages", that is, the villages imagined by literati are all unproductive, the factors of production are basically eliminated, there is no hard work, no worries about harvest, no poor education and medical resources, and no darkness of human nature under embarrassing material conditions.

　　The countryside has been stripped of the relations of production, and it is just a static existence like a potted plant. Scholars cut out the appearance of potted plants according to their inner needs. As Raymond Henry Williams said, "there is no pastoral scenery of agricultural labor and labor; The landscape composed of Woods and lakes can be found in 100 similarities in new pastoral paintings and poems, from which the fact of production has been expelled, roads and passages have been cleverly covered by trees, and traffic has been suppressed visually; Inconsistent barns and mills were cleared out of view … … The tree-lined road leads all the way to the distant mountains, where there is no detail to spoil the whole scenery … …”

　　If they just think about it, that’s fine. Once they try to regard imagination as a kind of practice, they are almost doomed to the end of bankruptcy. A typical case is the rush of homestay fever in recent years. Young intellectuals are not only consumers of homestays, but many of them even become owners of homestays. China Tourism and B&B Development Association officially released the "2020 B&B Industry Research Report", which shows that the total number of domestic B&B houses will exceed 3 million sets in 2020, among which the rural houses will develop rapidly and the number of houses will increase rapidly. Judging from the portrait of the landlord, young landlords with high academic qualifications poured in, accounting for more than 80% of the higher education, and landlords under the age of 31 accounted for 69%. Young intellectuals have moved their imagination of poetic countryside to urban homestays or villagers’ hostels. "Old wood, adobe houses, pebbles, old doors and windows" are the common features of literary and art scholars’ hostels. Young intellectuals fantasize about opening a homestay, that is, living a slow-paced secluded life, meeting like-minded friends from all walks of life and feeling spiritual freedom and romance.

　　But the reality is skinny, as the article "X316" said, "Small capitalists wanted to make money by lying in the hotel, and finally they could only lie in the hotel and cry". Earlier data showed that in addition to the profit of homestays with obvious location advantages and an average occupancy rate of over 90%, many homestays are in a state of obvious off-peak season, huge operating pressure and long-term return on investment. There are also real and painful cases around the author. Three young friends spent a total of 1 million yuan to invest in a village house in Fujian, and lost all their money after one year of operation. Finally, they found a "reason" to go to court with the landlord.

　　If you want to live a self-sufficient life in the countryside, you must take productivity and production relations into account. At this time, many people will find that there is no direct and inevitable connection between the countryside and "low desire" and "beauty". Even because of the poor local material conditions and the lack of contractual spirit, business activities are much more difficult than in cities.

　　Essential hallucination and subjective absence

　　The article "X316" debunks the illusion of "good rural life with low desire" with her real rural experience. For example, it is very beautiful to see the wooden building in the photo fit perfectly with nature. In fact, the living conditions in Mulou are very bad, with poor lighting and sound insulation, so it is impossible to be a sewer, so it is impossible to be a bathroom and toilet. To go to the toilet, you need to go to the dry toilet … … The living conditions are very bad. Villagers are not as simple as they think. When outsiders come to run tea gardens locally, some villagers think that outsiders occupy their resources. "Some people secretly destroy tea gardens and factories, and call on villagers not to help tea gardens pick tea during the tea-picking season". Moreover, because of the unclear rules and the lack of a sense of reasonable competition, "there will be more dark battles in small towns and villages." Because of the boredom of life, in order to pursue sexual stimulation, various problems will also arise.

