Everyone Is Connected to Me: 

Reading Human Realm in Hongxing Village

By Sheshui Nongfu · May 7, 2026 · Source: Midnight Outcry (Ziye Nahan)

At six in the morning, before the dawn had fully broken, the market in Hongxing Village was already bustling. This had become a daily habit since I was stationed in the village: head to the morning market for breakfast, then take a stroll around. Only during these hours did this remote small town along the Han River truly come alive. Villagers from surrounding hamlets arrived from every direction—carrying fresh greens from their gardens on shoulder poles, holding poultry fresh from the coops, or pedaling creaking tricycles—jamming this narrow thoroughfare of merely a few hundred meters shoulder to shoulder. Steam rose from breakfast stalls; the beancurd seller hawked at the top of his lungs; an old cobbler sat on a folding stool puffing his pipe, waiting for customers; a vegetable vendor haggled with buyers in voices so shrill they sounded like an argument. These mingled sounds buzzed together into a single hum, creating the town's only burst of clamor and vitality each day.

At a breakfast stall, I ordered a bowl of hot-dry noodles and a bowl of sweet fermented rice wine, squatting on a roadside step to eat. An elderly vegetable vendor beside me called out, "Early rise, cadre!" I nodded with a smile. He lived in a nearby hamlet, just a ten-minute bike ride away; though in his sixties and slightly stooped, his spirit was remarkably hale. I asked how this year's harvest was turning out. Grinning broadly, he said, "Not bad, not bad—enough to keep body and soul together." With that, he lowered his head to weigh vegetables. Watching his busy silhouette, I realized with sudden clarity that this was the very "countryside" absent from daily circulars and official briefings—not cold statistics, not administrative reports processed through layers of bureaucracy, but these genuine people, this straightforward, earthy vernacular, and this dew-dampened, weathered, furrowed face that shone with quiet stubbornness.

After breakfast, I walked another circuit through the streets and unconsciously wound up on the river dike. Broad daylight had broken, and the waters of the Han River shimmered in the morning glow. An occasional cargo barge drifted past on the wide river, its horn echoing across the open fields on both banks, mournful and solitary. The river breeze blew against my face, carrying a cool mixture of moisture and earth that pierced straight to the core. This dike resembled a dividing line: beyond it flowed the rushing river; behind it rose the hearth-smoke of countless households. Gazing upon the flowing water, an indefinable sensation welled up inside me. Not far away on the river shoals stood a solitary windmill, turning quietly like a silent sentinel.

It was precisely at this moment that the novel Human Realm surfaced from the depths of my memory, vivid and clear.

To tell the truth, I had read Human Realm multiple times. When my work unit dispatched me here as a village-stationed cadre, I packed no other books, bringing only this novel along for company, opening its pages every now and then. In earlier readings, I had been drawn primarily to the narrative itself: Ma La returning home after his prison release to plant fruit orchards and launch a cooperative; Murong Qiu navigating the academic establishment before finally deciding to return to rural soils for fieldwork. I had followed the plot, shared the characters' joys and sorrows, and been moved by their fluctuating destinies. Back then, I believed I truly understood the book. Yet not until I arrived in Hongxing Village—this remote settlement perched along the Han River far from metropolitan Wuhan—and beheld the river, the dike, the quietly turning windmill on the flats, and the living souls walking this earth, did I realize for the first time, to the bone, what those two words, "Human Realm," truly signify.

The events of the novel unfold on Shenhuang Island. That place also has a mighty river, a river dike, and soil nurtured and threatened by rushing waters. Ma La, Murong Qiu, Uncle Dawan, Guyu, Xiao Guai'er... These names and personas once existed solely as type on paper. But standing on the dike in Hongxing Village, I felt them come alive, stepping off the page and walking beside me. Was not that old man squatting on the field ridge puffing his cigarette the spitting image of Uncle Dawan? Was not that nimble yet bashful youth selling fish at the morning market the very picture of Guyu? And that child trailing behind adults with trousers perennially caked in mud—was he not Xiao Guai'er in the flesh? At this moment, art and reality converged.

My eyes grew hot.

Human Realm is art. Teacher Liu Jiming condensed his lifelong reflections on rural China, the peasantry, and this soil into the compact stage of Shenhuang Island. The narrative there was distilled: clear thematic lines, concentrated conflicts, and characters both sharp and archetypal. It resembles an intentional painting where every stroke carries purpose and every color speaks. Yet Hongxing Village before my eyes is raw, living, unvarnished existence. Everything here is more tangled, diffuse, and ordinary than the world of art, steeped in the unadorned triviality of living. There are few dramatic confrontations, few operatic crescendos of ecstasy and grief; there is only daily labor, calculations over salt and rice, domestic gossip, and long stretches of plain, quiet days.

Yet it was precisely this unvarnished existence that enabled me to grasp Human Realm from the marrow.

In the past, I read the Human Realm on paper; stationed in the village, I am reading the Human Realm in real life. These are two distinct modes of reading, yet they are tied together like a red thread linking art and life. Once, across paper, I imagined Ma La's solitude and tenacity; now, standing atop the Han River dike, I personally experience that heavy, layered sentiment. Liu Jiming wrote life into art, constructing a world in Human Realm that draws the reader inward; my rural assignment brought that artistic world into physical reality, letting me cross paths with those literary souls with every sunrise and dusk in Hongxing Village.

If Human Realm, through the figure of the returning Ma La, sketches an intellectual's reflection on the countryside, the peasantry, and the trajectory of China, then standing on this dike, am I not likewise an embodied silhouette thinking and discovering in real time? Ma La is fictional, yet his bewilderment, his struggles, and his persistence are real; I am real, yet my emotions, my questions, and my underlying sentiments appear to have been laid out by Liu Jiming long ago. Art and reality converge and interweave until the boundaries dissolve. Because I possess Human Realm as a reference point, my rural experience has grown profound: as though there is a path that Ma La walked in the book that I am walking now; as though there is a river that the people of Shenhuang Island crossed that the villagers of Hongxing Village are crossing today.

