Visiting Zhang Baotong, China's first village, 2017.2.6

Yesterday, when the family was having dinner together, I heard from my brother-in-law that there is a newly built modern rural community opposite the West Lake in Miluo City, which is very luxurious and beautiful, and can be called "China's first village". Pen, fun, pavilion www. biquge。 I was surprised to hear this, because I had heard that Huaxi Village, Huashi Town, Jiangyin City, Jiangsu Province, Nanjie Village, Linying County, Henan Province, and Daegu Village, Jinghai District, Tianjin City, were called the first villages in China. But to say that Miluo also has "China's first village" makes me feel a little unbelievable. Because the annual income of Huaxi Village is even more than that of Miluo City. And I don't know how many places in the country are richer than Miluo, why can Miluo build "China's first village"?

Since my brother-in-law said it, and it was true, I really wanted to go over and see it. After lunch, I took a nap and set out on the journey.

It was the eighth day of the Lunar New Year after the Lunar New Year, the sky was gloomy, the wind and water stopped, and the sound of firecrackers still sounded in the countryside opposite the West Lake on the edge of the city. I walked along the dilapidated country road on the embankment of the West Lake towards the opposite side of the West Lake. Coming across the lake, it's a fork in the road. On one side is the embankment facing west, and on the other side is a wide road towards the lake. I didn't know where I was going, so I wanted to inquire, but I couldn't see a single person on the entire embankment or at the edge of the village, and the people passing by on the embankment were driving fast on motorcycles, so I couldn't inquire. I want to develop new areas that are usually located on the side of the road, so I walk towards the side of the road.

The embankment was full of buildings, but there was no one to be seen, so I walked towards the other side of the road. On the side of the country road is a drain full of pig manure, and the stench is very pungent. I often go to West Lake Park for a run and walk, looking from the lake to the countryside, I always feel that the countryside is a vast paddy field, fresh air, beautiful scenery, but when I really came here, I didn't expect the air here to be so bad.

On the edge of the wide asphalt road is a small pig farm, a small three-storey building, but it is filthy, with a large flock of chickens scattered everywhere and the concrete floor in front of the building is covered with chicken manure. A middle-aged woman sits under a canopy in front of the building. I asked her where the "No. 1 Village in China" was. She shook her head, indicating that she hadn't heard. I'll just say there's a new very nice neighborhood or something. She understood, pointed to the embankment, and told me to follow the country road all the way forward.

The country road begins to descend in the middle of the embankment, diagonally into the depths of the countryside. However, the stench of the stinky gutter that ran from the pig farm down the side of the road was always with me, and it made me feel very uncomfortable, but I couldn't get rid of it, because it was always on the side of the road. When I walked to the entrance of a village, I asked an old man on the side of the road where this drainage was going, and the old man told me that the sewage was always facing forward, and finally discharged into the Miluo River, and then flowing into the Xiangjiang River. When I heard this, I was stunned, thinking that if such a dirty and smelly sewage was discharged into the Miluo River, and then into Dongting Lake and Xiangjiang River, I don't know how many water sources would be polluted and how many people would be harmed. But the old man said that there was no way to do it. Because there has to be a place for all this sewage.

Walking all the way down the country road, I was greeted not by the vibrant, thriving new rural landscape I had imagined beforehand, but by a squalid and dilapidated scene. Large tracts of farmland were overgrown with half-man-tall grass, and in the farmland near the edge of the village there were many discarded couches and rotten quilts. Half-built or even partially built buildings were abandoned there, and many were destroyed and turned into piles of construction waste. The water in the pond at the edge of the village is jet black and has been polluted by sewage, turning it into a waste pit.

On the way, I met an old lady. She happened to live in the same village of Nantuo that I was going to see. We talked as we walked. She told me that her family had moved from the original village of Nantuo to the new village. The houses in the new village are not funded by the state, but built by the builders at their own expense according to the uniform piles and drawings. The compensation for her family's old house is 600,000 yuan, 60,000 yuan for one acre of paddy field in the family, and 135,000 yuan for each of the four members of their family. And their family spent three or four hundred thousand yuan to build a house, and another three or four hundred thousand yuan to decorate it, a total of seven or eight hundred thousand yuan.

With that, we came to the front of Nantuo New Village. From a distance, the buildings in the community are lined up and one by one, very neat, very eye-catching, with white walls and red tiles, very exquisite and beautiful. If you just look at the exterior of the building, not from the car parked in front of the door, you can't tell who is poor and who is rich.

