What is rural China?

My personal feeling is that the integration of culture has been shown in thinking and language! Symbolic system.

With the development of society, the industrial revolution has replaced agricultural society, and post-industrial society has arrived. The concept of rural China seems to have changed with the demolition, especially in thinking and language, from urbanization to urbanization. Breaking the process of rural development.

What kind of society is rural society, the grassroots society in China? It is not a description of a specific society, but some concepts extracted from the specific society. It is a unique system contained in the specific traditional Chinese grassroots society and governs all aspects of life. In this sense, concepts are tools for us to understand things.

Soil. From the grassroots level, Chinese society is rural. Soil, that is, soil. Our nation is inseparable from the soil. It has a glorious history growing out of the soil, and it will naturally be bound by the soil. Now it seems that it cannot fly into the sky. "Soil" is the lifeblood, and people who directly rely on agriculture to make a living are stuck to the land. We can easily believe that for people who make a living by farming, settling down for generations is the norm, while migration is an abnormality.

"The True Colors of Countryside". This chapter is roughly the summary of the whole book. “From the grassroots level, Chinese society is rural.” In this chapter, Fei Xiaotong defines the grassroots level of Chinese society as rural. This “local” has three characteristics:

< p>First, "Country people can't live without the soil." Countryside people rely on farming as the most common way to make a living, and therefore they understand the value of soil best.

Second, illiquidity. People who make a living from agriculture are "glued to the land." This does not mean that the rural population is fixed, but that the relationship between people and space is immobile.

Third, acquaintance society. The characteristics of slow population mobility in rural society make rural life full of "local" characteristics. People live in villages and stay in their hometowns forever. Therefore, rural society is a society among acquaintances, and this is why we have the freedom to "do whatever we want without going beyond the rules." This chapter describes the foundation of Chinese society, and it is also the foundation of the whole book. The differential pattern of the following chapters and the root of the etiquette society all lie in this "local character".

"Literature Sending to the Countryside" and "Re-Essay on Writing Sending to the Countryside". These two chapters illustrate a problem - the lack of writing in rural society cannot be said to be a sign of "stupidity". Writing is the product of the isolation between people in the process of expressing their feelings. However, in rural society, "face-to-face communication is direct contact. Why choose writing instead of a more complete language?"

In fact, There are also more "special languages" that do not require the participation of sounds and words, which can be used as symbolic raw materials, such as expressions, movements, etc., which are more effective than language. “So in rural society, not only are words redundant, but speaking is not the only symbolic system to convey affection.