The road back home, fertile land newly cultivated
The winding mountain road in Yunling Village was paved with smooth asphalt, but Li Xiaoyu still stopped the car at the village entrance. She needed to walk in step by step, stepping on this familiar land.
A full eight years had passed since she first came here. The large locust tree at the entrance to the village remained lush and leafy, but beneath it were no longer elderly people playing chess and chatting. Instead, a group of young people, live-streaming their videos on their phones, enthusiastically introduced their bamboo crafts in accented Mandarin. In the background, the once dilapidated ancestral hall now bore signs proclaiming "Yunling Bamboo Art Intangible Cultural Heritage Workshop" and "Spiritual Inn - Local Healing Center."
When the hometown welcomes the wanderer with a strange face, it brings not only joy but also deep questions.
"Teacher Li!" a clear voice rang out. Li Xiaoyu turned and saw a tall, dark-skinned young man walking briskly towards her. It was Shitou. The introverted and silent boy who found inner peace through weaving bamboo baskets was now a grown man with relaxed features and a resolute gaze.
"Shi Tou?" Li Xiaoyu almost didn't dare to recognize him.
"It's me," Shitou smiled shyly and took her simple luggage. "Everyone is very happy to hear that you are coming back to visit."
He didn't take Li Xiaoyu to the village committee, but instead went to the back mountain. The bamboo forest remained lush and green, but in the clearings, several simple wooden installations stood: a "listening pavilion" shaped like an earlobe, an array of bamboo wind chimes that rang softly in the wind, and several tree stump benches for quiet sitting.
"This is something I built with a few young people who returned to the village," Shitou introduced. "It's called 'Bamboo Forest Quiet Path.' Tourists from the city like it, and the villagers also like to come here to walk and sit after dinner in the evening."
Li Xiaoyu sat down on a tree stump, closed her eyes, and listened to the rustling of bamboo leaves in the wind, punctuated by the occasional chirp of a bird. At that moment, she completely distanced herself from the intense, conceptually charged world of the global summit, and a long-lost sense of groundedness, slowly returning to her.
However, this tranquility was soon broken by reality.
At the newly renovated "Heart Station," Li Xiaoyu met Xiao Qin, a young woman who had recently graduated from a social work program in the provincial capital and replaced Lao Wang as stationmaster. She enthusiastically showed Li Xiaoyu the data reports on her computer: "Secretary Li, we're strictly following headquarters' standardized procedures. The completion rate of online psychological assessments has increased by 50%, and group counseling attendance is also stable..."
The data looked impressive, but Li Xiaoyu frowned slightly. She looked around. The walls were no longer covered with playful children's drawings, but with beautifully printed mental health posters. The sandboxes in the sandbox room were neatly arranged, the impromptu creations of mud, twigs, and wildflowers gone. A sense of overly "standardized" quality made her feel like something was missing.
If the promotion of standards loses its warmth, it will become a new shackle.
In the afternoon, Shitou took Li Xiaoyu for a stroll around the village. The village had indeed become richer, with more new buildings, but it was also emptier. Most of the young and middle-aged still worked away from home, leaving the elderly and children behind. An elderly woman, sitting in the sun at a doorway, recognized Li Xiaoyu and took her hand, mumbling, "Xiaoyu, life is better now, and we have more money, but sometimes I still feel empty inside. The kids are all on their phones and don't even talk to us old folks anymore..."
At the village primary school, the principal shared another dilemma: "Secretary Li, we're not short of hardware, nor are we short of psychology courses assigned by higher authorities. But the examples in those courses, like 'test anxiety' and 'peer competition,' don't quite resonate with our children's situations. They're more concerned with missing their parents, feeling inferior, and feeling left behind..."
At night, Li Xiaoyu stayed in Shitou's newly built two-story house. Shitou took out his notebooks from the past few years, several thick notebooks filled with notes on new rural issues he'd observed: the "digital divide" loneliness of empty-nest elderly people, the "emotional poverty amidst material abundance" of left-behind children, the difficulties of returning young people integrating into their hometowns due to "uncomfortable local conditions"...