What does this convergence mean?

The answer, I suspect, lies in the word "devotion."

Lu Xun wrote: "Countless people, infinite distances, are all connected to me." When I read those words in my youth, they felt vast and abstract; recalling them on the river dike struck like a dull mallet against my chest, aching deep inside. Are those unfamiliar souls far away, separated by thousands of miles of sorrow and joy, truly bound to me? I cannot say with certainty. But what of this earth that nurtured me, these homegrown villagers, these elders of my own flesh and blood—how could they be disconnected from me?

I am an intellectual who emerged from rural soil. My roots remain embedded in the earth; through my veins runs peasant blood. I have lived in metropolitan centers for years, yet that part of me belonging to the land never left. Now I have returned, dispatched as a village cadre to another rural community: Hongxing Village. It is not my birthplace, yet it is where I am stationed, where I live and labor day and night. This river, this dike, this windmill, these elderly men and children have woven themselves into my life.

This is where Ma La and I share our deepest kinship. We are both returnees, caught between city and country, intimate yet estranged. I recognize that I am no longer an authentic peasant. Though I understand their dialect, squat on field ridges to share their meals, and help resolve their domestic grievances, something has been added to me, and something has been lost. I carry the detached reflection of an intellectual, while having lost the unreflective authenticity of the born farmer. I strive to assimilate, yet that self stands apart, aware, with a touch of melancholy: I cannot truly go back.

Yet does being unable to return fully mean one should not return at all?

No. One must still return. Even if one can never recover a state of raw peasant existence, even if one bears the marks of urban life, I still want to come back. For here dwell my kin, my concerns, and the place where my heart finds rest.

Where the heart finds peace is home.

I thought of the dwelling built beneath the windmill in Human Realm. Ma La erected a room by the riverbank, turning himself into a farmer and launching his idealistic enterprise through a posture of strategic retreat. Some labeled him a Don Quixote, tilting foolishly against windmills beyond his strength. But to my eyes, that was not an attack; it was a rooting—driving oneself into the earth so that, even if mocked, misunderstood, or neglected, one might stand guard and accomplish what little lies within one's power. That stance moves me, and it shames me. I lack Ma La's resolve; I am an ordinary cadre engaged in ordinary labor, capable of changing very little. Yet my heart leans toward him—toward that clarity, that perseverance, and that retreat-as-defense idealism.

Village-level assignments are consumed by minutiae. Endless reports, recurring meetings, and daily mediation of domestic squabbles can breed weariness and gloom. In such moments, I think of Ma La: of him beholding the desolate Shenhuang Island in the persistent autumn rain, and of how he trudged through it step by step. Then I tell myself that I am not simply finishing an administrative task; I am paying homage in my own way to Human Realm, and to all who have labored, struggled, and hoped upon this soil.

Homage. That is the fitting word.

Homage to Liu Jiming, who with Human Realm wrote a chronicle for contemporary rural China and gave voice to the silent majority. Homage to Ma La, who bore the hopes of a village on shoulders not inherently strong. Homage to Uncle Dawan, Guyu, and Xiao Guai'er—names in a novel, yet faces I encounter daily in life. And homage to my rural kinsfolk: the people of this land whose calloused hands raised generation after generation of children like me who walked out into the world.

I recognize that actual village work diverges from the narrative in Human Realm. Reality holds fewer dramatic crescendos and fewer concentrated archetypes; for the most part, it is plain, diffuse, and mundane. Yet spiritually and emotionally, they share an identical heartbeat. It is an intellectual's devotion to the people—a love for the soil, and a commitment to those who live upon it. This devotion is no empty slogan; it permeates every household visit, every conversation, and every decision made. It prevents my rural assignment from remaining a bureaucratic formality, breathing a living soul into the work.

Human Realm brought life into art, while village assignment casts the light of art onto life. Artistic truth and social reality blend together, granting me a comprehension of this soil deeper than any solitary reading could provide.

I stood for a long time upon the Han River dike.

The windmill turned, unhurried, like an elder recounting a distant tale. Sunlight glinted off the water, dazzling the eyes into a quiet reverie. I remembered my childhood in the countryside, the hearth-smoke curling into dusk, and myself running barefoot along field ridges. Back then, I knew nothing except that I grew from the soil. Later came schooling, employment, and the bustle of urban life; at times, I felt myself drifting farther from that earth. Yet standing on this dike, tasting the river breeze and watching the windmill, I feel I have returned—not as that naive youth of the past, but as a returnee carrying reflection, devotion, contrition, and resolve.

Whatever trajectory my future village assignment takes, I will remember this moment: the market in the morning light, the old man squatting by the street eating hot-dry noodles, the long horn echoing over the water, the hum of the windmill, and every word and character in Human Realm. I will strive to be worthy of the land that reared me, and worthy of the rural elders living upon it.

They are my kinsfolk.

And I, a son of the peasantry who never truly departed in spirit, am willing to offer my modest strength to do what little I can for them. Even if it is slight, even if it alters nothing, at least I have returned. I stand here. I remember them.

Countless people, infinite distances, are all connected to me.

All the more so is this land, which I love to my depths and can never forsake.

The river wind blew on. Turning, I descended the dike. Behind me, the waters rolled forward and the windmill turned in silence. Ahead lay Hongxing Village, my mundane work, and those faces familiar beyond measure that I meet every day. I quickened my stride, my heart grounded. It felt as though one book had closed, and another was opening.

The title of that book is also Human Realm.

May 1, 2026 · Hongxing Village