Liu Jiming's The Human Realm: If We Take Off Kong Yiji's "Long Gown," Can We Become "Ma La"?

He Wei, Published in: Twin Mountain Record, June 14, 2025

[note: Kong Yiji is the protagonist of Lu Xun's short story of the same name — a destitute, down-and-out scholar who nonetheless clings to the long scholar's gown that marks his status as an educated man. Lu Xun originally intended the "long gown one cannot take off" as a satirical image of anachronistic intellectuals, but in recent years it has been widely adopted by university graduates as a self-deprecating meme. The rise of this "Kong Yiji literature" phenomenon reflects the enormous gap between the jobs that university-educated young people hope for and the jobs they can actually find. Educated people began joking that their inability to find suitable employment was because they couldn't take off the "long gown" — and so they had no choice but to "take it off" and try work beneath their level of education.]

Ma La in The Human Realm received a higher education, served as a schoolteacher, and ran a company — yet in the end he took off his "long gown" and returned to Shenhuangzhou to become a new-style farmer. But Ma La's becoming a farmer was not a retreat back to square one — it was, after a lifetime of experience, the finding of a life's ideal.

So: is the "retreat" of taking off the "long gown" as spoken of today truly the same kind of retreat as Ma La's in The Human Realm? Where do the differences lie? And how should we think about those differences?

Before answering these questions, I need to briefly introduce Ma La's experience as the novel presents it. Ma La was three years old when he drifted about with his mother and his elder brother Ma Ke after leaving Dongting Lake, eventually settling in Shenhuangzhou. His growing up bore witness to many historical events after the founding of the People's Republic — the People's Commune movement, the sending of educated youth to the countryside, Reform and Opening-Up, the tide of migrant labor, the abolition of the agricultural tax. Along the way, in his youth, he successively lost his mother and his brother; it was with Guo Dawan's help that he grew to adulthood, received an education, and became an "intellectual." During his university years, Ma La came to know another person who would profoundly shape his life beyond his brother: his teacher Lü Yongjia. After graduating from Yanhe Normal College, he was assigned to teach at Hekou Middle School, then at Lü Yongjia's urging resigned from his state-salaried teaching post to go into business. When the venture with his teacher Lü Yongjia was going splendidly, he was forced into involvement in a smuggling case and served prison time in place of the deceased Lü Yongjia. Released in 2000, he returned to Shenhuangzhou, became a farmer, grew strawberries and kiwifruit, and — ahead of his time and with a bold willingness to be first — established Shenhuangzhou's very first professional farmers' cooperative. Just as he was about to lead more villagers toward prosperity, he was forced to bow before the capital that had invaded the countryside.

To compare Ma La's return to farming with the contemporary act of "taking off the long gown," we must first clarify several questions.

Part One

Before we can take off the "long gown," we need to have actually put it on. Today we treat "knowledge" as the "long gown" — but is the gown on our bodies truly well made? Is it not rather a shoddy, cobbled-together thing? As China's national strength has grown and education has become increasingly universal, a widespread illusion has formed: that anyone who has studied and received a higher education has acquired Kong Yiji's "long gown." This is not so.

In my view, Ma La in The Human Realm can genuinely be called an "intellectual." Unlike today's universalized education, the era in which Ma La graduated still belonged to an elite system: in 1978, the gross enrollment rate in higher education was only 2.7%. Moreover, Ma La developed the habit of lifelong reading and learning — in his earlier years he read novels and philosophy; after returning to the countryside he began reading books on soil science and agricultural technology. Knowledge alone is not enough, however. What matters more for a true "intellectual" is a sense of social responsibility — a sense that the rise and fall of the world under heaven is one's own concern — along with the capacity to judge the prospects of social development. When Ma La returns to Shenhuangzhou he sees that "the village has only the old and the young; you can barely make out a single able-bodied man or woman; the eye sweeps over a scene of desolation, like a landscape in a film after the ravages of war." This is the hollowing-out of the countryside — caused by the urban-rural dual structure — with most of the young and able-bodied flowing to the cities, leaving land with no one to farm it. The "grassroots literature" of the early new century concentrated its reflection on precisely this phenomenon. And Ma La returns precisely to try with all his strength to transform this situation: he subscribes to newspapers, buys a computer, gets connected to the internet — all to receive new information quickly and judge the new situation so as to change things. He is not a village cadre, yet he cares more about Shenhuangzhou's tomorrow than the village cadres do. He could have made better choices for himself, yet he is willing to put down roots in the countryside as a new-style farmer. He is by nature shy and reserved, yet he became the first person in Shenhuangzhou to dare try something new, establishing the professional farmers' cooperative. In the process of founding the cooperative, he paid out of his own pocket when other members had no funds, and little by little he moved and enlightened Guyu, Xiaoguai, and others — truly fulfilling the role of an "intellectual" in the countryside. Compared to Ma La, what "long gown" do we have to speak of?

