Fifteen years after that famous life plan, what happened to its advocates? ｜Relay Interview 020 Tang Guanhua

( The original article was published in Xiaoniao Literature )

Text | Yang Ying

In general, Tang Guanhua is an issue maker. In terms of title, he can be a musician, a multimedia designer, a charity person, a video producer... and so on. The title changes depending on what issues he appears on and how those issues are defined by the media. Over the years, he and the media have formed a symbiotic relationship: the media needs his issues, and he also needs the media's right to speak.

Before chatting, Tang Guanhua sent me a copy of T Magazine’s Chinese version’s report on him in October 2022. This is the latest systematic review of Tang Guanhua and his "Homeland Plan" by the media. Previous similar ones include "Qingdao Daily" in 2020, "Interface" in 2019, "China Youth Daily" in 2018 and 2015. "New York Times". This is of course not all the reports. Under the Wikipedia entry for "Tang Guanhua", there are as many as 31 citation sources and 6 information sources, the vast majority of which are reports from various Chinese and English media. The earlier ones were in 2014, and most were released in 2020. In all these reports, Tang Guanhua's life played a role similar to that of a "spectacle". In other words, it went further than ordinary "lifestyle" behavior. Just like a Hollywood movie, "spectacle" needs to be told, analyzed, and felt, and all of these combined make up "charm." Tang Guanhua knew this. One report said, "When media workers filmed him, Tang Guanhua used his own video recorder to record the interview process for many years."

Tang Guanhua was born in Qingdao, Shandong Province in 1989. He is a child of a middle-class family. His father was once a poet and later became a businessman. The money he earned "at least does not require others to support him in his later years." In 2008, when Tang Guanhua was 18 years old, he proposed a "Home Plan". This plan expressed his understanding of human civilization and crises at that time in 20,000 words, including environmental changes, energy supply, wealth distribution and There is also a program of action for the evolution of the earth. The general idea is to spend 25 years to first be self-sufficient, then attract people who agree with the concept to form a community, and then "explore the tension between home and city, so that home and city can form a healthy exchange for the rest of our lives."

Tracing the origins of Tang Guanhua's above cognition is far less easy than describing what he did subsequently. T Magazine said that he didn’t think much about it at first, just to escape from a life involved in money and consumption; in the “Interface” report, Tang Guanhua was already an artist before he proposed these things - he had done conceptual photography and made documentaries , did performance art performances, and met many friends in the process, and discussed their "home plan" with them. Then in 2010, Tang Guanhua went to Laoshan and started a self-sufficient life. This thing also has a name, "Self-Sufficiency Laboratory", starting from building houses by hand, digging toilets and growing vegetables.

Neither of us mentioned this when we were talking. From the moment he said, "I don't take classes seriously after the third grade of elementary school," the conversation went in the direction of Tang Guanhua's family of origin. His father is the starting point of his story - I later saw similar statements in other media - Tang Guanhua said that his father often put him in Xinhua Bookstore, so he read a lot of books, "I feel like in fifth and sixth grade The world is vast, I know more than others, and I feel that I have a special mission and must do something.”

But my father’s understanding of “do something” is that if you can’t enter a top university, it’s better to make money as soon as possible and start a business to get the first pot of gold. Tang Guanhua said that he started repairing computers for others in the first grade of junior high school. “I came into contact with (computers) relatively early when I was a child, so I would assemble machines for others. If something broke, I would fix it. A trip would cost at least 50 yuan to start.” By the time he was in his first year of high school, Tang Guanhua was able to open his own design studio, earn a stable income, and rent a house by himself. But the father was still dissatisfied.

"In the early days, I spent a lot of energy dealing with my father's expectations, because you don't have any other direction or other life, you are just in the process of proving yourself. There is no real sense of accomplishment in this process, and all you get is No. I felt that I was able to survive better than my peers, but I still didn’t get recognition. In addition, I had some funds at the time, so I could go abroad or travel around, and in the process I felt that they didn’t need me. They have no problem themselves, so why should I prove myself in this case?”

"I started to think about the rationality of this problem. What should I do with my life? Is it just to keep proving, and then make more money, and then he will be happy? I will be recognized? This is the purpose? This is definitely not the case My purpose in this world.”

The time when Tang Guanhua was thinking about this was around 2006 to 2007. After that, his father asked a friend to get him a high school diploma, and he said goodbye to school completely.

"Once I figured out this problem, I felt very relaxed. After I came back, I threw away all my things. The watches, bags and other gadgets I bought with money in the past were just in front of him (referring to my father). I threw them all down the stairs and didn’t want them anymore.” Tang Guanhua said, “I went back just to make an announcement. After the announcement, I started to think about what I wanted to do.”

Tang Guanhua discovered public welfare in the process of searching everywhere. What he discovered was not only the purpose of public welfare, but also the model of public welfare. "I see that many scholars, or those outside the academy, are researching some small things, or protecting some animals, and have some support from foundations. Yes, they do this through sponsorship or various self-help thing, so I became concerned about such things.”

By the time we chatted in early 2023, the Homestead Project was in its 15th year. Tang Guanhua has advanced his own self-sufficiency to the second step of his action plan, community. The community also has its own name, "consensus community". Tang Guanhua said that this is a word he invented "after inspecting various countries and conducting detailed research on various communities at home and abroad in ancient and modern times, combined with his understanding of Chinese semantics."

