There's nothing big in the news today, so let's just chat about everyday things.
A reader asked if I went out for the holiday. Tomorrow, my whole family will be taking a short trip to the outskirts of Beijing, staying in a hotel. The main purpose is to make the kids happy. I'm planning two long trips soon, both after the May Day holiday. One is that I bought tickets to Jay Chou's concert in Wenzhou, which my wife and I will go to see. We saw Jay Chou's "The Era" concert at Chaoyang Stadium in 2011, so this will be a reunion 15 years later. Everyone says Jay Chou has aged, so I'm going to see what that's like.
Another long trip I'm planning is to take my mom on a trip. This time, I'd like to climb a famous mountain, either Sanqingshan or Huangshan (both are granite peak forest landforms). I'm currently working on the itinerary. I encourage you all to travel with your parents, and I'm going to do it myself too. I'll write a travelogue to share with you all later.
Last night, I mentioned a reader from a poor family whose parents, both over 60, were still working in a factory. Many people left comments expressing shock. When I first heard about it, I was also a little stunned, but I eventually processed the fact. Our country has always had a serious problem of uneven development, and I discussed another similar topic on my WeChat official account before.
At the time, I mentioned that I couldn't squat and couldn't use a squat toilet when I was out and about. Then we talked about how my family had a flush toilet (sitting toilet) when I was a child. Readers from all over the country left comments sharing their own toilet conditions when they were young.
What truly shattered my worldview was that many people were still using outhouses in rural areas until around 2000. After defecating, they didn't even have paper to wipe their bottoms; they used leaves, straw, and plaster instead. This seemed absurd to me, but seeing how vividly and realistically people described it, I couldn't help but believe it.
China is still too big, so big that it seems to be pieced together from different worlds. Back in 2000, I was about to go to university. I used an Iriver MP3 player to listen to music, and I bought a computer that cost 4,000 yuan specifically for playing Counter-Strike. My mouse was an IE3.0 that cost 300 yuan. I had a little over 200 yuan of pocket money every month. Meanwhile, in rural areas of inland China, some people couldn't even afford toilet paper to wipe their bottoms.
It's not fair to say I was ignorant. Back then, the internet was very underdeveloped, and only a small group of urban elites had access to it. Everyone was discussing and focusing on bourgeois topics, so the countryside was an isolated world to me at the time. It wasn't until recent years, when everyone went online and started exchanging ideas, that I filled that gap in my understanding.
Interestingly, even in rural areas of mainland China, the conditions for using the toilet improved significantly after 2000. At least people had toilet paper to wipe their bottoms, and flush toilets gradually became common in homes. So, although China had been reforming and opening up for 20 years, it was only after 2000 that the vast majority of people truly began to escape poverty. A major event occurred at that time: China joined the WTO and began to become the world's factory. The manufacturing industry provided hundreds of millions of jobs, and waves of young people from rural areas flocked to the cities to work—this was the tide of the times.
However, outside this torrent of poverty, some people remained in rural areas for various reasons until the country launched a systematic poverty alleviation project in 2015, gradually focusing on rural areas and finally achieving the poverty eradication goal in 2021. Considering that reader mentioned their home was connected by road and a base station five years ago, the timing is perfect. It can only be said that they were a bit unlucky, being among the last batch of impoverished people rescued by the government.
A few days ago, there was a reader's comment that could be expanded on: the Soviet Union's threat to drop nuclear bombs on us. They had even drawn up a specific strike plan, but were ultimately forced to abandon it for various reasons.
Sino-Soviet relations deteriorated starting in the 1960s, with the Zhenbao Island conflict being the most significant event. The Soviet Union suffered a loss and was enraged, wanting to retaliate with nuclear weapons. Although China also possessed nuclear weapons at the time—an atomic bomb in 1964 and a hydrogen bomb in 1969—its medium- and long-range missile capabilities were very weak, unable to reach the core areas of the Soviet Union, and at most could only strike a few cities in the Far East.
After finalizing its nuclear strike plan, the Soviet Union sought confirmation from the United States. The Americans were shocked; they hadn't expected the Soviets to be so audacious and promptly exposed the plan. On August 28, 1969, the Washington Star ran a front-page headline: "Soviet Union Plans Surgical Nuclear Strike Against China," sending shockwaves around the world.
Just to add, this newspaper ceased publication more than 40 years ago.
When the news reached China, the central government immediately launched a full-scale war preparation, accelerated the construction of the Third Front, and moved military factories into mountain caves to avoid concentrated nuclear strikes. The plan was to prepare the entire nation for war should the Soviet Union invade China, implementing layered resistance and replicating the experience of the victory in the War of Resistance against Japan.
There was also a "home exchange plan" circulating online, which said that after the Soviet Union bombed us to pieces, we would collectively rush to Siberia to establish a country, but this is considered unofficial history, and I have not found any official confirmation of this.
In short, the opposition from the United States, the pressure from global public opinion, and most importantly, China's very resolute stance of resistance, all contributed to the Soviet Union abandoning its nuclear strike plan and ultimately resolving the conflict through diplomatic negotiations.
One consequence of this was that China and the US began to band together for mutual support: the ping-pong diplomacy of 1971, Nixon's visit to China in 1972, and the formal establishment of diplomatic relations in 1979. Great power politics is characterized by periods of unity and division, good times and bad times. More than 50 years have passed, and now we are in friction and confrontation with the US, yet we have turned around and become allies with Russia.
Let's just chat about these trivial things tonight, just to pass the time.
Original Article: View Chinese Version
