Reminiscences | Dialogue with Zhou Jian: Why do city people have so many misunderstandings about the countryside?

Are these misunderstandings of rural areas by city dwellers due to ignorance, or are they a result of where their interests lie?

Last night at 9 p.m., I did my second live stream, and the guest was Zhou Jian—online, everyone calls him “Uncle Zhou.” He is the blogger of “Uncle Zhou Walks the Countryside” and also the chairman of the Beijing Grateful Public Welfare Foundation. We are both from Sichuan, and we met because of the farmers’ pension. After meeting once, we decided to do a live stream. As a result, we talked until almost 12 o’clock last night, and considering that the audience had to go to work the next day, we ended it early.

The reason I especially wanted to talk to Uncle Zhou is because he has been to places I haven’t: more than 150 impoverished counties in China, nearly 3,000 villages, and he has interviewed two or three thousand farmers. I believe that he, along with Zhao Yushun and Yuan Zhenzhen from “True Story Chronicle,” don’t quite believe those three rural experts who are full of talk about “protecting the urban-rural dual system” and those rural construction people who claim to “revitalize the countryside.”

My core question this time is only one: How far is the gap between the imaginations of city dwellers about rural areas and the reality of rural areas?

1. Farmers “have land,” so they have security?

This is a question that cannot be avoided every time, because in the eyes of many city dwellers, farmers “having land” is a remarkable advantage. I asked Uncle Zhou: You’ve been to so many places and met so many farmers, have you ever seen one who has become rich by farming?

His answer was very straightforward: “Not a single one. I’ve been to more than 150 counties, and I haven’t heard of a farmer who can get rich by farming. Basically, all the income from farming is only a part of maintaining life—and it’s almost impossible to generate monetary income. In other words, today in the countryside, if a family doesn’t have anyone going out to work, this family is mostly a low-income household.”

The core reason is: the growth rate of agricultural inputs and labor costs in the past few decades is several times that of grain prices. Uncle Zhou also said: In 2006, the agricultural tax was abolished, and an important reason was that the salaries of the tax personnel added up to more than the agricultural tax collected. In other words, the output value of agriculture is so low that it can’t even support the salaries of tax officials, and some people say that farmers can get rich by relying on land. What kind of logic is this?

Taking Sichuan as an example, the per capita paddy field may be less than one mu. Even with the most optimistic estimates, one mu of land, two seasons a year, after deducting the costs of seeds, pesticides, fertilizers, and machinery, can only save 800 yuan. A household with two or three mu of land has a net income of one or two thousand yuan a year. And this one or two thousand yuan, “means that you may catch a cold a few times, or take two months of medication for high blood pressure and diabetes, and it will be consumed.””

This is still for those who can farm, but the pension issue we are discussing is not aimed at the young and middle-aged, but at the elderly—this is a key point that many city dwellers intentionally or unintentionally ignore. So I asked Uncle Zhou: These elderly people, can they still work?

Uncle Zhou said: “It’s not a matter of whether they can work or not, it’s that I have to work even if I can’t—because there’s only so much pension a month, just enough to buy salt and soy sauce, what do you eat if you don’t farm? This is a matter of life and death.“”

Then he described the general physical condition of the elderly in the countryside he had seen: too many underlying diseases, high blood pressure, heart disease, arthritis, and chronic obstructive pulmonary disease, all of which are present. Minor illnesses are not treated, major illnesses are endured, and if they can’t bear it, they go to the hospital for a look. The doctor says it’s serious, so they go home and wait to die. Last year, he met a five-guarantee household in Zhongjiang, Sichuan, whose toe was cut by glass. Medical insurance could reimburse it, but there was no money for food and no travel expenses, so he simply cut off his toe with a kitchen knife—a living person, treating himself as a consumable. This person later got sick again, had two days of drips, and died the next day after returning home.

City dwellers think that the elderly in the countryside can support themselves by farming. The fact is, they don’t even have the body to farm.

