(Related article) "The rules for the ball enter the village rules, capital is banned: Details of grassroots governance behind the popularity of "village BA""
July 31, 2022, Taipan Village basketball game site. (People's Vision/Photo)
When doing the report "Village BA", I found a lot of things worth thinking about. For example, Taipan Village directly wrote some stadium rules into the "village rules and regulations":
"As long as you make trouble, disrespect the referee or fight, you will be listed on the stadium blacklist and exposed, and you will not step into the stadium for life."
You might as well imagine what the village cadres want to express when saying "the rules on the stadium are the village rules and regulations of Taipan"? In fact, it is very simple. They are emphasizing a kind of love, and this love is pure, because only when all villagers love basketball, the punishment of "not allowed to enter the court" will have a deterrent effect, thus forming a strong binding force on the villagers' words and deeds.
If a person has no interest in basketball at all, what's the point of allowing him to enter the basketball court?
I think this is also a more direct reason why the village BA is popular.
Apart from that, I think of more things. When I saw the village rules and regulations that were "not allowed to enter the court", the first thing I thought of was " Bailuyuan ". Heiwa was driven out of the ancestral hall by the patriarch Bai Jiaxuan and was unable to gain a foothold on the plateau because of his actions that violated traditional moral teachings. He was forced to take risks and become a bandit.
was still young at that time. When I read this, I was full of doubts. If I didn’t let it go, I wouldn’t go in. Can’t I find a place to stay? In fact, not allowing him to enter the ancestral hall is not only just not allowing him to worship his ancestors, but also means being isolated or even excluded. That is in a traditional society. If he is excluded by the social relations of the whole village, there is really no place to stay.
In modern society, personal situations have long been different from before. People can choose to study, job search and migration independently, and their freedom has been greatly improved. However, the invisible bond in rural acquaintance society is still in place. For example, migrant workers can freely choose to work in Dongguan or Kunshan , but few people stay in the local area to start a family and start a business. When they reach a certain age, they will still return to a highly humane village.
They did come back, too. I interviewed an elder sister in Taipan Village. She worked in the workshop of a car factory in Shenzhen in her early years and also taught herself Excel forms and accounting. She has been back in the village for several years and is one of the first batch of online shopping people in the village. She now runs a express delivery agency and has a prosperous life. We also interviewed several young people who were planning to do business, open B&B and , shoot short videos, do live broadcasts, and make a variety of ways to make a living, all of them plan to stay for long-term development.
In the past three to five years, it is the peak period when the first batch of migrant workers, as well as factory brothers and factory girls return home. Moreover, due to the advancement of poverty alleviation and rural revitalization policies, the rural situation is improving, and the new generation of young people are not willing to go far to work. In the early years, because there were too many people going out to work, many remote villages experienced hollow villages, left-behind elderly people, left-behind children, etc., and the moral binding force nested in blood ties and neighbors was weakened for a long time. Now, the fishing net of this interpersonal relationship has opened its dense grating eyes again.
Moreover, this kind of human bond in the mountainous areas of Guizhou is stronger than that in other places. During the interview, the villagers would repeatedly mention the traditional festival of Miao " Eating New Festival ". Every year, the new festival of the lunar calendar "June 6th" will be held. The whole village will mobilize men, women, young and old, and bullfighting and bird fighting competitions will be held. Because the cost of raising cattle is very high, and the risk of bullfighting is somewhat dangerous, it has gradually been replaced by a basketball game that is widely accepted and popular, becoming a new tradition. I checked the information and found that the New Eat Festival was a traditional festival born in Guizhou's mountain farming civilization. This place is remote and closed, with a small arable land area, a small plot, and mostly terraced fields, so it cannot be mechanized. The people living here form a bond of mutual help in the long-term cooperation of production activities. The New Festival is a ritual to strengthen and consolidate this relationship.
A villager commentator from the BA in the village was more direct. He said that the basketball game is a symbol of unity in the whole village, and destroying the rules of the basketball game is to destroy unity. I have never doubted the sincerity of the villagers for the sport of basketball, and the happiness and joy written on my face are really precious. The villagers love basketball, but behind this love is also a sense of identity and cohesion.
Therefore, the stadium of the village BA is the "ancestral hall" of Taipan Village. If you do not allow you to enter the stadium, it is equivalent to not allowing you to enter the ancestral hall. Not allowing the ball to enter the court not only means being deprived of the fun of watching and playing football, but also means being isolated by the villagers, which is a serious punishment for a person.
Some people may be unhappy by comparing the village BA stadium to a "ancestral hall". Because for a long time, in some literary works, ancestral halls are not a good word. The ancestral hall certainly has its historical limitations, but it also has its historical contributions. Moreover, in the new era, it is given new functions.
In traditional society, they assume the responsibilities of mediating disputes, developing the economy, and helping widows, widows, widows, orphans, which is actually an ancient grassroots autonomy model. In recent years, many ancestral halls have been renovated and become public spaces for sports, leisure and discussion. The role of
Village BA basketball game is basically similar to that. The basketball association that organizes basketball games exists independently of the village committee. The funds are raised by the villagers themselves, and the expenses need to be disclosed. The village committee has the right to supervise the finance of the Basketball Association . If there is a different opinion on the matter, everyone will raise their hands to vote. Through all this, the villagers have explored an effective path to grassroots autonomy.
In addition, villagers purchased 130,000 yuan in new cars, and the association staff bought firecrackers to congratulate them; the basketball association recommended villagers in families with difficulties to serve as public welfare positions in basketball activities (cleaners); visited the homes of retired soldiers, etc. This actually assumes part of the public function.
I asked several heads of the Basketball Association, and what they expressed was that the villagers in the village and the players in other villages were full of awe of the rules of the court. Whether on the court or in daily life, if there is a bad fight in the village, the villagers' first choice is to hit 110 and ask the police to come forward to deal with it. However, under the legal red line, an incident with a not very bad nature and a relatively vague right and wrong requires the "rules" on the basketball court to evaluate.
Southern Weekend Reporter Li Zailei
