Seen from the grassroots level, Chinese society is rural.When I say that the grassroots of Chinese society is rural, it is because I consider that a society that is not quite the same as the rural grassroots has grown from this grassroots, and it has occurred on the edge of the contact between the East and the West in the past hundred years. A very special kind of society.We will not mention these social characteristics for the time being, but we will talk about them later.Let us first concentrate on those country people who are called rustic.They are the grassroots of Chinese society. When we say country people are rustic, although it seems to be contemptuous, the word is used very well.The basic meaning of the character soil is soil.Rural people cannot do without the soil, because farming is the most common way of making a living living in the country.In our Far Eastern continent, there may have been some primitive people who did not know how to farm in ancient times. How those people lived, at most we are only curious about it.Based on the current situation, the majority of people on this continent drag their feet into the fields to make a living.We might as well narrow it down to see that the basins of the three major rivers are all agricultural areas.Moreover, it is said that all the children who migrated from this old agricultural home to the surrounding outskirts have always faithfully kept this tradition of directly asking for life from the soil.Recently, I met an American friend who came back from a trip to Inner Mongolia. He asked me very strangely: People who went to the Central Plains, when you arrive at this grassland that is most suitable for grazing, you still hoe the ground and sow seeds, and each family rowed a small square. , planted; it is really like digging into the soil and seeing no other way to use the land.I remember my teacher, Mr. Shi Luguo, also told me that as far away as Siberia, the Chinese have settled down, no matter what the weather is like, they still need to plant some seeds to see if they can grow the land. ——In this way, our nation is indeed inseparable from the soil.A glorious history has grown from the soil, so it will naturally be bound by the soil, and now it looks like it can't fly to the sky.

Only those who make a living by farming understand the value of soil.People in the city can use rusticity to despise country people, but in the countryside, "soil" is their lifeblood.The god who occupies the highest position in number is undoubtedly "the land". "Land", the god who is closest to human nature, is a pair of old couples who live together and take care of all the affairs of the countryside.They symbolize the precious earth.When I first went abroad, my nanny secretly stuffed a package of things wrapped in red paper under my suitcase.Later, she avoided people and told me that if the climate is not acclimatized and you are always homesick, you can cook some soup from the things wrapped in red paper.This is a bag of dirt from a stove. ——I saw a similar custom in Poland, an agricultural country in Eastern Europe, in the movie "Unforgettable Song", which made me understand more about the position that "soil" occupies and should occupy in our culture.

Agriculture, unlike nomadism or industry, is directly derived from the land.Nomadic people can live in the water and grass, erratic; industrial people can choose places to live and move without hindrance; but farmers can't move the land, the crops growing in the soil can't move, and those who wait for the crops can't move. Because of this, the old farmer seems to have inserted half of his body into the soil, and the rusticity occurs because of immobility. People who earn their living directly from agriculture are glued to the land.I once met a friend who studied languages ​​in the Zhangbei area.I asked him if there was Mongolian influence among the languages ​​in this area.He shook his head, not only did he not see any influence in language, but also in other aspects.He went on to say: "These surnames have always been in the village for hundreds of years. I reconstructed the family tree of each family from the tombstones. It is clear that they are still those people. The population in the village seems to be attached to the soil. From generation to generation, there will not be much change.”—This conclusion should naturally be conditioned, but generally speaking, this is one of the characteristics of rural society.We can very well believe that for people who make a living from agriculture, settlement for generations is the norm, while migration is the abnormality.Severe droughts and floods, and years of military turmoil can cause some farmers to abandon their wells and leave their homes; even if such a major event as the Anti-Japanese War caused the flow of grassroots population, I believe it is still very small.

Of course, I am not saying that the rural population of China is fixed.This is impossible, because the population is increasing, and it only takes a few generations of reproduction on a piece of land to reach the saturation point; the excess population can be vented out, and the hoe can be used to open up new land.But the old root doesn't move often.These vented people are like seeds blown out from an old tree by the wind. They found land to survive and formed a small family colony. Those who could not find land fell under various fates. Was eliminated, or "prosperity".I have also seen this kind of seeds blown from old trees in the area near Yaoshan Mountain in Guangxi, desperately cultivating land.In Yunnan, I have seen small villages grown from this kind of seeds, which were only two or three generations old; I have also seen those "lonely souls" who could not find land there, and roadkill corpses that died and were eaten by dogs .

Immobility refers to the relationship between people and space, and the relationship between people and space is isolation and separation.Isolation and separation are not united by individuals, but by groups that live in one place.Originally, from the perspective of agriculture itself, it is unnecessary for many people to live in one place.The degree of division of labor in farming activities is very shallow, at most there is some division of labor between men and women, such as women transplanting rice seedlings, men hoeing and so on.This kind of cooperation is not so much for increasing efficiency, as it is because the man is too busy at a certain time, and the family members come out to help.Without the full development of the division of labor and specialization in farming activities, agriculture itself has no need to gather many people to live together.We see that there are settlements of different sizes in the countryside, and we can imagine that this is due to reasons other than agriculture itself.

