Great Power Technology

Xu Lei led Ye Zhou and three others on the rural road to the experimental field. The solar street lights on the road lit up one by one as they passed by, and then gradually went out. Ye Zhou looked at this scene with some curiosity and spoke to Chen Hao said:

"Is this considered technological excess?"

Chen Hao was stunned and replied:

"Not really. Nowadays, this kind of sensor switch is very cheap and has a low failure rate. I have read a report before, saying that this kind of sensor street light is very practical in rural areas. After adding solar panels, It can even run completely off the grid, which is very convenient both in terms of ease of installation and subsequent maintenance.”

"Furthermore, I remember that Hailan's batch of street lights started to be rolled out after sulfur-silicon cells, so the overall benefit ratio should be better."

Chen Hao mentioned sulfur-silicon batteries, and Ye Zhou immediately understood what he meant.

Yes, co-authorship has something to do with myself.

"so."

Ye Zhou nodded thoughtfully, and then continued to ask:

“For infrastructure like this, is it now a unified allocation or a collective fund?”

Xu Lei on the side heard what he said and answered before Chen Hao:

"There are both appropriations and fund-raising. Generally, larger infrastructure projects are allocated from the unified fiscal budget, such as road construction, street lights, water, electricity and communications. This village also updated aging circuits this year, using appropriations."

"However, smaller things are funded by crowdfunding, and the most typical ones are large agricultural machinery."

"Now in rural areas, wherever there are more fields, large agricultural machinery has basically started to be used. In the past, we learned in textbooks that our country's cultivated land is relatively scattered and is not suitable for large agricultural machinery. Now it seems that this judgment is gradually being changed. break in."

"For example, in this village now, there are two harvesters and 12 agricultural drones for spraying pesticides, 4 of which are privately owned, and the remaining 8 were all purchased with crowdfunding."

“I don’t know why, but it seems that in the past two years, in rural areas, the means of production have inexplicably begun to be publicized again.”

Ye Zhou followed the direction of her finger and saw a harvester parked on the roadside, and said with some sigh:

"So this is also one of the dividends of technology. After the cost of machinery drops, even for scattered farmland, it becomes more cost-effective to use machinery than to use people. The changes in rural areas today are really big."

Upon hearing this, Wu Ping, who had been following silently, suddenly interrupted:

"Yes, in rural China, the most difficult time has passed."

Ye Zhou was stunned for a moment. He could clearly hear a sadness in Wu Ping's tone. This emotion appeared for the first time in the nearly two years that Wu Ping had been with him.

"Brother Wu, are you also from the countryside?"

Wu Ping nodded, answered briefly "yes", and said no more.

Today, after following Ye Zhou to see rice fields, eat common meals in rural areas, and see the countryside at night, he did have some urge to talk, but long-term professional training made him restrain it. got this impulse.

Ye Zhou also noticed this. He reached out and took out a pack of cigarettes from Chen Hao's pocket. He took one out and handed it to Wu Ping. The latter took it hesitantly. After a few seconds of silence, he finally said:

"Ye Gong, in fact, you have also lived in rural areas and have experienced life in rural areas, but you should not have experienced the most difficult period in rural China."

"I was born in 1985. In my memory, the 1990s and the beginning of the 21st century should be the most difficult times I have ever experienced."

"Looking at it from a current perspective, China's rural areas at that time, whether it was land or ecological environment, had almost reached their limit for the explosive growth of population."

"Starvation is very common, and overload of physical labor is also very common. In 1995, I was just 10 years old, but I had already begun to participate in all the heavy physical labor at home."

"Planting rice seedlings, cutting pig grass, cooking pig food, plowing, and fertilizing. Each of them requires the whole family to do it. If there is even one missing link in the process, it means a reduction in food production or even no harvest."

"That kind of pressure is terrible. As a farmer, you never dare to make mistakes, because as long as you make a little mistake, your life will be extremely difficult in the coming year."

"However, even if you really work hard to farm, the final reward is just a guarantee that you will not starve to death."

"During that time, using 'difficult' to describe it was actually somewhat inaccurate. It would be more accurate to say 'terrifying'."

"We are short of everything. Drinking water, irrigation water, firewood, meat, clothing, fertilizer, electricity, manpower, money. Apart from labor, what the children like us think about and do every day is actually the same as what I later read in the book. The rural children who arrived here all did similar things, such as digging out bird's nests and catching fish. However, the only difference is that we did this not because of the so-called innocence, but because we wanted to have enough to eat."

"I have a very good friend - he has been a brother since childhood. We often acted together at that time."

