“Time to cherish rural traditions

The video seeks to justify the Chinese perception of old age and sickness.

AFTER watching a video about an ordinary uncle believed to be a “mental antidote” to the rat race, I was rather surprised — less by the uncle than the clicks and rave reviews it had.

His tribulations were certainly worth our sympathies, but such resilience, perseverance and unqualified optimism could be easily found in many Chinese peasants.

Take one of my own paternal uncles in rural Lianyungang. He had a couple of fingers on his left hand cut off while feeding a thresher at the production brigade in the village.

While the handicap was more manageable — as a child I often asked him to show the damaged hand, and he gladly obliged — it was a fateful accident for he remained unmarried.

He could create Chinese paintings in his own style, and craft miniature sedan chairs and electric appliances needed in sacrificial offerings for funerals.

Last year he invited me to his home, but I found it almost impossible to traverse the yard taken up by the garden, dogs, a flock of free-ranging chickens, even cages of rare birds hatched from eggs.

And stacks of paper boards set for recycling.

But my uncle does not enjoy the kind of reverence he probably deserves — in the eyes of most villagers, his life was an anomaly to a long-accepted pattern, essentially about carrying on the family line.

The video seeks to justify the Chinese perception of old age and sickness as something necessarily intervening between birth and death.

This view is flawed.

For the typically Chinese outlook is more concerned with the perpetuation of the family line, as expressed in seasonal sacrificial offerings to ancestors, but much more in the solicitous care for the welfare of the progeny.

Chinese peasants are known for their frugality.

They have an uncanny ability to subsist on very little, and their overriding passion to save to a degree fueled the high growth at the beginning of the opening-up period.

The money earned was not intended for personal pleasure, but to be saved for more serious purposes.

Such as the construction of village homes that would help the marriage prospects of their sons.

In the case of the uncle in the video, he had to spend his life savings to buy a flat for his adopted daughter in the county seat.

That is not news.

If you look around, you will find that nearly all Chinese parents are doing the same thing.

Chinese peasants are often stigmatized as shortsighted, but they have an instinctive grasp of the meaning of life.

At the beginning of China’s reform and opening-up, when villagers flocked to cities, these migrants became part of what became later known as demographic dividends.

But as the second generation of migrants is ready to sacrifice themselves in the labor market, the dividend is diminishing.

Rural life is changing. With the rise of storied building — walled and well gated — casual visits from neighbors are not so easy.

Although the uncle in the video is common in more sense than one.

It would be encouraging if the sentiments triggered by the video suggest a real appreciation of the traditions once taken for granted in rural China.