That song "Have money and no money to go home for the New Year" has sung the voices of countless homecoming people.
All the way to the dusty, tired, as long as the plunge into the hot "home", a year of hard work is worth it.
But I don’t know when, the family reunion has changed its taste, adding a touch of awkwardness of being close to home.
Lin Yutang said: "Chinese’s face can not only be washed, but also thrown away, rewarded, contested and kept. Sometimes it seems that fighting for face is the first meaning of life."
The more people there are, the more you can’t escape the absurdity of "saving face"
01
How many people were kidnapped by face during the Spring Festival?
Face, the first meaning of visiting relatives and friends during the Chinese New Year.
In order to be "decent", it’s painful to punch a swollen face and fill a fat man.
1. You are a mature adult. It’s time to learn to pay a good New Year call.
The pain of being forced to show "communication skills" is comparable to talent show.
No matter how close you are to each other or how deep your friendship is, you have to smile, say hello warmly and take the initiative to greet each other, even if you don’t know the relationship at all.
Anyway, pull my parents’ sleeves, smiling mother immediately prompt:
This is the second cousin of your third uncle, Grandma Wang, and we are close relatives. According to your seniority, you have to call someone an old aunt!
Then, you have to hide your embarrassment with a smile and pretend to be caring and attentive naturally.
The days of visiting relatives can be described as the peak period of social phobia patients.
In the eyes of many parents, if you can’t greet your relatives and friends warmly, you are guilty of a big taboo, because "giving others a face is giving yourself a face."
In Family with Children, Liu Xing’s good friend Mouse went to Liu Xing’s house with her mother.
Mother winked and poked at her son. Every time she poked, the mouse said a compliment with a grin on her face.
Mouse and Mom/Family with Children
Xia Donghai and Liu Mei also had to follow closely, returning an anodyne greeting.
Liu Mei and Xia Donghai/Family with Children
After several rounds of "full chat", the mother was still not satisfied, poked her son again, and muttered with a mouse:
Mouse and Mom/Family with Children
The same is true for holidays. I have been struggling for 358 days in complicated social relationships. I finally have 7 days to stay at home and raise my spirit to be "willful", but I still have to deal with the world.
A superficial greeting, the same courtesy, the greeting person is exhausted physically and mentally, and the person being greeted is also embarrassed.
Liu Xing and Xia Xue/Family with Children
In the end, whose dignity was fulfilled?
2. "How drunk you can drink means how much you can afford me."
Distant relatives I haven’t seen for many years, old classmates I haven’t gathered together for a long time …
Common topics are becoming less and less, and the exchange of feelings depends on a glass of wine.
Drinking is supposed to be fun, but there are always people who, in order to highlight their appeal, turn drinking into a "mutual test" to keep up appearances and gain prestige.
"If you don’t drink, you won’t give me face."
"You are embarrassing me."
After three rounds of drinking, toasting becomes persuading, and persuading becomes forcing.
No one wants to be labeled as "indifferent to feelings" and can only surrender under the coercion of "deep feelings and a stuffy mouth"
Drinking a few glasses of wine has become a sign of testing the depth of friendship, which only satisfies the vanity of the drinker.
In the eyes of many people, drinking is related to their own face. Not drinking is almost linked to "incompetence", and refusing to drink means "not being brothers enough".
In order to be a hero, talk about loyalty, and fight for wine without restraint, it is more than human feelings that are kidnapped.
Mr. Shi, 40, dined with his comrades-in-arms for many years.
Mr. Shi, who was weak in alcohol, was embarrassed to be a wet blanket and forced himself to drink six bottles of beer.
During the dinner, he couldn’t help but want to go to the bathroom to vomit, and he was afraid of being laughed at. As soon as the dirt in his stomach swelled up, he held his breath hard and pressed it back.
Finally, Mr. Shi’s abdominal pain was unbearable, and he fell down on the table. After being sent to the hospital for examination, he found that Mr. Shi’s esophagus was "exploded" by the gas of beer.
