Chapter 2 Introduction: Between Reality and Goals

China is a large agricultural country, with 900 million farmers in a population of 1.3 billion. However, for a long time, the vast majority of urban people did not know how farmers lived in the countryside.I only vaguely remember that the great reform that shocked the whole world in the late 1970s started in the countryside. Production has been bumper harvests year after year, and "difficulty in selling grain" soon appeared, and many "million-dollar households" emerged.For a while, Chinese peasants seemed to be getting rich.However, soon thereafter, with the continuous deepening of urban reforms, we heard little about Chinese agriculture, countryside and peasants.However, it was later discovered that more and more farmers have given up the land that was once regarded as their life, and stayed away from the villages and familiar farming that they used to stay together day and night. They would rather endure loneliness, humiliation and discrimination, and flock to cities everywhere. , Therefore, the "migrant labor wave" set off by millions of Chinese farmers has become a strange landscape in the last decade of the last century time and time again.

Over the years, because of our dedication to the writing of reportage, we have had the opportunity to go deep into the countryside in various places. At the same time, we have made many friends from farmers and often listen to them talk about things in the countryside.We found that the rural folk paintings that remained in our impressions were nothing but distant and illusory pastoral songs, or in other words, a yearning for the countryside by urbanites who are accustomed to the impetuous life of the city.But this is not the case in the countryside in real life, or in other words, it is not the case in the eyes of the peasants. They do not have such leisure and leisure, and they live very tired and heavy.

Once, in order to understand the pollution of the Huaihe River, we passed by a village on the Huaibei Plain in Anhui Province, and we were shocked to find that many peasant households there were destitute and destitute.In one family, the whole family spent a whole Spring Festival with the five yuan they got from selling vegetables, and their life was not as miserable as it was in the first few years after liberation.A farmer made a calculation for us with his fingers. He said that without seeds, chemical fertilizers, irrigation, mechanical planting and collection of taxes and fees, if the yield of wheat per mu is less than 900 catties, this year will be equivalent to Nothing.However, in the rural areas of Huaibei, it is obviously rare to be able to produce 900 catties of wheat per mu. It is quite good to receive 800 catties, and generally only 600 catties. It is unsustainable, but they still have to bear various taxes and fees.

The farmers said with tears in their eyes: "The benefits left to us by the big contract have been taken away bit by bit!" We did not expect that the poorest place in Anhui Province would be in the south of the Yangtze River, in the world-famous Huangshan City, and in Baiji Township in Xiuning County, Huangshan City, which has no roads or telephones.There, we were surprised to find that the agricultural production in the mountains was still in the original state of slash-and-burn farming. Farmers worked hard all year round, with an average income of only 700 yuan, and a monthly income of only 58 yuan; many farmers lived in the dark , Damp, small, dilapidated mud houses, some of which can't even afford roof tiles, and the roofs are still covered with bark.Because of poverty, once you get sick, you can endure minor illnesses and wait for death from serious illnesses.There are 620 households in the township, and 514 households are poor, reaching 82.9%. There are 2,180 people in the township, and the poor population also accounts for 1,700. Seventy people, reaching eighty-one percent.However, in such a poor township, because of the exaggeration of the village cadres a few years ago, they were deemed to have been lifted out of poverty by the top, and the exorbitant taxes sent down made the villagers suffocate; The corrupt officials were brought to justice just before we went.While we are amazed at the ubiquity of corrupt and law-breaking people, we also feel suffocatingly heavy about the topic.

On the day we left Baiji, we deliberately chose to go down the mountain from Zhejiang. Along the way, we also discovered that Zhongzhou Town, Chun'an County, which belongs to the "paradise" Hangzhou City, is actually not much richer. In the spring of 2000, Li Changping, Secretary of the Party Committee of Qipan Township, Jianli County, Hubei Province, said three sentences in a letter to the leaders of the State Council: "Farmers are suffering, rural areas are poor, and agriculture is dangerous." These words at least show that, What we encountered in the rural areas of Anhui Province also existed in many other places.Li Changping's letter on the issue of "agriculture, rural areas and farmers" obviously touched the heart of a prime minister of a big country. Premier Zhu once commented emotionally: "'Farmers are really miserable, the countryside is really poor, and agriculture is really dangerous'. Although it is not a comprehensive situation, the problem The reason is that we often take some good situations as the overall situation, but mistakenly believe in the 'announcement' from the grassroots, and ignore the seriousness of the problem."

As a result, a question that baffles those of us who live in cities all year round emerges: the great changes in China today are due to the great changes that attracted worldwide attention more than 20 years ago. Hundreds of millions of peasants have led the way of reform in China, how can they be reduced to such an embarrassing situation now? It is undeniable that we have entered an unprecedented new era in Chinese history. However, forgetting the living conditions of the people at the bottom, especially the 900 million peasants, is something that some people in our era have done most thoroughly.