　　The exposition of "X316" shares the same tone with the narrative of returning home before and after the Spring Festival every year, but it also has obvious narrative defects. If "poetic countryside" is the beautification of the countryside after removing the factors of production, then "cruel bottom" is to remove the countryside from the pattern of binary opposition between urban and rural areas and regard many social problems as essential "rural problems"

　　An argument often heard in the narrative of returning home is that although the countryside is rich, the morality in the countryside is deteriorating, and vanity and money worship prevail, which is embodied in sky-high bride price, sky-high banquet and sky-high funeral. The educated young people who returned home blamed everything on the feudalism, ignorance and difficult education of the villagers. But in fact, all these reflect a common problem: the lack of rural spiritual construction. Under the pattern of binary opposition between urban and rural areas, a large number of superior resources are tilted towards cities, especially big cities, and the vast rural areas get too little, and even they have to continuously transport resources and labor to cities. Rural areas have long been in a barren state. It is very closed, backward in education, and there are no places for entertainment. The villagers follow the tradition and inertia. It is not necessarily that they are unwilling to keep up with modernization, but that they have been abandoned by modernization for a long time.

　　Another example is the sky-high bride price, which seems to be a rural worship of money, and it is also a series of social problems. The long-standing "preference for boys over girls" has led to a serious imbalance between men and women; Coupled with the unbalanced development between urban and rural areas, social mobility has intensified, and many women in rural areas have also gone out to work, and chose to settle down in cities. On the contrary, there are almost no young women of school age who have flowed into villages from cities, which has aggravated the imbalance of marriage sex ratio in rural areas where the population has flowed out. The number of marriageable young men is much higher than that of marriageable young women, and men can only gain an "advantage" through the competition of bride price. If the unbalanced sex ratio is not fundamentally reversed and the trend of population outflow is alleviated, the phenomenon of bachelor will persist for a long time, and the sky-high bride price may be replaced by other forms.

　　In other words, the problems found in the countryside are not unique to the countryside, they are universal social problems, but in this closed field of a specific village, all kinds of problems will be concentrated and dominant.

　　Whether it is "poetic village" or "cruel bottom", it seems that it is the opposite, but in fact it is exactly the same. They all regard the village as an imaginary object and "essentialize" the village, as if there is some static rural experience waiting to be extracted and discovered.

　　Another question about the "cruel bottom" narrative is, to what extent can the individual’s empirical writing "speak for" the countryside? For example, in the narrative of returning home every year, the educated youth will go home for a few days before and after, and may not go out for a few times, so they can make a long speech with a few days’ experience. Even some sensational homecoming articles were finally proved to be fabricated by educated youth "behind closed doors". When there is some kind of "essential" rural imagination, it is easy for them to grab all kinds of elements to arrange and combine into a sensational article.

　　Even if the experience of rural life is true, the rural image will be completely opposite because of the writer’s different positions and angles. For example, "X316" wrote a beautiful, quiet and idyllic side of the countryside in the Life Record of Southeast Guizhou. But because of her dissatisfaction with the article "Summer Hail", is she really as beautiful as she looks in "Good Rural Life with Low Desire"? In the rebuttal article, what is critical is the various disappointments of rural life. This is enough to show that because of the limitation of individual experience and the lack of rural subjectivity, perceptual rural writing tends to be more subjective "literary narrative" than "objective record"

　　To get close to the real countryside, we can take a way, or what cultural scholar Nan Fan said is "dialogue": "Instead of imagining some independent, pure and out-and-out experience at the bottom, it is better to measure the state of the bottom in the comparison, dialogue and interaction of all walks of life. The bottom layer does not exist in advance, but the main body produced in multiple dialogues. In this dialogue, intellectuals and the bottom interact with each other ‘ The other ’ … … Dialogue can prevent a certain class from becoming a collective of thousands of people, or romanticize each other according to abstract definitions. "

　　All roads lead to the same goal: some comfort for the urban poor youth

　　Whether it is a "poetic country" or a "cruel bottom", it is precisely this "dialogue" relationship that is lacking. We can even say that urban youth — — Whether they come from the countryside, work and live in the city, or are born and raised in the city, their writing about the countryside may be a kind of "talking to themselves", which is far from the real countryside. Their imagination of the countryside is essentially to solve the individual’s survival dilemma; The country is just the wine of others, pouring the foundation of the heart.