If you want to save face to a certain extent, even "living a life of suffering" is a luxury.
At a dinner party in Jinhua, Zhejiang, 10 people advised each other to drink, and one of them was lying in the lobby of the hotel to sleep because of lack of alcohol.
By the time everyone came back, he was out of breath.
The police introduced Mr. Shi’s misfortune due to excessive drinking/pear video
The other nine people who drank at the same table were found to need to pay more than 600,000 yuan to the families of the deceased because they failed to fulfill their dissuasion obligations and failed to send their drunken friends home.
For the sake of the so-called face, punching a swollen face and filling it with fat, breaking a tooth and swallowing it in the stomach, at most, it is a temporary pain.
If you bet your life and put your health in it, it is really too late to regret it.
3. Even if you overdraw, you have to have a "decent year"
What are you most afraid of when you go home during the Spring Festival?
Endless marriage, birth, comparison and entertainment …
At the end of the day, I am most afraid of meeting that "you are so bad" look.
People who have worked hard outside for a year return to their hometown with great joy, only to find that the taste of the year is getting weaker and weaker and the taste of money is getting heavier and heavier.
A few days ago, there was a hot search on the national lucky money map.
Red envelopes of several hundred yuan are normal, but in some places, lucky money has already reached tens of thousands.
National Lucky Money Map/Weibo @ Sina News
China News Network once made a statistic, how much does it cost to spend a decent year?
The result is very heartfelt, and it costs 8900~36000 yuan.
Spring Festival spending statistics/China News Network
No matter how the year goes, you should at least "pretend" to be decent, so as not to be looked down upon.
If you can’t return home with clothes on, you should also "rent" it.
Ms. Liu, a white-collar worker in Shanghai, rented a 20,000-yuan bag to go back to her hometown this year. "There are many classmates and family gatherings to attend, and I need a decent bag."
The person in charge of the operation of a rental platform revealed, "In the first half of the month, the booking demand of some luxury brands began to rise sharply, but because many users will directly renew their leases, many users have not rented them."
It is understandable to show your success and pursue decency. If you deliberately show off, it will change its taste.
Netizens lamented the excessive pursuit of decency and the taste of the New Year/Weibo
People who really care about you, whether you get ahead or not, will leave a pair of bowls and chopsticks for you to have a hot meal with.
Too much care about other people’s eyes, trouble and money to cover up, but failed to live up to this hard-won reunion.
02
The face piled up by matter is doomed to be fragile.
In his autobiography "My First Half Life", Puyi once recalled the luxurious imperial life.
Even the daily thing of eating, the royal family can toss out a huge set of ostentation and extravagance, and decorate the decency to the extreme.
"The biggest ostentation and extravagance that consumes manpower, material resources and financial resources is eating.
I ordered a’ pass the meal!’
The little eunuch in front of him said the same thing to the eunuch in the temple on the Ming Temple in hall of mental cultivation,’ Pass the food!’
The eunuch in the temple passed this on to the eunuch standing outside Yangxin Gate, and he passed it on to the eunuch waiting in the imperial kitchen in West Strip … So it has been passed into the imperial kitchen.
Before the echo disappeared, a procession like a dowry had walked out of the imperial kitchen.
This is a team composed of dozens of eunuchs dressed neatly, carrying seven dining tables, holding dozens of red lacquer boxes painted with golden dragons, and heading straight for hall of mental cultivation. "
These dishes are just a formality. I don’t know how many times they have been reheated in order to complete the above process.
Puyi doesn’t eat these things, but wastes them in vain.
Confucius’ phrase "Never tire of eating fine food, never tire of eating fine food" originally emphasized the etiquette of life, but it has changed from generation to generation.
The culture of advocating etiquette and norms has created Chinese’s unique face view.
The royal family has its own strength to show off its prestige, while ordinary people pretend to be "face-to-face" for the sake of others’ eyes, so they can only eat their own bitter fruit.