Therefore, it can be considered that what we are facing is not just a simple agricultural problem or a simple economic problem, but the biggest social problem facing the ruling party in the new era.We really have no reason to forget the vast countryside in today's rapidly changing cities; without the real prosperity of 900 million peasant brothers, all optimistic economic statistics will be meaningless! Dwight Perkins, an economist at Harvard University in the United States, once said a sentence that is still worthy of our deep thinking: "For future reformers, China's political experience is obvious but often forgotten-the reform process should There are clear beneficiaries.” At the beginning of the reform in the last century, the beneficiaries included individual industrial and commercial households and pioneers in the Shenzhen Special Economic Zone, in addition to the “big contract” farmers.But when the center of reform moves to the city, the beneficiaries become the new entrepreneurial class, government officials who get rich quickly through rent-seeking activities, and the urban middle class that can barely be called a group. Groups - 900 million farmers, not only are not beneficiaries, but because of increased production but not increased income, some places even have a situation where "the present is not as good as it used to be".We often proudly declare that we feed 21% of the world's population with 7% of the world's arable land.Our farmers have provided enough food for 1.3 billion people. This cannot but be a great contribution to the world. However, we often seldom think that we are feeding with 40% of the world's farmers. This twenty-one percent of the population.This can only show that our agriculture is still quite backward, and the living standards of the vast majority of farmers are still very low.

The United Nations published a "Human Development Report", which ranked 162 countries and regions in the world according to the level of development index, and China was ranked 87th.This ranking is very depressing.When more than 20 years of successful reform and opening up, China's gross national product has been greatly improved, and because of this rapid development, it has created a miracle of economic growth in the world today, the Nobel Prize winner in economics Rhine, however, is watching my country's agricultural problems. He once told Chinese visitors that there are two major problems in the Chinese economy: one is agriculture, and the other is population; Yang Zhenning, a Nobel Prize winner in physics, also said the same thing: The most difficult thing for China at present is that the per capita national income is too low.

An indisputable fact is that China's agriculture, rural areas and farmers' problems have become the main factors affecting the future development of our country's modernization. It is a serious problem that the achievements of reform and opening up that we have finally created through more than 20 years of hard work may be destroyed! As reportage writers, our literature should always maintain a dialogue with real life.In the face of such serious problems, writers should not be absent.Therefore, starting from October 1, 2000, we set out from Hefei and traveled all over the vast rural areas of more than 50 counties and cities in Anhui Province. Experts and government officials engaged in the research and practice of "three rural" work conducted a painstaking investigation that lasted for two years.

We have never doubted that the rural appearance of Anhui Province is the most representative among the twelve major agricultural provinces in the country; in terms of rural reform, Anhui is even more representative among all the provinces, cities and autonomous regions in the country. Typical meaning.Because of the land reform, the "big contract" and the reform of rural taxes and fees, which are called the three major rural reforms in New China, the latter two reforms originated in Anhui.Premier Zhu has said more than once: "On the issue of agriculture, when the central government wants to make major decisions on agriculture, I often go to Anhui to investigate and study. It can be said that many of our successful experiences are I came from Anhui, and Anhui has made great contributions to China's agriculture." Wen Jiabao also said: "It is about rural policy issues, so I thought of Anhui to listen to everyone's opinions, because there are many familiar situations, Comrades who dare to express their opinions. Every time I come, I gain a lot.” Therefore, when we enter the vast rural areas of Anhui, we are actually getting closer to Chinese farmers.

We are the descendants of farmers, and we all spent our innocent childhood in the countryside. Today, when we run in the fields that have become unfamiliar, we still feel like returning to the arms of our mothers. The impulse in our hearts almost overflows with tears. .This kind of flesh-and-blood relationship with nature is something we have never felt since we entered the city. However, when we approached the peasants in China with the enthusiasm and calmness rarely seen by today's writers, we felt unprecedented shock and pain. We want to say that today's China is not full of singing and dancing, and we still have many difficult places and people.Now many people have never left a big city, and they think that the whole of China is like Beijing and Shanghai. Some foreigners come here, and when they look at it, they also think that China is like that.Actually, not so. We want to say that we have seen unimaginable poverty, unimaginable crime, unimaginable suffering, unimaginable helplessness, unimaginable resistance, unimaginable silence, unimaginable touch and happiness. unimaginably tragic... We didn't even think that the pilot work of the reform of rural taxes and fees that Anhui Province took the lead in this time would be as thrilling as the "big contract" that happened in Anhui more than 20 years ago; This reform is carried out at the same time, and it is bound to be destined that our work will be as exciting as this reform, full of suspense, full of ups and downs, twists and turns, and even have to stop halfway like the pilot reform. Think painfully and break the original plan. It is also impossible for us to think that the problem is so severe that we have doubted our own ability and courage more than once, doubting such a major and sensitive topic, can a writer be competent? However, we persisted after all.Because we believe that the responsibility of literature to society is not passive, it should not be a pale memory of life, but it should work with readers to find hints from history for today; because China's tomorrow can only depend on our today cognition and effort. Now, when we start telling stories about Chinese agriculture, rural areas, and farmers, we first force ourselves to calm down. We know that only calmness and calmness can hold back the waves that have surged in our hearts countless times...