This article is from the WeChat public account "Tamen" (ID: DT-Tamen), author: Zheng Xiaohui, editor: Wang Chaojing.
Although the word "poor" appears frequently in social networks, such as crying "to become poor again" after seeing the stock fund collective plunge last week, and laughing at the rich when they see the 3,000-square-meter manor-style villa, "poverty limits my imagination", these jokes and jokes about "relative poverty" are more based on the imagination of the concept of "poverty" than on actual experiences and feelings.
DT Finance mentioned in the "2021 Domestic "Poor" Money Survey" released in March this year that the reason why those "new poor people" who are crying poor in words but are not poor in fact are born in batches is because there is no unified standard for the definition of income of "poor" by contemporary people. More than 60% of post-00s and post-95s believe that the income of the poor is no more than 5,000 yuan, and 45% of post-90s raise this line to 10,000 yuan.
But that doesn't mean poverty is a tough, distant topic.
Last Monday, we launched a call for "Memories of Poverty" and received a number of responses. We find that in the present moment when consumerism is surrounded by consumerism and successful people can be seen everywhere, poverty is a personal experience that many readers have experienced or are experiencing, and those moments of poverty and embarrassing memories have left indelible traces on their flesh and spirit, and affect their future life choices.
↑ Movie "Parasite"
<h1 class="pgc-h-arrow-right" data-track="136" > poor enough to "survive": at the poorest time, some people eat cabbage, steamed bread, and boiled water for 3 days, and some people can only rent a "coffin room"</h1>
George Orwell, an English writer who once lived with workers, dishwashers, beggars, and vagrants, wrote, "Dust is the most snobbish, and when you are dressed brightly it retreats, and when you are torn it swoops in from all directions." Thus, he describes the feeling of poverty as "like it's covered in dust, rough, sticky, and overwhelming." In such a dilemma, people have no choice but to endure hard, and lower all the standards that can be lowered, and live roughly.
@ This is youth
When I was in college, I had less living expenses and more money, and almost all the boys in our dormitories did the same. So we were eating the cheapest instant noodle box in the province, blocking the walls. Sometimes when a bun is squashed, it tastes like a flatbread, and it feels so delicious. The worst time was a fried cabbage, and a steamed bun, plus boiled water, can eat for 3 days, lasted for half a month.
@sinqua
At the age of eighteen, several people planned to go to Shijiazhuang to find another fellow villager and work together. It was already night in Shijiazhuang, the phone could not be reached, there was no money on the body, and I made a floor on a very high step, and at that time I had to bring a futon to go out to work. A few people giggled and picked up cigarette butts from the ground to smoke, watching the stars chat. The next morning, we put all the money together and bought a drawer of small dumplings, one for each person. After eating and going out to look for a job, I found a construction site in the afternoon, and the first request I made to the foreman was to let us have a meal first. I'm forty years old.
@Niming
My mother quarreled with my grandmother because of the tuition fee for the make-up class, and my grandfather rushed out and yelled at me, "You don't want to go to school, tomorrow I will tell your teacher that you can't afford to go to school, don't go to school in the future." My mother pulled me out of the door while crying, saying that even if I smashed pots and sold iron, A person would provide for my schooling.
@Mr. Xu
When I was still in college, I didn't have electronic payments, I only had 100 yuan a week for living expenses, and I was penniless on weekends. The girl who was pursuing at that time borrowed money from me, said that her wallet was lost, there was no money on the bus, and asked me to pick her up, so I parted ways.
@Xiao Liu
Just came to Beijing to live in a coffin room, the house can only put down a one-meter bed, nothing around can be put down, shoes under the bed, get up and wear shoes to open the door to have a leg position, a house six shared, I this is a storage room, central air conditioning, only my room is not ventilated, winter is very warm, but summer is too hot to die, often hot at night can not sleep.
