Rebirth of the Wild Age

Song Weiyang lived in the village for six days, chatting with the elderly and children when he had nothing to do, and finally caught the attention of the village party secretary.

The village party secretary's surname is Liu, and if he talks about relatives in a roundabout way, he is still Hong Weiguo's distant cousin.

Seeing the setting sun slanting, Song Weiyang helped a blind and deaf old man home, and was about to stroll to Hong Sishu's house for a meal. Liu Zhishu suddenly appeared, stood behind him and said, Xiao Song, are you an unannounced visit to a cadre from the province?

Song Weiyang laughed and said, Why do you think I'm an unannounced visit to a cadre?

Every day in the village, the cliche is either a cadre or a reporter. Liu Zhishu said.

Song Weiyang asked: Aren't you afraid?

I haven't done anything wrong, what am I afraid of? Liu Zhishu slowly took out his cigarette pouch.

Pick this, Song Weiyang handed over a stick of Hongtashan. I did the math. Last year, the withdrawal and retention in the village already exceeded 20% of farmers' income. The central document clearly stipulates that the withdrawal and retention should not exceed 5%. You are blatantly illegal!

Liu Zhishu was not afraid at all, struck a match and lit a cigarette, puffed and said: Then you can go to a few towns in the surrounding area to inquire about it. Our Baimiao Village has the least collection of deposits and deposits, but at least it is in the bottom three. There are missions in the township, how can I fight against the township? I must have taken kickbacks, but that’s nothing, at most you can get some money for cigarettes and alcohol. If you secretly interview cadres, then arrest me. If you unannounced interviews with reporters, I advise You go to Shengli Village in the next township, where the village cadres are the ones who strip their skins and drink their blood.

How about peeling skin and drinking blood? Song Weiyang asked.

Liu Zhishu shook his head again and again: I won't say anything. If you offend someone, you should investigate it yourself. Anyway, don't mess around in our village.

Song Weiyang said: I want to ask, why do grain stations give farmers IOUs?

You still need to ask? Liu Zhishu sneered, The grain station in the village has no money at all, so what if they don't give IOUs? Even if the grain station has money, it won't be given to the farmers. It will be withheld first.

Song Weiyang said: Why did you hold it?

Liu Zhishu said: Assessment. Three mentions and five reunifications, farmers have to pay for everything. Farmers refuse to pay, so they deduct it from the IOU, which is convenient for everyone. If you are really a cadre from the province, go to the city. The big corrupt officials in the county. Let me tell you, farmers get married now, and the handling fee for getting a marriage certificate is several hundred yuan. The handling fee for the marriage of people in the city is only a few dozen yuan, and it can be more than a hundred yuan. It’s amazing, it’s because farmers are recognized as easy to bully.”

Song Weiyang felt that there was nothing to talk about, and said, I'm really not a cadre, nor a reporter, so don't think about it.

Then you wander around the village all day? Zhishu Liu asked suspiciously.

I'm doing social research and preparing to write a graduation thesis, Song Weiyang said, I'm a college student who will soon graduate.

Liu Zhishu turned around and left, muttering: Students don't go to study, they come here to play tricks.

...

In the next period of time, Song Weiyang visited more than ten villages in four nearby towns.

In comparison, the village of Hong Weiguo's hometown is considered an upper-middle-class wealthy village. There are two kinds of real poor villages, one is that the village cadres are too black-hearted, and the other is that the land is too barren.

Let's put it this way, based on the level of retention and apportionment for farmers in this area, at least 900 catties of millet should be harvested per mu of land, otherwise the farmers will work for nothing. However, there are very few paddy fields that can harvest more than 900 catties of rice, and they are rare.

What does this lead to?

All the money farmers earned from selling agricultural by-products and working part-time were wiped out by withdrawals and apportionment fees, leaving only a pile of grain at home, with no money for market consumption at all.

In the two extremely poor villages, due to the barren land and little food, they can only barely guarantee that they will not go hungry. The dropout rate of junior high school is actually over 30%, because the farmers cannot afford the tuition and miscellaneous fees. Some are unwilling to study even if they can afford it, and go to learn crafts or work at the age of fourteen or fifteen.

Further west, Song Weiyang went to the next province to visit the hometown of a comrade-in-arms of Hong Weiguo. The situation here is similar, with minor differences, except that due to the proximity to the Yangtze River, more farmers go to the cities to work, and they are generally a little richer.

Then he went to a certain province in the southwest, which was also the hometown of Hong Weiguo's comrade-in-arms—for fear of accidents, local people had to lead the way.

The villages I visited this time are poor and crazy, because they are remote and there are very few farmers who go out to work, so they can only nest in the fields to eat. But there are barren mountainous lands everywhere, and few grains can be grown at all, and the per capita monthly income of farmers is less than 10 yuan. There is still a heavy burden to carry and stay. Farmers don’t eat meat, a catty of vegetable oil can cook vegetables for a year, and the smell of oil can’t be seen. If there are two or three meat dishes in the New Year’s Eve dinner, it belongs to a wealthy family.