"Consensus Community" has more specific hardware requirements. “When I wanted to make a consensus community, the land in Laoshan was not enough. I needed a piece of land. The land could be small to begin with, but it must have at least three hundred acres of expansion space, and the community must have the possibility to grow. . It is best to provide such land for free, because we do not have the funds in the early stage." Tang Guanhua told the "Interface" interviewer.

Fuzhou provided him with such conditions. Zhengrong Charity Foundation has 500 acres of land. It originally planned to engage in organic farming, but it failed. In 2015, Tang Guanhua reached a cooperation with the foundation, and the latter authorized Tang Guanhua to use it in the name of "experimentation." This project in Fuzhou is called "Southern Living Community" by Tang Guanhua. His model is still to attract like-minded people to do things they are interested in on these 500 acres of land, such as construction, agriculture, handicrafts, and breeding. If these things have something in common, it is that apart from survival, no one has any utilitarian purpose. Tang Guanhua basically does not review "like-minded people". If you want to enter the community, you must first understand some consensus (WeChat, website or other channels, you can always understand the detailed requirements), and the limited hardware facilities have formed a problem in itself. Natural filtering mechanism. Many people came and went because of it. But by 2020, hundreds of people had taken part in the experiment, and a dozen long-term residents were already living there.

Tang Guanhua said that it would take him at least 10 years to conduct such a community experiment - Fuzhou failed to do so, and the Zhenrong Charity Foundation later faced financial pressure, and the southern living community experiment was terminated. Tang Guanhua then entered the process of finding a new experimental site. As for himself, he temporarily settled in Damoyu Village in Kunming, Yunnan.

The most interesting part of Tang Guanhua has always been not that he broke away from the daily life that most people understand and forced himself into some kind of painful experiment, but his social imagination. There is a completely different meaning between doing something alone and hoping that everyone will do it together. Tang Guanhua is committed to practicing a certain template first - not only a life model, but also himself as a practitioner of this model and a communicator with the "normal" world. You can understand him as the image ambassador of the life model he advocates. . Rather than specific life skills, he used "independent thinking" to describe the significance of this.

"It emphasizes people's independence, or freedom. Without this kind of thinking, others can only give you a set of frameworks. When you find other things from this framework, you are actually framed by this framework."

He proposed that "consensus communities" are stateless human communities that are clustered based on hobbies, religious beliefs, eating habits and other concepts, "such as artist communities, Christian communities, Zen meditation communities, vegetarian communities, etc." There is something subtly risky about these claims—not in a life sense, but in a political sense. Including the failure suffered by Fuzhou, in a sense, it was also the pressure caused by political reality. Now, in order to allow the "consensus community" to continue, he will also take the initiative to understand certain grassroots policies to gain support.

When I asked about this, Tang Guanhua's answers were frank but contradictory. The most contradictory part is that his plan to break away from the fixed social framework relies on the system to be realized. Tang Guanhua said that he would "unite all forces that can be united", but he would also remain cautious about cooperation opportunities from the government and enterprises.

"In fact, in previous practices, including in the past ten years... there were still some interactions. For example, rural revitalization was proposed later, right? There was also an ecological civilization. Many official media reported before 2010 and 2012 Just find me to sort it out... We have some communication and interaction."

"If someone is willing to fund this now, no matter who it is, domestic or foreign, individual or official, would you be willing to accept it?"

"Of course I will evaluate whether this matter is really sustainable. Suppose an overseas foundation comes and is immediately noticed by the government. It will not be sustainable. These issues must be weighed."

"So if the local government supports you, what's the incentive for it to do this?"

"To be honest, I don't really understand... because the government we are talking about is actually all levels of government. There are layers of officials at each level of government. Of course, you can talk about their actual interests. The demands are similar...but they also have different emphases. Villages, townships, counties, cities, and provinces are all different, but if you can make such a statement, you definitely want to do something."

He still hopes for some kind of spiritual contagion. "I may have to change some ways now to convey some spiritual power. I can also see that some people may still do it even though they know it is not possible, so it means that what has been conveyed now is not just a thing in a real physical space, it is It may be more metaphysical, and it may even plant some seeds... Because I am doing a life experiment, this experiment will continue to fail, but failure will also convey a lot of information."

Q: What interesting things have you been doing recently?

A: Do some inspections and research. When I was in Fuzhou before, I didn't go out. I received many people every day, so I rarely had time or opportunity to go to various places. Now that I have been to many places all the way from Fuzhou, I want to see what each county is doing and what the entire countryside looks like.

Q: What should be inspected?

A: When it comes to "consensus community" or lifestyle, we will see a lot of information. Including others telling us where there is a similar village, or where the government has launched a major rural revitalization project. We may have heard of it before, but now we have the opportunity to meet the operators of these places. There is another county in Fujian that may still want to communicate and do some construction work. The government has such support.

Q: Where is the interesting part?

A: If it is a construction experiment, we may be deriving a design method or even a design language. According to my architect friend Yoshitomi Haruki, "We are like leaves on a big tree in the city. Everything we depend on for survival comes from the trunk of the big tree. If the trunk of the big tree stops, the branches and leaves will immediately collapse." "This is very fragile. So what we are doing now is a decentralized building. For example, without centralized power supply and water supply, how can it keep running?

Q: What’s the hardest part?

A: If this thing can be practiced, it still needs a very stable space. Take it out for at least three to five years. A building can have four seasons in a year, a cycle. Without time, a lot of data cannot be produced.

Q: Any interesting people you would like to recommend for relay?

A: A friend who used to be in Greenpeace is very hardcore. You can consider this person.

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