Vernacular China: China from the Essence of Vernacularity

? The word "earth", in Shuowen Jiezi, means "the earth that spits out living things." Since ancient times, soil has been a major concern of the Chinese people - the Tuentian system during the Three Kingdoms period, the land revolution during the New China period, and now the "Three Rural Issues" have all proved that Chinese people's lives cannot be separated from the land. However, at some point, the meaning of "土" has been expanded, and gradually used to mean rustic, outdated, and out of fashion. "It seems to have become a pejorative word that "everyone shouts at". However, Mr. Fei Xiaotong, a famous Chinese sociologist, expressed a different viewpoint from the common people in his book "Native China".

"Chinese society is vernacular." This is Mr. Fei Xiaotong's central point in Native China. The book expands outward from the vernacular nature of Chinese society and analyzes China's social structure, national ideology, and its historical background and accumulation. As he mentions in the preface, "The vernacular China spoken of here is not a sketch of the specific Chinese society, but rather an idiosyncratic system contained in the specific Chinese grass-roots traditional society, which governs all aspects of social life. ." The whole book focuses on fourteen typical nodes intercepted from the social life of the Chinese people to help us understand the concrete Chinese society.

"Having grown out of the earth with a glorious history, it is natural that it is also bound by the earth, and is now very much a bit flightless." Many say the book, written in 1948, has long been inapplicable to modern times. As the process of modernization continues, China's vernacular society seems to have been violently impacted, more and more people are bent on pursuing a modern, high-end life, especially young people in the countryside, who have long been unwilling to inherit the land handed down from their ancestors, and are trying their best to have a job in the city, and are reluctant to refer to their own origins for fear of being told by others that they are "dirt". They are also reluctant to mention their origins for fear of being called "dirt" by others. However, no matter how much people avoid it, rusticity has long penetrated into every aspect of Chinese society, and every Chinese person has more or less rustic characteristics imprinted on his or her bones. The culture of Chinese society is still rustic, and "those who are known as rustic country people are the grassroots of Chinese society. Views that have been imprinted on the land, such as the differences between men and women, the subtle yet humane nature, the pursuit of stability and conservatism, and the importance of ethics and morality, have profoundly influenced Chinese thinking and behavior for thousands of years. Chinese people have roots, and this root is y rooted in the soil, and its nature is difficult to change.

With the development of economy and science and technology, Chinese society has slowly turned into a society of strangers, and the old days of pleasant conversation, mutual help, and moral restraints have long been replaced by cold machines and legal controls. The ideas in Native China are precisely a warning that we must not forget China's roots and ignore the essence behind the society. Only in this way can we better develop modern society on the basis of recognizing the essence.

As young people of the new era, although we have not personally experienced the Chinese society in the last century, we have learned about the nature of Chinese society's "vernacular" and the social conditions in the past through reading the book "Vernacular China". We should learn and carry forward the ideas in the book in a dialectical way of thinking, face up to the nature of society, learn from the past and contribute to the faster and better development of society.