2. Farmers “have land,” but in fact, it doesn’t belong to the farmers

If the above is about the land not making money, then there is a more fundamental problem: farmers legally do not have land at all.

Uncle Zhou clarified a property rights issue that many people haven’t thought clearly about. After 1949, the landlords were overthrown and the land was divided. In 1953, cooperatives were established, and the land belonged to the collective. After the reform and opening up, the smallest unit of rural land ownership became the village group—but the village group doesn’t even have legal person status, it’s a virtual grassroots organization, and it’s actually managed by the village committee. So legally speaking, farmers only have the right to use the land, not the right to ownership, and even less the complete right to dispose of it.

What does this mean? Land acquisition, farmers have no say; land mortgage, farmers can’t borrow a penny; homestead, you use a bowl given by others, and it can’t be inherited—once you lose connection with the village collective, the bowl is taken away.

Even more absurdly, the state subsidies don’t go to the farmers, but to the big households. Uncle Zhou saw a farmer who originally had a piece of private land, which was in the big field. As a result, the whole big field was transferred to the big household, and the private land was also gone. In order to maintain life, this old man could only push the courtyard wall inward by one and a half meters, and open up a small piece of wasteland between the road and the courtyard wall to grow vegetables.

What about the subsidy? Can’t get it. Only the big households can get it, the small households don’t have a share, and many places have a threshold for subsidies.

City dwellers think that farmers having land is a privilege. The fact is that this “land” neither makes money nor gets subsidies, and it doesn’t really belong to the farmers themselves.

3. Is the homestead an advantage? But no one asks where the location is

City dwellers also have a common envy: farmers have homesteads. In a country where land is state-owned and most urban residents can only buy apartments, having a piece of land seems to be a great privilege.

Uncle Zhou’s response was extremely direct: “A homestead in the countryside is nothing.”

The reason is actually understood by anyone who has bought a house in the city: what determines the value of a property is always the location. A 50-square-meter house in the Second Ring Road of Beijing is not the same concept as a villa in the Daliang Mountains. What puzzles me is: when city dwellers buy a house, they regard “location, location, location” as the golden rule, but when it comes to rural homesteads, they suddenly forget this common sense.

In a mountain village without a signal and where you can’t call 120, what does it mean to have a homestead? Uncle Zhou’s mother-in-law lives outside the Fifth Ring Road and thinks it’s too far, saying “You’ll die on the way if you call 120“—what about the homestead in the countryside? You can’t even make a 120 call, are you going to retire there?

Furthermore, even the property rights of the homestead itself are not complete. The homestead cannot be inherited, and when selling the house, you can only sell the attachments on the land, not the land. Such “ownership” is more like a temporary residence permit.

4. Rural consumption is low? Cheap may be fake goods

“Rural prices are low, and the cost of living is low”—this is another fixed script in the imagination of city dwellers about rural areas.

Uncle Zhou used his own experience to overturn this statement. He worked at CCID in his early years and had access to a large amount of market data for electronic products. The conclusion was: industrial products are sold cheaper in big cities because big markets have price wars. Small markets have fewer sales, and manufacturers have no motivation to compete, plus layers of logistics and taxes—he gave an example: a primary school in Mengla County, Yunnan Province, bought a batch of curtains. Volunteers found that the price was “too expensive,” so they questioned the principal. The principal felt deeply humiliated and told them to go directly to the supplier. The supplier laid out the algorithm: from Shanghai to Kunming, Kunming to Xishuangbanna, Xishuangbanna to Mengla, Mengla to the town, each section has freight and tax, and after four rounds of superposition, the price is more than 50% higher than in Shanghai.

This is still the case with genuine goods. What if it’s fake goods?

Uncle Zhou said that the vast rural market has long been a dumping ground for counterfeit and shoddy products, and fake goods with various big brand names are flooding the small shops in the villages. The accumulated goods that cannot be sold in the city, the procurement of government projects, can be stuffed into the countryside. “They have truly become the economic intermediaries—the things that can’t be sold, the things that should be lost, are all accepted by them.”