Because the community was built in October last year, most of the people have moved in, but some people are still renovating, and even some buildings have not yet been renovated. The old man invited me to her house. So I went into her house. The house was indeed spacious and luxurious, even more luxurious and comfortable than the residences of the Shanghai capitalists in the thirties and forties. The living room is large enough to put a table tennis table, the LCD TV is as big as a small movie, surrounded by a large and thick leather sofa, and a small statue of Chairman Mao is placed on the small cabinet next to the TV. Opposite the living room is the dining room, where a large round table is placed. I went to the garage, the bathroom, and the dining room. All very nicely decorated, the upstairs layout is the same as the first floor, but all carpeted. There are two faucets in the kitchen, one is groundwater, and the water pumped up is a bit black, and the other is water filtered by a water purifier. Although the filtered water is relatively clear, it is still not drinkable. The drinking water is purified water purchased from the neighborhood. Next to the kitchen are two plastic buckets, each containing about 20 litres of water, and each bucket of water costs 3 yuan. Because they don't have a lot of family, they buy three buckets of water a week for drinking and cooking. The vegetables they eat are still grown from the original vegetable fields, and once the vegetable fields are occupied, then they have to buy vegetables, and they have to buy food. In fact, their paddy and vegetable fields have long been expropriated.

In the face of the spaciousness and luxury of the home, the old man was not a little proud and excited, but worried, because the old man said that although they lived in a very spacious and luxurious house, they were very worried about the future. Because they lost their land, they had to earn money by working. And they have a daughter and a son. The daughter is married, and the son is no longer in a car accident two years ago. My husband is 67 years old and still working outside. The daughter-in-law is in her 30s and works in the city, only 2,000 yuan a month. One of their two grandchildren is in middle school, and the other is only a few years old. Once the two grandchildren grew up and married, they no longer had a homestead to build on, but had to live in their three-story building. In fact, all of their demolition compensation and capitation fees have been spent on this spacious and luxurious building, and there is no savings. Therefore, they are very worried about the future pension, raising grandchildren and daily living expenses.

Leaving the old man's house and walking down the street in front of the new village, he met a young woman with a child. She told me that they didn't actually want to demolish either. Because their house is just across the street, a three-story building that has only been built for five years. But there was no way, because all the surrounding buildings had to be demolished and relocated to the new village across the road.

Leaving Nantuo New Village and walking on the way back, looking at the large area of villages and buildings around the new village that have been relocated and will be demolished, I can't help but think that a building is a lot of wealth, and once demolished, it will be a lot of construction waste. And how big a fortune should the buildings and fields in this village be, and what a big construction garbage dump. Many of the buildings in these villages have only been built for a few years or more than a decade, some with two or three floors, and some with four or five floors. Just because of the construction of new villages, these good buildings and large fields will be demolished and occupied. This will cause much waste to society, to the country, to farmers, and to the local environment.

However, people's eyes seem to be focused only on money, and wherever there is a green space, it will immediately be turned into a building and sold for money. The West Lake in Miluo City was originally a large reservoir, but now the fields around the reservoir are all occupied, so this place, known as West Lake, has begun to release water to make land, which has been excavated and buried by large machinery, preparing to turn the only water area in the city that can be played by people into a hotel and a playground.

For the sake of the greed and political achievements of some people, good infrastructure has been demolished and built, built and folded, demolished and rebuilt, and does not hesitate to trade the property of the state and the interests of the people. However, why can this kind of project of political achievements that harm the interests of the people be repeatedly prohibited? This is worth pondering by each and every one of us.

Huaxi Village is known as "the first village in the world" for a reason, Huaxi Village has helped the surrounding 20 villages to develop together, and has built a large Huaxi with an area of 35 square kilometers and a population of 35,000 people, forming a beautiful village with "green mountains, lakes, highways, waterways, tunnels, and heliports". How many years ago, each villager's annual income could easily exceed 100,000 yuan, and the work was easy, all the villagers lived in villas collectively, distributed cars, and had a very complete medical education system and infrastructure. Every household has millions of balances in savings, and their annual income is 12 times higher than that of the city. How many such villages can there be in the whole country? Therefore, as a region that is not wealthy, to create "the first village in China" or "the first village in the whole province," even if it is the "first village in the whole county," I am afraid that the project can only create a false prosperity, and instead of leading the peasants to get rich, it will lead the peasants into poverty and anxiety.