　　"Summer Hail" described in detail in the article why she wanted to escape from urban work. Citing the research of David Graeber, an anthropologist at the London School of Economics, she pointed out that most jobs in modern society are meaningless in themselves, and unintentional and harmful jobs account for more than half of all jobs. Many jobs are new and more hidden "slavery". "Modern slavery is more lucrative than the old model. Different from the old system, the new system can’t legally own the personal ownership of the enslaved. In the past, buying slaves required a large sum of money in the early stage, and they were responsible for them all their lives. The birth, illness and death of slaves meant that the assets of manor owners shrank. Now it is more convenient. When they are used up, they are directly thrown away. After their physical strength is extracted, the cost of treating illness is directly thrown to the fragile public service system and individual families. "

　　In recent years, waves of youth subculture, from "mourning culture" and "Buddhism" to "invisible poor people" and "lying in school", are highly related to the discussion of "summer hail" We can also give more reasons, such as one-dimensional success values restricting diversified life choices, high housing prices depriving the struggle value, the difficulty of class mobility caused by class solidification, the squeezing and deprivation of individuals by working mechanisms such as "996" and "Super Week", and the involution era making everyone exhausted in the brutal competition without development … … People are alienated into screws and tools, and countless urban youths are in trouble, and they are eager to escape.

　　The "low desire and beautiful rural life" of "Summer Hail" is just an advanced stage of "lying flat and learning": "I don’t support the monthly life in 200 yuan advocated by the master of lying flat philosophy, which is at the expense of the basic nutrition of the body, and a good body is the foundation of a healthy mental state. It is not necessarily a good choice to get out of the oppressive environment of endless work and enter another situation where the quality cannot be guaranteed." In other words, what she advocates is a kind of "lying flat" on the basis of relative financial freedom, not being kidnapped by work, but becoming a spiritual free person.

　　The "summer hail" lifestyle is only suitable for a few elites like her: she has good family conditions, high academic qualifications and fluent foreign languages, and she can completely support herself through sideline work, even the village house is her own … … Her living in the city or the countryside has no influence on her personal development; The "village house in the forest of western Zhejiang" is more like a holiday country house, where you can still get in touch with the current information and understand the pulse of the times through the Internet, books and conversations. Therefore, under the article of "Summer Hail", there are many envious voices, but almost all of them say that they can’t do it or can’t do it. This is the same mentality as watching Li Ziqi’s video, and it is a mental desertion of the sleepy young people.

　　In the "cruel bottom" narrative in the market, one evidence that the hometown is degenerating is that the villagers are surrounded by money worship, they have no sense of borders, and they are curious about the salary of urban youth returning home and whether they buy a house. Urban youth often feel offended, not only because their privacy has been violated, but also because their poor economic situation in the city makes them speechless. They are full of frustration at their inability to turn intellectual capital into economic capital or political capital, and feel that their self-esteem is damaged in front of their peers in rural areas who have made a lot of money. At this time, as the scholar Kong Deji said, they "choose to criticize the countryside to maintain their self-esteem", maintain their psychological superiority, and get a psychological comfort: the countryside is too bad, which is simply unreasonable, and the city is better than the countryside.

　　All kinds of imaginations about the "cruel bottom" in rural areas include both the humanistic care of urban youth and the curiosity of the lost, in order to gain a sense of superiority and psychological comfort. Compared with the worse situation, it seems that their current predicament is acceptable.

　　In a word, there are two extreme imaginations about the countryside at present — — No matter whether it is poetic or cruel, the main participants are urban youth, and no matter what kind of imagination, it is a kind of relief and comfort for them to their own predicament. However, we know that "beautiful rural life with low desire" is too idealistic, and it basically does not have the conditions and possibilities for promotion; Taking the countryside as the imaginary other, urban youth will not gain the initiative in their own lives. After all, the countryside is not the antidote to hardship.

　　Whether it is the rural problem or the urban dilemma of urban youth, to truly and effectively solve it, we must change the unreasonable way of resource distribution, unblock the channels of class mobility, and adjust and reform the social structure. All this will not come for no reason.