How many farmers are proud of farming?

Old peasants, like ordinary people, will eventually become obsolete words. When the leisure class and middle class have romantic imaginations of agricultural life, the hearts of peasants are still floating aimlessly.

Peasantry is a strange word today, and only in remote villages can there be a real sense that this is peasant territory. New farmers, migrant workers, new citizens, vagrants…these words are gradually becoming the mainstream of society, replacing the name of farmers. Think of "farmers", the mind is no longer "facing the loess back to the sky".

I have five uncles. Now only one of them still sticks to the countryside and lives a farming life. The other uncles have become businessmen, workers and handicraft operators living in counties and towns for more than 20 years. They have become citizens in the process of urbanization. Strictly speaking, they are farmers who have a citizen life. They can drive on the streets of the city and go shopping in shopping malls and supermarkets, but their thinking is still deep-rooted. Farmer thinking.

In this context, watching TV series "Old Farmer" has a special taste. At first, I didn't understand why the word "old" should be added before the word "peasants". Now I understand that just like the word "old" should be added before the word "common people", only the old peasants and common people are the bottom buildings of each era, the objects of upward blood transfusion, and the victims who pay the most and share the least. The word "old" used to describe them refers not to age or character (honesty), but to the label that is branded on them and cannot be torn off.

Leaders call the old peasants "peasant brothers"; school education primary and secondary school students call the old peasants "peasant uncle"; citizens call the old peasants "mud legs"; film and television dramas call the old peasants who do not understand the truth "elm head"... From time to time, peasants have been passively defined and classified in this way. In Old Peasant, Niu Dan played by Chen Baoguo and Ma Renli played by Feng Yuanzheng are standard old peasants in image and speech, but in thinking mode and action, they get rid of the bondage of being peasants and restore the original dignity of "peasants are also human beings".

How to treat farmers as human beings is not difficult for creators. What kind of eyes you use to look at farmers, whether you look at farmers from an equal perspective, then what kind of farmers appear in your pen or image. Peasants cannot master the weapons of literature and art, but can only be regarded as objects to be molded. The peasants in Zhao Benshan's "Rural Love" series are molded. Audiences are amused by the characters in the play, partly because the characters cater to the audience's imagination of farmers. The peasants in "Country Love" are true, but this is certainly not all true. Without the part of the peasant story that has been concealed, the peasant image can only be an incomplete, incomplete and entertained group.

In novels, movies and TV series, farmers have been lost for a long time. Therefore, the broadcast of "Old Peasant" can be regarded as a sign that peasant drama has become a highlight again. Its creation is trying its best to strip away the stigma of peasant image for so many years. It reminds people of "Ordinary World" published many years ago and written by writer Lu Yao. The peasants they show also have juicy sensitive temperament and common thinking skills of intellectuals. When these peasants crawl in the dust and are run over by the wheels of the times, They would also raise their heads and shout pain to the sky and raise their fists to resist.

Old farmers are easily associated with illiteracy. There are two sources of tragedy in farmers, one of which is lack of education, and the other is lack of resources. Think about it, it is really "thinking carefully". Who makes farmers uneducated? And who extracted resources that should have belonged to farmers? The bold character of Niu tries to explain this problem. In the past, he could easily be labeled as uneducated, but from his actions of defending the jujube tree on his ancestral grave from being cut down, chasing after the rebel daughter-in-law who killed a man, hiding in the cornstalks and complaining to the prefectural party secretary overnight, he clearly followed the most defensible part of traditional culture. To say that he was uneducated really underestimated the persistence and wisdom of the peasants.

Ma Renli was transformed from a landlord's son into a farmer, so he had both intellectual and peasant temperament. As a person with a little culture in the village, Ma Renli is timid and cowardly. He protects himself first, but he knows the current situation and understands strategy and tactics. As Niu's bold good friends, they complement each other's personalities. As a pair of combinations in the play, they set off the integrity of farmers 'character. What is the biggest goal of farmers? For thousands of years, this goal is probably three words "live", in order to survive, several generations of farmers to dig food as the last inviolable bottom line, and how to let farmers live with dignity, but live in the so-called Internet age, the new media age is still unsolved old problems.

Farmers have built their expectations on their children. From the resumption of college entrance examination to today, urging their children to go out of the land and work and live in big cities is the dream of most farmers. My uncles, whether they are still farming or have become citizens, are constantly urging their children to leave home and go out. One of the standards of their children's achievements is to see who has gone far. In the past, we had a misunderstanding,"farmers love land", no one is willing to admit that farmers actually do not love land so much, otherwise we can do a survey, how many farmers are proud of farming?

The relationship between farmers and land and the earth-shaking values of farmers can be found in a series of stories told by Old Peasants over more than 60 years. The changes that have taken place in Chinese farmers over the past 60 years are more than those in the past one or two thousand years. But how much do we know about the stories of farmers and how much can we tell? Without a true understanding of the peasants, people can only lie on the culture and grain piles created by the peasants and dream of death. Without restoring the truth of the peasant world, those who work on the land can only be false and beautiful images depicted in rural essays.

If you really live in the countryside, you will know the difficulties behind those beautiful scenery; if you have blood ties with farmers, you will know how much sadness, helplessness and humiliation are hidden in the word "old" in front of farmers. Old peasants, like ordinary people, will eventually become obsolete words, and the words used to give them new identities are not clear. When the leisure class and the middle class romanticize agricultural life, the hearts of peasants are still floating aimlessly.