@ Fungi
After graduation, the rental platform thunderstorm, negotiates with the landlord to share half of the rent, pays the rent and has 300 yuan left on the body, buys a shared bicycle monthly card to ride to work, and the wish is to be able to take the subway for 2 yuan per day to commute to work.
↑ Movie "Thief Family"
<h1 class="pgc-h-arrow-right" data-track="137" > the sequelae of poverty: now that there is money, there is still psychological poverty, and it is reluctant to spend money</h1>
"There are three things in the world that cannot be hidden: poverty, coughing, and love," Nabokov wrote in Lolita. People may have long since escaped poverty, but the impact of poverty is subtle. The most intuitive one is that people always subconsciously put money first in their daily life choices. No matter what you do, the cost of money is the most important consideration. It can be said that people's lives are more dominated by money.
@Smart Porcelain
In fact, the family is not poor, mainly after their own contact with Taobao, self-control is not strong, often buy and buy, at the end of each month can only rely on flowers to support, so there are always more than 10 days a day to control the money spent in single digits. I ate a large bucket of cereal with my classmates, a glass of water, a lot of it was tasteless cereal, and I ate it to the stomach. If you don't want to eat, go to the canteen to hit 1.5 yuan of fans plus 1 yuan of unlimited rice. There is also a 3 yuan a bag of squeezed vegetables to eat a day, another canteen free rice with soup, squeezed bibimbap is also very delicious. Now anyway, some of them can eat, I will not be picky about anything, but it is estimated that before eating bad, now the stomach is not good.
@Teacher
I am 57 years old, seven years old, and my family is very poor, and I only give a dime to buy a dish. In the second grade of primary school, I remember that everyone wanted to watch a movie, five cents a ticket, I didn't ask my family for money, and directly told the teacher that I didn't watch. At that time, I was really poor, which led to earning more than 10,000 a month now, and I was still psychologically poor and reluctant to spend money.
↑ Movie "Perfect World"
@Ball
When I was a child, my family was in business, and then I went bankrupt, and there was a long period of time when I had to calculate the price of a single sheet of paper. Now every time I visit a high-end shopping mall, I don't have the courage to walk into a very high-end store, and I will first look at the price of the tag when trying on clothes. The first reaction to receiving a gift from a boyfriend is not to be happy, but to repulse, because to think about how to return it to him, it may be to invite him to a meal, or it may be an equivalent gift.
@ Nannan who doesn't want to grow up
In 2007 and 2008, fifty cents were broken into three parts of flowers, one dime to buy milk candy, one dime to buy plums, and the remaining three cents were reluctant to spend to keep the next purchase pen. I still have the habit of saving money, and I always have to make a circle of calculations when buying things. There was a girl who said that I was a little family, at first I would feel uncomfortable, and then I was also calm, it is true that these habits of thrifty calculation are engraved in my bones and I grew up with me, but frugality is not a bad thing. Although I cut it, I am willing to bring delicious specialties to my parents, willing to spend the rest of the flowers from my mouth to broaden my horizons and improve myself, my friends need me to do my best, and the country needs me to do my best.
@gtiu
Don't waste it. When eating, I will try to eat all the meals I ordered, and when the fruit is broken, I will think of cutting off the broken parts and eating them, and many things can obviously be thrown away but still hoard them with the idea of "I will use them later". But these habits are not directly left to me by poverty, but by my elders, who have passed on to me in their daily lives.
↑ Movie "Thief of Time 1"
@ Small social animals that insist on sports
In May 2017, when I transferred from Guangzhou to Foshan, I only had 12 yuan left on my bank card. In fact, there have always been savings, but at that time, the family needed money, my sister also needed money, and I needed money to move. There is not much left in a month. Fortunately, the newly hired company even has a Sunday meal package. So I stayed up for half a month and got a salary of 1,000 yuan. But then the boyfriend came to Foshan to try work, did not wrap up or eat, all the costs I came to pay, the pressure is very high. Although my life is a little more generous now, I still live in anxiety. At the moment I'm considering whether or not to get married, because the hardships of the past few years have turned me into a dink, full of fear for the future.