Including the now popular live streaming with goods, there are also special AB goods for rural areas—last time, when we were live streaming with Zhao Yushun, we talked about it. The system identifies that the buyer’s address is rural, and then sends B goods with poorer quality, because rural consumers have a weak sense of rights protection and no comparison.

The conclusion is simple: rural areas either buy the same goods that are more expensive than in the city, or they buy fake and shoddy goods that are cheaper than in the city. The so-called “low cost of living” does not exist.

5. Rural elderly don’t spend money, is it because they don’t like to spend money?

This is another common saying of city dwellers, and sometimes it is also used by three rural experts to refute the necessity of raising pensions: the rural elderly are used to being simple and don’t like to spend money, they are not poisoned by “consumerism,” and they will save the money they are given, which is not meaningful for stimulating domestic demand.

Uncle Zhou’s answer hit the nail on the head: “He doesn’t have money, he can’t even protect his life, how can you let him consume?”

Then he gave a very simple logic: Give him 200 yuan, of course he will save it—because he needs to save 500 yuan to go to the county hospital for a visit. Give him 2,000 yuan, and he dares to spend it. It’s not that farmers don’t consume by nature, it’s that they are given too little, so little that it’s only enough to hoard for emergencies, and not enough to spend.

The rural elderly do not dislike spending money and do not want to improve their lives. Uncle Zhou asked many elderly people how often they eat meat. The answer is that they don’t eat much usually, and “when they eat meat” is during weddings and funerals, when they eat more at the banquet. This is not called simplicity, this is called using reduced desires to cope with absolute poverty.

Their daily expenses, what Uncle Zhou said is similar to what Zhao Yushun said: First, medical insurance fees, which now cost four or five hundred yuan a year, which must be paid; second, the daily medication for chronic diseases, high blood pressure, diabetes, and other underlying diseases must be taken for a long time, but this also depends on the family situation. If they can’t afford it, they can only ignore it; third, human interactions, weddings and funerals, which are the basic operating costs of the rural society, and for many rural elderly, it is also a rare opportunity to improve their lives.

All these expenses, add up to far more than the basic pension of 163 yuan.

6. “Having a minimum living allowance is enough”—the tricks of the minimum living allowance

City dwellers also have a rescue logic: there is a minimum living allowance in the countryside, and those who can’t make ends meet can apply for the minimum living allowance.

Uncle Zhou said that this understanding has a big error. Many city dwellers hear “Beijing’s minimum living allowance is more than 1,000, Shanghai’s is 1,500,” and think that the whole country is at this level—in fact, the upper limit of the minimum living allowance in most areas is five or six hundred yuan, and the threshold for qualification determination is extremely absurd.

First, the deposit cannot exceed a certain amount. Some places have a low upper limit of 5,000 yuan, and those with deposits of more than 5,000 yuan do not meet the conditions. Second, the income and property status of the children will be directly converted into the “income” of the parents—if the son runs a taxi in the city and buys a car, the parents cannot get the minimum living allowance because “the family has a car.”

Here, there is a Chinese-style logical paradox: when paying taxes, the parents’ deductions are calculated on a per-capita basis, and the amount is limited; when enjoying welfare, all the property of the children must be included. When one person is alone, it is one person, and when sharing responsibility, it is a family.

More importantly, we all know that the children in the city may not really be able to support their parents in the countryside. Earning 10,000 yuan a month in the city to pay off a mortgage and raise children, how much money can be left? But the system doesn’t care, it will directly convert this into the elderly’s “hidden income” of about 2,000 yuan per month, directly blocking them from the minimum living allowance.

In fact, many countries don’t calculate it this way. For example, in the United States, even if Elon Musk earns billions of dollars a year, if his mother doesn’t live with him and has a low income, she can also receive the US “minimum living allowance.”

The above does not yet consider the “relationship households” problem in the process of minimum living allowance review.