Part Two

Granting for the moment that contemporary young people do have a "long gown" — why should we take it off? And what is the difference between our taking it off and Ma La's?

The "long gown" is a real-world symbol of "knowledge." Can we really find work simply by taking it off? Those who labor with their bodies rather than their knowledge would surely snort with contempt: "Do you think this work is so easy to do?" Seen this way, perhaps we are somewhat ignorant of the hardships of ordinary life and unacquainted with the ways of the world. Moreover, taking off the "long gown" that represents "knowledge" — does this not also implicitly deny knowledge itself, deny the value of educational credentials? Is reading truly useless? Is diligent study really meaningless? To take a concrete example: if we had not studied, we would not even be able to produce the self-deprecating comparison to "Kong Yiji's long gown," let alone understand it when someone else made it. The difficulty of finding good employment, or finding work that falls far short of our expectations, is caused by many factors — not by "educational credentials" alone — and so we cannot allow ourselves to negate the value of education. Speaking from my own experience in the humanities, where income is certainly not high, the level of one's institution and one's degree remain an important key for getting one's foot in the door when submitting job applications.

Seen in this light, what Ma La took off was not the "long gown" representing knowledge — for he never stopped earnestly studying and updating his knowledge. What he took off was the "long gown" representing society's preconceived notions about what an intellectual ought to be and do. This is connected to the era he inhabited: in that era, the only goal of a country boy getting an education was to go to the city, obtain urban work and an urban identity. One need only think of An Ordinary World to understand: that novel reflects not only the interior history of a generation of rural intellectuals but also serves as a mirror image of a social condition. And so Ma La's choice to put down roots in the countryside was profoundly difficult for people to understand. But is the only purpose of hard-won study to achieve fame and fortune? Ma La, of course, did not choose to stay in the countryside from the very beginning — it was a life choice he arrived at only after the company's collapse, Lü Yongjia's death, and several years in prison as a stand-in for the company. With his knowledge and by following the right person, Ma La had once shone — but through capital's greed and Lü Yongjia's desperate gamble, he also fell to the lowest point of his life. It was only after experiencing these great rises and falls that Ma La came to understand what he truly wanted. Perhaps a return home is every person's homesick instinct — he needed to return to his spiritual homeland in search of consolation, to find a resting point for a soul that had drifted half a lifetime. But after returning to his home, Ma La did not lie flat and give up — he set out again, relying on his own knowledge, his broader vision, and his audacity to dream and to act, to lead the farmers toward prosperity.

So what Ma La took off was the suit and tie of the intellectual, and put on the garb of the new-style farmer of the socialist countryside. What he "took off" was the received idea that an intellectual can only accomplish something in the city. What he "took off" was all the glory and all the silence of the past.

Furthermore, the "retreat" we speak of when people take off the "long gown" today is aimed only at the individual — things have not gone as one personally wished — and it is a private matter. Ma La's retreat, by contrast, carries a collective and public character, because he wants to transform a declining Shenhuangzhou.

Part Three

Finally: how should we take off this "long gown"?

When we speak today of the "Kong Yiji long gown one cannot take off," it carries a tone of self-deprecation and irony — of helplessness and powerlessness. Its prevalence across the internet has given more and more young people the feeling of having found a sense of belonging, because it is often within a collective that we find belonging. But it is also within a collective that we are most easily stripped of our individual selves. Many people have been swept up involuntarily, joining passively — simply because we all face the same difficult employment environment. When people discover that under the shelter of this internet catchphrase they can temporarily set aside their disappointments, they feel as if they have found a refuge and join without hesitation. In doing so, we miss an opportunity to examine ourselves clearly, see the situation for what it is, and adjust our direction accordingly.

The environment is difficult, it is true — but even in the most difficult environments, some people succeed. Why should we be content to be the majority of the group rather than the one who stands apart within it? I remember a podcast — I have forgotten which episode — in which a major figure in real estate said something that left a deep impression on me. The gist was: every generation has its own easy things and its own hard things; rather than tangling ourselves up in the question of the era, we would do better to do each thing that is presently ours to do — if it is time for the college entrance exam, sit the exam; if it is time to get a qualification, get the qualification. That way, when opportunity arrives, we will not find ourselves at a loss.

Returning to Ma La in The Human Realm: he voluntarily took off the "long gown" of the intellectual and returned to the countryside. Although he had served prison time in another's place, his old schoolmate the county magistrate Ding Youpeng still believed in his abilities and was willing to help him make a comeback — yet he refused. He wanted only to accomplish something in the countryside. Viewed from the perspective of history, his choice was consonant with the direction of China's social development — for rural construction needs precisely these intellectuals willing to give of themselves.

And so: to take off the "long gown" passively is the way of the majority — an escape from reality, a hasty search for temporary security. To take it off actively is to go against the crowd, to be the one who dares to be first. The question of how to take off the "long gown" also reminds us that when faced with what is fashionable, we must not simply follow the crowd — or mechanically apply a label to ourselves.