@Nine Songs
In 2018, I interned in Beijing as a senior in college, but my family was not poor, but I didn't want to ask my family for money. So I could only eat cakes at night, not even pickles; I was reluctant to turn on the air conditioner, so I bought a second-hand fan with my roommate. In the second phase of the internship, I gave up the internship opportunity of a product manager who may have a better future and went to audit, simply because of the money.
↑ Movie "Dallas Buyers Club"
<h1 class="pgc-h-arrow-right" data-track="138" > is to be poor now, to leave money for the future: no one wants to live a hard life, but I believe that poverty is only temporary</h1>
In one of Murakami Haruki's short stories about poverty, if you only look at the first half, you will probably sketch a tragic picture in your mind: "There is no combination sound and no TELEVISION, no washing machine, no refrigerator, no dining table, no gas stove, no telephone, no electric hot water bottle, no vacuum cleaner, no electric oven, no, nothing." But he turned the edge of his pen, but the second half was very optimistic about life, not to go against the grain, nor to complain. "So, even though it was a move, thirty minutes didn't take it." If you don't have money, your life will be extremely simple."
Now, college students, want to make themselves independent in advance, do not look for parents to live, three part-time jobs every month, earn living expenses, a month can earn up to 1500, at least 6-700 hundred, and do not want to fall behind the schoolwork so the requirements are not high, enough to live on the line. As a savings, the scholarship resolutely does not take out a penny, eats in the canteen, eats in the single digits a day, and only eats 200-300 yuan per month. Although poor, I felt great. Recently, in order to improve myself, I signed up for a class, and the scholarships were spent, and I became a completely poor student hahaha, but I was very rich inside.
↑ Movie "When Happiness Knocks"
@M.
Having just returned to China, I have no idea about the price of renting a house in Shanghai. However, the starting salary of the industry is relatively low, and there is very little housing fund left for itself. From Hangzhou to Shanghai to see all day, from Puxi to see Pudong, the more I look at it, the more desperate, basically about to give up. When I went home that day, I contacted a few intermediaries, and the next day I continued to look, looked at three or four, and finally saw a relatively satisfactory place. A very small room but all the utensils, with a cubicle with kitchen and bathroom. After moving in, I dressed according to my own habits, put flowers on it, bought an oven, and took a little money every month to buy tableware and small decorations. I spent a year in this small space, until the next year I got a salary increase and replaced it with a larger one-room apartment. The embarrassment of not having money to rent a house and the despair of finding a house were slowly broken up by their own business in a year.
@Mr. Lin
25 years old, living in a small room with a rent of five hundred yuan a month, doing a 3500-wage job, and has not bought clothes for a year, clothes and shoes that were bought many, many years ago. Never go to a meaningless dinner, just want to save more money, so that you can be responsible for your own expenses when you go to graduate school in the future. I never felt that poverty limited anything, and everything I do now is for the long-term future.
↑ Movie "Saving Money Romance"
<h1 class="pgc-h-arrow-right" data-track="140" > written at the end</h1>
Today, consumerism is still prevalent. We see more of the "success" stories about how young people earn x million a month at a young age, or go to high-end restaurants, buy luxury bags, and even buy a car and a house. Under such a background, "poor" has become the most disturbing and most wanted to get rid of the people of this era, and the experience and story of the "poor" have also been drowned in a huge wave of information and algorithm recommendation mechanisms, becoming a part of the "silence".
It's not the audience's fault. But we need to be wary that information cocoons give people the illusion that what they see is the world. When it pushes you the same kind of things you have seen, and constantly reminds you that you can't lose, can't be left behind, can't be left behind by the times and peers, then you have to consume, you have to experience, you have to make life upgrade better. All of this reminds you that poverty is original sin. This is also why the material level that this generation can have is not worse than that of people in the seventies and eighties, but the feeling of "poverty" is not lower than before, and "poverty" has become the most important, or even the only problem.