The smallest community in the countryside can have only one family.Living together with couples and children has gender and parenting needs.Regardless of the nature of society, apart from special groups such as the military and schools, the family is always the most basic nurturing community.Such a small community with only one family is not common in rural China.In areas where terraced fields are planted in the mountainous areas of Sichuan, this kind of situation may exist. Most farmers live together in villages.This has a great influence on the nature of our rural society.In the rural areas of the United States, most of the households form a single unit, and there are very few neighbors with adjacent houses.This is the result of their early years of colonization, when there were fewer people and more land. At the same time, they also maintained their spirit of individual responsibility and solitude.We rarely have a similar situation in China.

The reasons why Chinese peasants live together in villages are roughly as follows: 1. The area cultivated by each family is small, and the so-called small-scale farmers operate, so they live together, and the distance between the house and the farm will not be too far.2. Where water conservancy is needed, they need to cooperate and live together, so it is more convenient to cooperate.3. For the sake of safety, it is easier to defend when there are more people.4. Under the principle of equal inheritance of land, brothers inherit the legacy of their ancestors respectively, so that the population accumulates from generation to generation in a place and becomes a rather large village.

No matter what the reason is, the unit of rural communities in China is the village, starting from Sanjia Village to large villages with thousands of households.The isolation and estrangement I mentioned above refer to the relationship between villages.Isolation and estrangement are not absolute, but the rate of population turnover is small, and the communication between communities is bound to be sparse.I think we can say that life in rural society is full of local characteristics.Endemic means that their range of activities is geographically limited.There is little contact between regions, life is isolated, and each maintains an isolated social circle.

Under local restrictions, rural society has become a society where people are born and die.The normal life is always a hometown.If all the people in a village are like this, there will be a kind of characteristic in the relationship between people. Every child grows up in the eyes of others, and in the eyes of the children, the people around them also grow up. Just get used to it.This is a "familiar" society, a society without strangers. In sociology, we often distinguish between two different types of society, a society that has no specific purpose and only occurs because of growing together, and a society that combines to complete a task.In the words of Tonnies: the former is Gemeinschaft, the latter is Gesellschaft, in the words of Durkheim: the former is "organic solidarity", the latter is "mechanical solidarity".In our own words, the former is a society of etiquette and customs, while the latter is a society of legal principles. ——I will analyze the differences between these two societies in detail later.What I want to explain here is that the villagers who are bound by the land in their lives, what they usually come into contact with are the characters they are born with, just like our parents and brothers, not because of the relationship we choose, but It is a living environment in which there is no need to choose, even before me.

Familiarity is the feeling of intimacy that arises from temporal, multifaceted, frequent contact.This feeling is the result of countless small frictions.This process is the word "Xi" in the first sentence of the Analects. "Learning" is the initial contact with strangers, "Xi" is Tao Lian, and "Unyielding" describes the intimate feeling after getting acquainted.In a familiar society, we will get the freedom to do what we want without breaking the rules.This is different from the freedom guaranteed by the law.Rules are not laws, rules are etiquette and customs that have been "practiced".To follow the vulgar is to follow the heart.In other words, society and individuals are at home here.

"We are all acquaintances, just say hello, do you need to say more?"——This kind of words has become an obstacle in our modern society.Modern society is a society composed of strangers. Everyone does not know the details of each other, so they have to speak clearly;That's how the law happens.There is no law in rural society. "Isn't this a stranger?" The rural society gains trust from familiarity.This trust is not unfounded, in fact, it is the most reliable, because it is the rule.Western businessmen still often say that Chinese people’s credit is innate, and there are so many stories similar to myths: It is said that a certain person received a large amount of porcelain, which was ordered by his grandfather when he was in China, and handed over without a penny. And a lot of apologies for not being able to send it sooner. ——The credit of the rural society is not the emphasis on the contract, but the reliability when one is familiar with the rules of a behavior without thinking about it. This is a characteristic of "rustic".Because only a life directly dependent on the soil will take root in one place like a plant, and calmly touch everyone's life, just like a mother treats her children.Strangers cannot understand a baby's words, but mothers can hear them clearly, and can hear meanings that are not expressed in words. Not only people, they are also "familiar" with things.When an old farmer saw the ants moving, he would rush to dig ditches in the field. He was familiar with the meaning of ants moving.Knowledge gained from familiarity is individual, not an abstract universal principle.The man who grows up in familiar surroundings has no need for such principles, he only needs to know, within the reach of his contacts, the individual connections from means to ends.People who grew up in rural society seem not to pursue this truth that covers all things.When I read the Analects of Confucius and saw Confucius explaining the meaning of "filial piety" in different words in front of different people, I felt the characteristics of this rural society.What is filial piety?Confucius did not explain it abstractly, but listed specific behaviors and answered his students differently from person to person.In the end, it even comes down to the word peace of mind.As a child, you have to get acquainted with the character of your parents in daily contact, and then accept their love to achieve your own peace of mind.This illustrates the basic way people get along with each other in rural society. This method cannot be applied in the presence of a stranger.In the rapid change of our society, in the process of entering the current society from the rural society, the way of life we ​​cultivated in the rural society has produced abuses everywhere.Modern society of strangers cannot cope with the customs of rural society.As a result, rusticity has become a curse word, and "township" is no longer a place to return to with rich clothes.