An ancient county in Neixiang County, Henan Province has such a couplet: "It is not honorable to gain an official, it is not disgraceful to lose an official, don't say that an official is useless, and the place depends on an official; Wear the clothes of the people and eat the food of the people, do not deceive the people, and you are also the people. This couplet reveals the relationship between the government and the private sector in plain language. The officials of the feudal era still had this understanding, and today we communists should be much higher than this. Not long ago, an internal reference in the People's Daily introduced the political experience of Gao Derong, vice chairman of the Standing Committee of the People's Congress of Yunnan's Nujiang Lisu Autonomous Prefecture and a cadre of the Dulong ethnic group. Comrade Gao Derong said: "Leadership is to lead the masses to work together and to find a way to work. "If you are not pragmatic as a cadre or leader, the baton will become a-stirring stick." "Command people with your body, not your voice." "Floating in the officialdom makes people more and more impetuous, and living among the masses makes people's lives more fulfilling." I would like to recommend these words to all of you and encourage you to do so.

——"Speech at the Symposium with the Main Responsible Comrades of Heze City and County" (November 26, 2013)

Further reading:

"It is not honorable to gain an official, it is not disgraceful to lose an official, don't say that an official is useless, and the place depends on an official; Wear the clothes of the people and eat the food of the people, do not deceive the people, and you are also the people. This couplet is hung in front of the Yasan Provincial Hall in Neixiang County, Henan. This couplet was written in the nineteenth year of Kangxi in the Qing Dynasty (1680), and was written by Gao Yiyong, the magistrate of Neixiang. Gao Yiyong is a native of Jiaxing, Zhejiang, when he was transferred to the magistrate of Neixiang County in the eighteenth year of Kangxi, it was after the war, and the people in Neixiang left their hometowns one after another, the land was barren and the economy was depressed. Gao Yiyong was worried, felt a heavy responsibility, couldn't sleep at night, studied ink with candles, and wrote this couplet.

Gao Yiyong loves the people and is endowed with generosity. When he went to the provincial capital of Daliang (Kaifeng), the people in the streets and alleys pointed to him and said enviously that this was the county magistrate Gao Gong of the inner township. When he left the inner countryside, the people stayed in the middle of the road, and some even chased hundreds of miles. Qing Tongzhi's "Inner Township General Examination" commented that Gao Yiyong reclaimed a large amount of land and cracked down on bandits, and made a great contribution to the inner countryside.

Gao Derong is a typical example of today's leading cadres. He pretended to be the father and old folks of the Dulong clan in his heart, and he resolutely returned to his hometown twice in his life. Once when he walked out of the mountains at a young age, he stayed in school and had a bright future, but he took the initiative to ask to be transferred back to the remote Dulongjiang Township to teach; Once, when he was over half a hundred years old, he was promoted to vice chairman of the Standing Committee of the People's Congress of Nujiang Lisu Autonomous Prefecture, and he once again put forward a request to the organization to "set up my office in Dulongjiang". His reason is very simple and moving: "The Dulong compatriots are still poor, and I enjoy happiness outside, but I can't sleep soundly." ”

Gao Derong not only cares about the masses, but also advocates hard work. From morning to night, running six villages a day, seeing more than ten project construction sites, and walking on a hundred miles of mountain roads are the normal work of the old county magistrate. For a long tunnel under the alpine snow line, Gao Derong rushed up and down, and it took more than three years to finally open it.

Mingling with the masses and setting an example for the masses is our party's fine tradition. In November 2013, Xi Jinping came to Heze, Shandong Province for research, and when discussing with the main responsible comrades of Heze City and counties, he started from the couplet of Henan Neixiang County Ya, and linked to the political experience of Gao Derong, a cadre of the Dulong nationality in Yunnan Province, so that the ancient people-oriented thought gained the significance of the times, and also made today's feelings for the people have a historical depth, which is intended to reiterate the leading cadres' practical style and mass consciousness, revisit the metaphor of the boat and water, regain the love of fish and water, and guide the leading cadres to continue to "suffer together, pass together, and work together" with the masses. Xi Jinping takes hard work as the criterion and the masses as the purpose. He shared with the whole party his political experience of "commanding people with his figure, not with his voice", which can be said to be directly to the disadvantage of the times.