“We really do whatever it takes to get a bite to eat. After we catch the fish in the small river ditch, we wait until the reservoir releases water to catch it in the big river; after we finish catching the sparrows, we run to the graveyard in the mountains to set traps to catch pheasants; every day After a paddy field is harvested, we will re-water it and turn it over several times because there will be a lot of loaches in it, which can be sold for money."

"Not only that, we also go to nearby steel plants to steal scrap steel, go to construction sites to knock steel bars, and go to reservoirs to fry fish."

"My brother is stupid. He always gets caught when he goes to fry fish. Every time I run halfway and have to go back to save him. Because of these stupid things, I actually got into a lot of fights when I was a kid."

"He is weak and can't fight, so I rush in front every time. Then when he gets home, he goes to steal safflower oil and gives it to me - inevitably getting beaten by his father again."

"One time, the two of us were really out of gas and hungry. We heard from others that there was water in a cave in the mountains and there were pond fish, so we lit a torch and wanted to go in and catch fish."

"As a result, the hole was too deep. I found the water and caught the fish, but when I wanted to get out, I couldn't get out."

"We were trapped in the cave for a whole day. Later, our family members tied ropes to find it and rescued us both. But do you know what the most bizarre thing is? Just after we found out that we were lost, in our The last thing we do before we run out of torches is put the fish back into the water and raise them.”

"At that time, we didn't even think about whether we could get out alive. Instead, we thought that if we came back, there would be enough fish in this pond to eat for a long time."

"Later, when we came out of the cave, each of us was holding seven or eight fish in his hand. It was as if we had won a battle, but we didn't even think about it. We almost died."

"My brother almost died later. When he was 16 years old, he electrocuted a fish in the river and electrocuted himself to the point of paralysis."

"It was 2002, and I had already joined the army. He was dismissed because of his poor health, and he had no talent for studying, so he could only stay at home and farm."

"My mother called me and told me that something had happened to him. I asked what happened. My mother said that the electric fish had electrocuted itself."

"With just one sentence, he is the final word."

"At that time, I felt it was really a pity. A good person would spend his whole life in such a muddle."

"This was the situation of farmers in that era. They were born, worked, and then died for various reasons, as if they had never been in this world."

"However, I really didn't expect at that time that his life would turn around."

"Two years, really just two years - three years at most."

"When we entered 2000, the urban economy began to explode, industrialization was fully rolled out, and the rural population began to flow to the city. The contradiction between man and land in the countryside suddenly weakened."

“In 2004, the rural areas and farmers policy began to be implemented.”

"Since that year, the living standards in rural areas have taken off, getting better and better year after year."

"He will definitely not be able to plant land anymore, but he is sitting in a wheelchair and taking advantage of all the policy support."

"New rural cooperative medical care, targeted poverty alleviation, rural revitalization, bringing technology to the countryside, and e-commerce entrepreneurship"

"After eating this way, and being pretty smart, their family went from being so poor that they couldn't afford to eat meat once a year. Now, they sell local cured meat, and they can make do with two floors."

"He really survived those two years. It was very hard, and he lay in bed for two full years, but he got through it in the end."

Having said this, Wu Ping took a long drag on the cigarette, then wiped out the cigarette butt with his hand and put the cigarette butt back into his pocket.

After spitting out the smoke, Wu Ping continued:

"Last year I went to see him when I was on vacation. He looked good and was in good health. I bought an electric wheelchair. I went to the pig farmer's house early in the morning to buy dozens of kilograms of pork and put it on my lap to transport home. , then chop it, marinate it, dry it yourself, and then go to the computer to put it on the shelf for delivery."

"Really, that scene had a great impact on me at the time - if I hadn't seen it with my own eyes, it would be hard to imagine that things with such huge contrasts could come together."

"A disabled person, with bacon all over the wall. Under the bacon is a vacuum packaging machine, and opposite is a computer with a fill light for live broadcasting."

"Ye Gong, you talked about the dividends of technology. In fact, I feel that this is the dividend of technology that I see."

"What you just said is that there is excess technology. I can probably understand what it means, but I have a point of view. I don't know if it's right or not."

"That is, the revitalization of our rural areas is actually achieved by the feedback of huge amounts of resources time and time again."

"Such an investment in resources will inevitably be wasted. For example, as you just said, this kind of solar street light may not be very necessary."

"But, I think, this is actually a symbol."

"It symbolizes that most of the fundamental problems have been solved, and we have begun to pursue higher levels."

Wu Ping paused again. He first glanced at Xu Lei, then turned his head to Ye Zhou, lowered his voice to the level that only the two of them could hear, and then said:

"Ye Gong, I know very little about what you are doing, but I know that this kind of pursuit depends on you; I also know what you are worried about."

"But, just do it. As for the outside, we are there."

"If anyone tries to take away what we have got, even with our teeth, we will bite him to death."

"I won't let my brother lie back in bed again."