Some scholars put forward the concept of "status consumption", which means that consumers convey their social status to others and improve their image through conspicuous consumption.
In short, it is to spend money to buy face.
According to the American magazine Jing Daily, by 2025, the luxury goods purchased by China’s post-90s and post-00s consumers are expected to account for 46% of the global market.
At the same time, the debt-to-income ratio of the post-90s generation in China reached an astonishing 1850%.
Behind the prosperity of luxury consumption, there is a worrying debt risk.
China tourists buy luxury goods/vision china.
Mr. Shen Lao, who lives in Shanghai, has a history of uremia for many years and relies on drug treatment to maintain his life.
Over half a year old, but I owe 1 million foreign debts.
This debt is owed by the adopted daughter.
Before that, he had paid off more than 1.3 million debts for his adopted daughter, patched things together and ran around …
Shen Lao’s self-report on bitter family affairs/"Case Focus"
In July 2017, Mr. Shen Lao’s adopted daughter suddenly disappeared, leaving a "suicide note" that listed all the foreign debts he owed.
"suicide note"/"case focus" left by adopted daughter
Mr. Shen Lao can’t believe it. The adopted daughter is a kindergarten teacher. How can she spend so much money?
According to a friend, Miss Shen spends a lot of money and is keen on buying brand-name clothes, cosmetics and bags.
My friend said that Miss Shen loves luxury bags/Case Focus.
When I first borrowed money, I just wanted to change my computer.
I tasted the sweetness of "decency" and gradually indulged in luxury goods that did not match my income, which gradually ruined a stable life.
In "Super Speaker", player Zhang Xiaolei has a thought-provoking passage:
Face is the most precious luxury in the world. How many people let go of their own limits and principles for it? They should take care of others’ faces and observe others’ glances.
You can build a decent face with materials, but after all, it is still a mirror, deceiving yourself.
03
Focus on the "lining"
Face is as funny as it looks noble.
Dou Wen Tao, the host, once filled a venue for the "buddy".
Many years ago, an unknown young man went through several layers of relationships and found Dou Wen Tao to help him marry.
Dou Wen Tao recalled helping to preside over the wedding/"Round Table"
The wedding scene was quite spectacular, and all the local dignitaries were present.
Dou Wen Tao also "played enough" and didn’t give a clue.
After the banquet, the groom confided to Dou Wen Tao: "This wedding is fake, it is for parents."
It turned out that the bride and groom had no intention of getting married.
The whole day’s fleet scheduling and luxury brothers lineup are all to show the neighbors who once looked down on the groom’s family how prominent their family is.
The so-called wedding is actually a sad farce.
"Face this thing can’t be defined. It’s like honor, but it’s not like honor.
It can’t be bought with money, it can give men or women substantial pride.
It is empty, men fight for it, and many women die for it. It is invisible, but it can exist only by showing it to the public. "
Sociologist Erving·Goffman’s parody theory reveals the essence of face: it is the social position or prestige that an individual obtains in society.
What many people can’t see through is that a person’s social status and external evaluation do not depend on the external appearance, but on the internal quality that a person has.
The evaluation standard of the world is always determined by value, and it is by no means a secular vision.
How much weight you have, how much face others will sell you.
Calm down and think about it, and you will find that 99% of what happens to yourself every day is meaningless to others.
There’s a line in The Master:
People live a lifetime, some people become face, some people become lining.
"If you don’t return to your hometown with wealth, you will never know." The overlord of the place of Xi Chu, who knows how to save face, will also be ridiculed as "dressed like a monkey."
Face is the facade to decorate the lining. As long as it is the facade, it may collapse in an instant.
As a "lining", the inner cultivation and personal qualities are invisible and intangible, but they really support a person’s solid spine.
This article was first published on WeChat WeChat official account: Financial Migrant Workers Lucky Fatso. The content of the article belongs to the author’s personal opinion and does not represent Hexun.com’s position. Investors should operate accordingly, at their own risk.
(Editor: Ji Liya HN003)
