Chapter 20 postscript

In 2012, when I was finally able to draw an end to this book, the recruitment of civil servants in the central government had just come to an end, but the examinations in various provinces and cities were in full swing. The number of recruits for fresh graduates has been greatly reduced, and more and more employment positions require applicants to have "more than two years of grassroots work experience."As a result, batch after batch of fresh graduates had to lower their goals and choose to apply for grassroots civil servant positions such as counties and townships in order to hold an "iron rice bowl".What followed was a clerk position in a department-level unit in an ordinary county-level city, and a 300:1 competition miracle appeared at every turn.

Under such miracles, officialdom novels about how to get promoted became popular, "thick black studies" about how to survive became popular, and videos criticizing such phenomena as extremely unhealthy and abnormal also became popular. Even "Baidu Encyclopedia" "Everyone came to join in the fun, and insisted on giving those candidates who finally got their wish an enthusiastic new title of "Red Collar"... However, few people stood up and told those successors to the "exams" with an objective and pertinent attitude. Kids: What does grassroots look like?

I have been writing this book for a long time. After leaving the grassroots, for four full years, I kept writing and overthrowing.There are too many things I want to express, and gradually I feel complicated and confused: I don’t know whether I want to write a kind of love or a kind of hatred; I had to interrupt the writing process several times to look elsewhere for inspiration.Even in the past four years, it has been published successively with "Paper Marriage 2: A Story of Seeking a Child" and has become a bestseller, but this story is still stumbling and unsustainable. I later learned that such hesitation stems from the complexity of emotions.

It was a passionate defection, two years of rough polishing, three points of regret and four points of walking forward bravely, and finally there were five or six sad grievances and seventy to eighty percent sincere respect. Looking back for a long time, I was very disappointed. Abandon. Yes, sorry. I don't give up the confusion, loss, grievance, frustration, emptiness, and chaos that I walked through step by step in the past, and I don't give up the sincerity, simplicity, hard work, encouragement, righteousness, and loyalty behind the smiling faces of my colleagues-no one knows, that The police uniform that I thought was restraint and rules is still hanging in my closet, next to those colorful fashions, existing silently and solemnly.

Although, I want to put it away countless times and press it in the bottom of the unknown wardrobe to bid farewell to a past that can never be repeated.But time and time again, when my hands touched the two silver four-pointed stars on the epaulettes, I would feel a sour expression——it is undeniable that behind this dark blue, there is a period of growth that is so real. Such growth is a vital experience for a writer; it is the basis of resonance for more readers. However, what I want to talk about is not just professional growth. I always feel that everyone is a part of society and has to play multiple roles in life.For example, the protagonist Mu Xin in this story is not only a grassroots civil servant, but also the daughter-in-law of an ordinary family.She seems to have everything that is affluent in the glass city - a stable job, a husband who loves her - but you have to get closer to find out that civil servants are divided into ranks, and there are countless ties behind love.

My position is only narrative. It doesn't talk about principles or methodology, but just narrates the fate of different women in different living environments. Even if this kind of narrative can only represent a group but not all, even if similar situations will gradually change with the changes of the world, even if some confusion will die reluctantly with question marks in the passage of time... But, to quote the writer Ye Zhaoyan In the words: "Real life will eventually become a part of history, and because of this, we might as well chatter." It's like this, since it is destined to not last forever, it is enough to just treat it as a story.

Just a story. Therefore, it is purely fictional. Any similarity is mere coincidence. And, thank you, for seeing this.