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The Fading Pastoral

Zheng Zhongmin

  

    In the past thirty years, with the rapid development of economy and society, China has crossed into a social stage mixing with characteristics of various civilizations from agricultural civilization. When people wake up, they suddenly find those they accustomed to have disappeared, leaving a strange and helpless world in front of them.

    The evolution of social civilization and the transformation of the mode of production and life lead to collapse the foundation of the farming culture, and a large number of traditional village demise rapidly. When the traditional villages become scarce resources, the protection work of them really has been put on the schedule. With backward economic development in remote areas, some traditional villages in original style are fortunately preserved. In order to develop rural tourism, the governments of these areas produce large-scale street advertisements in cities which advocate the poetic pastoral sceneries and village landscapes. However, it couldn’t stop the pace of the transfomation of rural urbanization. The traditional pastoral sceneries are still facing the crisis to be damaged and decayed.

    When the villagers work and live in the cities, the phenomenon of "hollow village" has aggravated increasingly. With the rise and rapid development of agritainment and homestay, people from city come in flocks to the rural area. When the rural customs catering to tourists, they become fakelores for performance...... The noise of the moment can not hide the decline of the rural areas, and the surface of prosperity cannot conceal the lost elegance.

    The agricultural civilization which experienced thousands of years has wrote glorious chapters in Chinese history. However, like the advertisements exposed and faded outdoors in the beautiful cities, the pastoral has lost its former glory and honor, driven poetic quality away and left pale and gloomy scenery, which produces frustrated disappointments and makes it difficult to find homesickness.