How the hell do you write a thesis?

Write a fart!

Song Weiyang's research focuses on the promotion of domestic demand in China by rural and township markets, but the reality is that it cannot be stimulated at all. It would be nice if farmers could eat meat.

...

There were no Internet cafes in the entire county, and even Song Weiyang wanted to use a telephone line to dial up the Internet, but he ran all over the county without finding a cat.

It is estimated that there are not many computers in this broken place.

Song Weiyang had no choice but to go to the county library, and a pack of cigarettes made connections, so he could look for information there. Soon he found a surprise, and found a set of social science magazines published in this province, which were not available in Fudan's library.

A local expert on agriculture, rural areas and farmers also called for rural marketization. The paper was well written, but there was not much operability.

The Sannong issue has become the research focus of many sociologists and economists. Song Weiyang has consulted hundreds of related papers in the library of Fudan University. But it’s useless, it’s useless, the revitalization of the rural economy requires the marketization of the rural economy, and experts and professors talked about it, and each one was more exciting than the other.

But there is only one real solution, and that is to cancel the agricultural tax first. Avoiding this issue and discussing the marketization of the rural economy is all hooliganism!

Song Weiyang came out of the county library, scratching his head with a cigarette in his mouth. He didn't know how to write his thesis.

Hong Weiguo thought he was worrying about the peasants, and comforted him: Boss, you really don't need to think about this. In fact, as long as the peasants are willing to go out to work, it doesn't matter if the farmers are willing to go out to work, and there are no people who starve to death. Take my family. For example, my younger brother worked outside for a few months, not only did he earn back the agricultural tax, but the remaining money was enough to buy food for several years.”

When Song Weiyang heard this, a flash of inspiration flashed in his mind, and he suddenly smiled and said, I know what to write, Lao Hong, thank you for reminding me.

Ah? Hong Weiguo didn't know why.

Song Weiyang planned to start over and write an article Rural Economic Situation and Food Crisis.

Human beings are profit-seeking, and so are farmers.

Now that farmers can no longer make money growing grain, or even lose money, more and more farmers must choose to go out to work and abandon their hometown land.

This account is easy to calculate. When I go out to work for half a year, I can pay the agricultural tax and buy enough food, and the money earned from working for the remaining half year can be freely used. That being the case, why should I farm the land?

Song Weiyang chose a number of major grain-producing provinces in the Yangtze River Basin. He pretended to be public servants and asked people from the Xifeng sales branch to help him look up files in various places, and then squatted in a small county in the southwest to receive faxes—the only one in the area. The old fax machine was directly requisitioned by Song Weiyang.

The archives of government departments are not just what you say you want to check.

Song Weiyang spent more than 60,000 yuan out of his own pocket, and asked people from Xifeng Sales Branch to help, and finally got a hand with big data. Then he organized another 30 people to go to the villages and towns to do field surveys, and spent nearly 100,000 yuan before and after to get more detailed data.

A total of 150,000 yuan was spent just to write a graduation thesis, and the ability to make money is everywhere.

According to the survey data obtained, in some major grain-producing provinces in the Yangtze River Basin, the land abandoned area is close to 3% of the cultivated land area, and it is increasing year by year. Seasonal desertion is even more serious, and farmers are too lazy to grow miscellaneous grains, and farmers choose to do short-term jobs to make money.

The more convenient the transportation and the smoother the information in the countryside, the more serious the situation of land abandonment is. In some places, whole villages and whole villages of farmers go out to work, leaving only some old, weak, sick and disabled to plant private plots at home.

In an old-fashioned tube building in a small county town, Song Weiyang finished writing the thesis with a pen, then revised it, and the writing was quite satisfactory.

Well, you can take it back and let Doudou type it into the computer, just like a child practicing typing.

Old Hong, go to the landlord and return the house, and we will return to Shenghai tomorrow. Song Weiyang said as he sorted out the manuscript.

Okay, I'll go right away. Hong Weiguo walked out quickly.

This tube building is not bad, the air is quite good, and it is quiet during the day. It is very inconvenient to have no toilet. Every time I have to go downstairs and walk several hundred meters to the nearby public toilet to solve my physical problems.

The dry toilet smelled so bad that Song Weiyang almost vomited the first time he squatted in the pit.

With a cigarette in his mouth to deodorize, Song Weiyang splashed and started to turn on the water. Before he finished urinating, he heard the faint cry of a baby. Luckily it's not night, otherwise it would be scary and we can rewrite the ghost story.

Song Weiyang subconsciously leaned over to look, and suddenly said in shock: Fuck!

In the drain of the dry toilet, there was actually a baby, the umbilical cord hadn't even fallen off, and the whole body was full of feces and urine.

Song Weiyang quickly took out his mobile phone: Hong Weiguo, quickly take someone to the toilet, there is an abandoned baby here. Remember to bring tools in the drain!