I once said that when the secretary of the county party committee travels to all villages in the county, the secretary of the local party committee travels to all towns and towns, and when the secretary of the provincial party committee travels to all counties and cities. I fulfilled that. When I was the secretary of the county party committee in Zhengding, I traveled to all the villages, sometimes riding a bicycle to the countryside. During my tenure as secretary of the municipal party committee and secretary of the prefectural party committee, I traveled all over the towns and villages of Fuzhou and Ningde. At that time, there were four towns in Ningde that had no roads, and I went to three, but later due to transfer, one did not go. There is a Xiadang township, when I went there it was really overcoming thorns and thorns, trekking through mountains and rivers, the secretary of the township party committee held a firewood knife in front of the weeds, he said that this road is a little closer, along the river. Along the way, the common people said that the "underworld" was coming. They call the secretary of the prefectural party committee "Difu", which means prefect. The common people eat pot pulp, spontaneously put all kinds of buckets, buckets are cool drinks, made of local herbs, and mung bean soup, saying that you drink it, the road is hard. That place is called Shouning County, and Feng Menglong, who wrote the "Three Words" such as "Warning the World" in the Ming Dynasty, served as a magistrate there. Feng Menglong went to office and walked for half a year. At that time, I sighed, how can a county magistrate in the feudal era who is only eight buckets high go to the county with all the hardships, are we communists not as good as an official in the feudal era? After arriving, I saw that the township party committee office was set up in a converted cattle pen, and the place was very small. The bridge in the south is a covered bridge, and we work on a bridge, with a few bamboo chairs, separated by a simple screen, on which we can hold meetings, eat, rest, and bathe. Now, the face of Xiadang Township has completely changed. At that time, I saw several churches there, who built them? 18th century Western missionaries. No matter what their purpose is, the sense of mission is comparable to that of our Communist Party! After I went to Zhejiang to become the secretary of the provincial party committee, I traveled all over the counties and cities, and then put forward the "88 strategy" for the development of Zhejiang, that is, to give full play to the advantages of eight aspects and take measures in eight aspects. What is it? This is to find out the situation thoroughly and grasp the first-hand materials. Don't eat the buns that others have chewed, we are not children, and let people feed them? Now, there are more means to understand the situation, telephone, Weibo, and WeChat are all very fast, and our means of doing mass work are better.

——Speech at the Enlarged Meeting of the Standing Committee of the Lankao County Party Committee of Henan Province (March 18, 2014)

Further reading:

Feng Menglong was an outstanding writer and opera artist in the Ming Dynasty, who collected and created "Yu Shi Ming Yan", "Warning World General Words" and "Xing Shi Heng Yan", which are collectively known as "Three Words", which have become classic representatives of ancient Chinese vernacular short stories. What few people know is that Feng Menglong is also a generation of honest officials who are diligent and love the people. In 1634, at the age of 60, Feng Menglong went to Shouning, Fujian Province to serve as the magistrate, and during his four-year tenure, he left a reputation of "simple government and clean punishment, the first literature, kindness to the people, and courtesy".

At the beginning of Feng Menglong's tenure, he conducted a comprehensive and in-depth investigation of Shouning to understand the actual situation. He cared about agricultural production and found that many fields in Shouning were made of chiseled stones, and as long as there was a little sandy soil, seedlings could be planted. He knows very well the truth that "the field is nourished by water", and when the water veins are smooth, the field will be fertile; When the water veins are blocked, the fields are barren. Through his investigation, he also found that fertilization is very important for agricultural production, but in winter, there are ash factories everywhere, and because he is afraid of burning trees, he concentrates fallen leaves and withered grass in the open space and burns them, which should be prohibited whenever they cause fires. These are the first-hand information he obtained after field research.

Xi Jinping worked for two years in the Ningde region, to which Shouning belongs, and had a geographical intersection with Feng Menglong. Like Feng Menglong, Xi Jinping traveled to nine counties within three months of his arrival in Ningde, and later to most of the towns and villages in the region. Among them is Xiadang Township in Shouning County. On July 19, 1989, when Xi Jinping first came to Xiadang Township, it was a "five-no township" with no roads, no running water, no electric lighting, no financial revenue, and no government office space. Xi Jinping walked for hours on a rugged mountain road to Xiadang Township. On July 26, 1989, he walked 3 kilometers in the rain again to Pingfeng Village, Xiadang Township, to inspect the flood disaster and comfort the victims. Such an investigation vividly reflects Xi Jinping's pragmatic style of "eating bread that others have chewed has no taste".

Xi Jinping's story of Feng Menglong's "six months in office" and his own experience of "overcoming obstacles and wading through mountains and rivers" at the grassroots level are precisely to reiterate the importance of investigation and research, and encourage leading cadres to lean down and contact the masses.

Xi Jinping emphasized, "Investigation and research is the foundation of seeking things and the way to achieve things." Without investigation, there is no voice, let alone decision-making." He encouraged the majority of cadres to go to the grassroots level to "dun dun seedlings" with "what is heard is not as good as what is seen, and what is seen is not as good as what is practiced". The road is dangerous, and those who do it know it" admonished the vast number of cadres to take practice as the criterion for judgment, and called on the vast number of cadres not to be falsely told and not to do false things with the idea that "what is obtained on paper is shallow in the end, and it is absolutely necessary to know that this matter must be practiced".