Xiwengzhuang Notes | Bai Yansong, why don’t you give it a try?

Every year at this time, the famous host Bai Yansong is very active, and he will comment on the proposals of the representatives of the two sessions.

The day before yesterday, host Bai said “small steps and fast running”:

“It is obviously not enough for farmers to have a pension of more than 100 yuan a month, including many of our committee representatives who are proposing, can we take small steps and run fast? If we increase by 20 yuan every year from now on, the farmers’ pension can double in ten years. I think small steps and fast running is the rhythm we should achieve.”

Mosquitoes are also meat, we should thank host Bai.

However, my language comprehension ability is much worse than that of host Bai, and I couldn’t figure out where this small step was after thinking for a long time. Is it fast to increase from one hundred to three hundred in ten years?

A Weibo blogger said this:

Can adding 20 yuan keep up with the rate of price increases? Starting from the age of sixty, how many decades of life are left? What’s the point of “small steps and fast running” and “doubling in ten years”?

I live in Xiwengzhuang, where many people retire from the city and come here to live out their old age. Most of them were teachers and civil servants before retirement, and their retirement pensions are in the tens of thousands, with the least being eight thousand. They increase by a unified margin every year, and the part that only increases after ten years is not a few hundred yuan.

Before retirement, I lived in the city, and my monthly food expenses were more than three thousand, which is considered a medium level. This is the expenditure for cooking by myself. If I go to restaurants a few more times, three thousand will not be enough. Less than six years after retirement, my monthly food expenses in Xiwengzhuang have risen to four thousand, and my food expenditure has increased by one thousand, and the standard is not as good as before retirement. It can be seen that the increase in pension is lower than the increase in prices.

The year before last, we rented a courtyard in Zoumazhuang, near the town.

Eighty percent of the village are farmers, who make a living by farming; twenty percent are fishermen, who sell fish from the reservoir. In comparison, the income from fishing is higher than that from farming.

Since the year before last, it has been difficult to catch fish in the reservoir. Interestingly, the “reservoir fish” business is booming in the fish street and the market. Obviously, whether it is reservoir fish is very suspicious. It’s a strange thing that fishermen can’t catch fish, but fish sellers are thriving.

Xiao Zhu, who fishes, said that in the past, 10 million yuan worth of fish fry were released into the reservoir every year, but they couldn’t see the fish from the year before last. The fishermen suspected that the fish fry were released too little. They reported this problem to the authorities, but there were still no fish after two years.

How many acres of land are planted is visible to the naked eye, but it is too difficult to count how many fish are released.

The income of farmers is even lower.

The Xiwengzhuang area is all barren mountainous land, and there is very little land that can grow grain. Farmers basically grow some corn and sweet potatoes to supplement their household income. Some farmers who live near the mountains raise some chickens and geese. Corn can be used as feed, and eggs and goose eggs can be sold for some money, which is higher than the income from pure grain cultivation.

The farmland allocated to farmers is planted with apples, pears, hawthorns, walnuts and chestnuts, but the varieties are homogenized, so they cannot be sold at a good price. These are all planted in the mountainous areas in the northwest of Beijing, from Changping, Shunyi, Huairou to Miyun. There is not much difference in the varieties of fruits in the mountains. The fruit farmers are fiercely involved with each other, and their income is not high.

From the beginning of the pandemic until now, there have been severe droughts in the spring and summer every year, and the harvest is naturally worse.

Our neighbor in the farmhouse is an elderly farmer.

My wife was watering the cherry radishes outside, and the aunt next door came over to chat with her. After my wife came back, she told me that the old couple next door were both over eighty years old, and they really didn’t look like it. The old lady is in good health, but she did the work of sewing clothes when she was young, and she worked day and night, which ruined her eyes.

The old man seems to be even better, almost ninety, and his body is also strong. In the spring and summer, there is a severe drought, and he gets up every morning to fill the bucket with water. He gets up early to prepare for watering the land. When the faucet is turned on, the water is like the old man’s urine. It takes half a day to fill seven or eight large buckets. Then, he runs to the field to irrigate the half-foot-high corn.

Their children and grandchildren all work and study in Miyun city. Every time they come back, they have to persuade the two old people: it doesn’t matter about this bite, if you can’t do it, don’t do it. The two old people feel that if the land is left barren, they will be struck by lightning and suffer retribution. Besides, it is not easy to live in the city, and it costs money to go out. These two acres of corn in the field can at least supplement some household income. At this age, what else can they do if they don’t go to the field?

Does it look okay?

This is for those who are lucky: they are in good health and their children are promising.

Most people are not so lucky. Their bodies are not very strong, and their children are still thinking about reaching out to the elderly.

Those who live well and those who live poorly are equal in one thing:

Disease.

The older you get, the more likely you are to get sick. The little money from the New Rural Cooperative Medical Scheme is gone after a few colds. If you get a serious illness, whether to treat it or not is debatable.

Just like the weather in Beijing, the smog basically depends on the wind, and getting sick basically depends on enduring it.

If you can endure it, eat two more years of corn and sweet potatoes.

If you can’t endure it, Xiwengzhuang has many mountains, and the pandemic has been relaxed in the past two years:

Bury it casually.

In the past two years, I have been picking mushrooms in the mountains, and there are many more graves on the slopes. The wind blows, and I can vaguely hear some eerie sounds:

Welcome host Bai to take small steps and run fast here.