"Teacher Li," Shitou said gravely, "Our foundation has accumulated so much valuable experience and methods outside these years, but... it seems we haven't been able to focus on 'home' as much as we should. Are our roots starting to waver?"
This sentence pierced Li Xiaoyu's heart like a needle. She recalled the vibrant, earth-inspired methods presented by her partners from Africa and South America at the global summit. In comparison, the "standardized" model the foundation was currently promoting in Yunling Village, and indeed in many rural areas across China, seemed pale and alienated.
The larger the radius of outward exploration, the deeper the inward gaze must be.
That night, Li Xiaoyu couldn't sleep. Standing on the second-floor balcony, she gazed at the quiet village under the moonlight, and reflection washed over her. While the foundation's global reach was right, it couldn't come at the expense of neglecting or even sacrificing its local roots. True strength lies in both connecting the world and cultivating our homeland.
The next day, she convened the foundation's domestic core team and representatives from Yunling Village to hold a unique "local seminar" in the bamboo art workshop.
She skipped the lengthy presentation and got straight to the point: "We made a mistake in the past, thinking that simply applying proven urban, or even internationally, methods to rural areas was 'empowerment.' But we forgot that rural areas have their own pulse and breath, their own unique psychological DNA. Today, we're not here to 'instruct,' but to 'learn' and 'co-create.'"
She let Shitou speak first, sharing the real problems he had observed and the local wisdom he had gained. She asked Xiao Qin to put down her report and listen to the old stories told by the village elders and watch the children playing on the ridges of the fields.
Based on these real voices, the prototype of a plan called "New Rural China 2.0" gradually became clear in the collision:
Localizing content: Abandoning rote curricula and integrating them with local culture. For example, integrating the cultivation of psychological resilience into group activities such as learning dragon and lion dances and local opera; and using actions such as revising family genealogies and recording village histories to heal individual existential anxiety and the breakdown of family ties.
Local activation of personnel: No longer relying solely on professional social workers, but vigorously cultivating "local therapists" like Shitou, warm-hearted "neighborhood watchmen", and "ancestral hall elders" who are good at mediation, so that they can become the capillaries of the rural psychological support network.
Adapting technology to rural areas: Adapting low-cost, high-reach technologies from global projects to suit rural areas. For example, developing AI voice companion apps based on local dialects; leveraging livestreaming platforms to build online communities for left-behind families to combat loneliness.
Ecological and sustainable integration: integrating psychological support with rural industrial development. For example, bamboo weaving is not only a livelihood skill but also a process of meditation and healing; the labor of ecological agriculture itself can bring a sense of accomplishment and connection with nature.
This plan is no longer a one-way input, but a "catalyst" that stimulates the inherent vitality of the countryside.
After the seminar, Li Xiaoyu and Shitou once again walked up the "Bamboo Forest Meditation Path" on the back mountain. The setting sun dyed the bamboo forest a warm orange.
"Shi Tou, you have grown up and can see farther." Li Xiaoyu said with emotion.
"Because my roots have always been in this land." Shitou looked at the ground under his feet. "Teacher Li, you can go ahead and connect with the world without worry. We are here at home. We will cultivate the new things we have learned in this land like planting crops."
A warm feeling welled up in Li Xiaoyu's heart, and she felt completely relieved. She understood that true inheritance wasn't about holding hands forever, but trusting that the person who took over the torch could forge their own path.
On the way back, Li Xiaoyu added a concise note to her notebook next to her grand vision of global strategy: "Deepen local roots, contribute to the world." She realized that the new challenges facing Yunling Village were a microcosm of globalization. The solutions she found here might be no less valuable than those explored in Bangkok or Nairobi.
Outside the car window, rolling mountains sped past. Li Xiaoyu knew she had chosen the right path back home. Exploring the world beyond allowed her to broaden her horizons, while cultivating her inner self ensured she always had a source of strength. Only in this way could the foundation, like a mighty tree, aspire to the heavens while maintaining deep roots, standing tall and thriving amidst the changing times.
“No matter how far we go or how high we fly, the weight of life always comes from our connection to the land.”
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