7. Why don’t city dwellers understand the countryside?

I have always wanted to figure out one thing: Are these misunderstandings of rural areas by city dwellers due to ignorance, or are they a result of where their interests lie?

I think both, but Uncle Zhou’s answer was very direct: “Vested interests, no other explanation. Those who don’t know, it’s because they don’t want to know. He is above the nine heavens and doesn’t want to look down.”

He gave an example: every time education fairness is discussed, when it comes to reducing the college entrance examination privileges of Beijing and Shanghai, all the experts and scholars in Beijing who are calling for education fairness immediately fall silent—because once the barriers are removed, their children may not be able to pass the exam. When it doesn’t involve their own interests, everyone is the most fair moralist.

But Uncle Zhou also said another layer: in addition to interests, there is a more fundamental problem, which is the lack of channels that can convey real information. The poorer people are, the more they lack channels to speak out. The elderly in the countryside are uneducated, cannot write, cannot speak, and their stories do not enter the media, do not enter the public eye, as if they do not exist.

Even worse, in today’s short video era, the countryside is more “consumed” than “presented”—the camera is aimed at the blogger himself who sent a bag of rice to an old man, it’s the inspirational story of “good people changing fate,” it’s a performance venue that satisfies the moral sense of urban audiences. That old man still has to live for 360 days a year, and this shot is never taken.

8. What is public welfare: letting people see people

Uncle Zhou has been doing public welfare for ten years, but he is different from most of the public welfare organizations I know.

They install street lights, but require local villagers to raise 20% of the funds; they help rural schools buy curtains, but insist on letting the schools negotiate themselves, not taking over. Many people don’t understand: they are so poor, why do they still have to pay?

Uncle Zhou explained something that I think is very important: the first logical point of public welfare is respect for people. Once you let the locals participate, they are no longer the objects of charity, but the masters of this matter. The village that you forced to raise 20% of the funds, in this fundraising process, reconnected the people who had been away from the village for many years. The primary school on the border of Yunnan found the educated youth from Shanghai, and now they are “taken over” by them, and Uncle Zhou himself doesn’t have to worry about it.

Fe Xiaotong talked about fellow villagers, classmates, and the same clan, which are the three meridians of Chinese social relations. Uncle Zhou’s public welfare is essentially along these three meridians, reconnecting the connections that have been broken—letting the people who have left the countryside see the countryside that nurtured them again. It’s not to make you go back, it’s not to make you feel guilty, it’s just to let you reach back a little bit.

“What are we doing public welfare for? To inspire people, to reconstruct people, to reconstruct people’s own and people’s social relations. If no one cares about us, can’t we support each other ourselves?”

9. Atomization, is it deliberately done by others

At the end of the live stream, Uncle Zhou said a sentence, which I think is the core of the whole conversation:

“Farmers are not seen, it’s not that everyone doesn’t see them, but that these suffering people are not allowed to be seen—because they will destroy harmony.”

In our society today, there is an extremely stubborn force that is making every person an isolated atom. The elderly in the countryside are islands, their children who work in the city are islands, and every young person who has to take over at a high position and work 996 to pay off a mortgage is an island. Atomization is not accidental, it is designed to a certain extent—isolated people have no power, and isolated people will only consume internally.

And what Uncle Zhou is doing, and what I am writing in the article on farmers’ pensions, is essentially doing the same thing: making people realize that they are not isolated. Let the children in the city realize that they and their parents who stay in the countryside are the two most difficult generations in the same generation, and they are a family; let the people who come out of the countryside realize that they cannot really cut off their own roots, and they should not cut them off. Re-form the isolated atoms into even a very small community.

Uncle Zhou is doing this at the public welfare site, I am doing this in front of the keyboard, and Zhao Yushun and Yuan Zhenzhen are doing this in the fields. This requires more people to do it.

I have always said that we children who came out of the countryside must speak for ourselves. Now I also want to add a sentence: we must first recognize each other.