He fiercely criticized the Manchu scholar clique and the twelve emperors of the Qing Dynasty.

Lin Jing made no attempt to hide the surprise in her eyes.

A child born in 1990 in a rural area of ​​northern Jiangsu Province has never been beaten since the third grade of elementary school. If this statement were given at a family education lecture in a first-tier city in 2016, it would be taken for granted.

But in the context of rural towns at the beginning of the millennium, it was even more incongruous than a golden phoenix flying out of the village.

Lin Jing instantly captured the dramatic narrative tension. She gently placed her pen on the A4 paper and leaned her body towards Zhao Shuyao.

"In the rural areas back then, it wasn't absolutely unheard of, but it was extremely rare." Lin Jing stared into Zhao Shuyao's eyes, her tone filled with intense curiosity. "So, after you stopped being beaten, how did your father educate you? He couldn't just let you do whatever you wanted, could he?"

After hearing this, Zhao Shuyao smiled broadly, leaned back on the sofa, and spread his hands.

"Of course, we should reason with each other." Zhao Shuyao said in a relaxed tone, as if he were talking about an extremely ordinary little thing.

Lin Jing raised an eyebrow, waiting for him to continue.

Zhao Shuyao crossed his hands behind his head and looked up, as if recalling a vivid moment.

"I remember it very clearly; it was when I was in the fourth grade of elementary school." Zhao Shuyao adjusted his posture, leaned forward slightly, and began to recreate the scene.

"That afternoon after school, I went fishing by the river with a few other unlucky kids from the village. I tore a half-foot-long gash in my new autumn clothes that I had only worn for a few days. Not only that, I also rolled around in the mud, and I looked like I had just been dug out of the ground."

Upon hearing this, the cameraman next to him couldn't help but tremble slightly.

"I was standing outside my house, feeling incredibly cold inside." Zhao Shuyao patted his thigh, his expression vivid. "According to the common practice in our village at the time, this was an unforgivable crime. I even planned out how I would be beaten, and even considered whether to protect my head or my buttocks first when I entered the house."

Lin Jing pictured the scene in her mind and asked with a smile, "And then? Your father didn't resort to family discipline?"

"No." Zhao Shuyao shook his head. "I pushed open the door and went in. My dad was sitting in the yard smoking. He glanced at me but didn't say a word. Then he pointed to the hand pump and told me to go wash my face."

Zhao Shuyao made a gesture of holding a rice bowl in mid-air with his hands.

"During dinner, the atmosphere was extremely tense. He let me eat normally, but I kept glancing at him out of the corner of my eye, afraid that he would suddenly pick up his chopsticks and hit me while I was eating. In the end, the meal was over and everything was calm."

"After finishing my meal, I quickly slipped back to the inner room and diligently wrote my homework neatly. I even folded the draft paper into a square, as if I had written the four characters 'Start anew' on it."

Zhao Shuyao's exaggerated description made Lin Jing burst out laughing. She could all too well understand the agonizing feeling of waiting for judgment after making a mistake.

"My dad didn't come in until I closed my notebook and called me into the main room." Zhao Shuyao's smile gradually faded, replaced by an extremely serious expression.

"I stood in front of him with my head down, terrified. I felt like I'd really hit a really big hole up tonight."

Zhao Shuyao paused, then couldn't help but laugh, revealing an expression that still seemed unbelievable to him to this day.

"But he didn't hit me." Zhao Shuyao looked at the camera, slowing his speech as he recounted the conversation from that night more than a decade ago, word by word. "He sat on the stool, looked at me, and the first thing he said was—"

Zhao Shuyao imitated his father's slightly hoarse northern Jiangsu accent:

“You’re not young anymore. You’ll be ten after the New Year. A ten-year-old should know right from wrong. It’s not appropriate to hit you now.”

Lin Jing's eyes widened slightly.

"You've reached the age where you care about your reputation," Zhao Shuyao continued, his eyes deep. "That's why I'm saving face for you today. Besides, you're so old now; if I chased you around the yard with a broom handle, I'd lose face too."

The suite was extremely quiet.

Lin Jing was stunned, and the assistant in charge of recording was also stunned.

This passage contains no sophisticated vocabulary, only plain language, but its respect for children's independent personalities and empathy for different social classes and ages completely surpasses more than 80% of parenting experts on the market.

"Your father's ideas..." Lin Jing took a while to find her voice. She shook her head with a sigh, "They are extremely advanced even now, let alone in a rural area more than ten years ago. This really doesn't sound like something someone with only a third-grade education could say."

Lin Jing carefully considered her words and gave her evaluation: "Perhaps this is the survival wisdom that the older generation has learned by struggling in the loess soil."

"No, Reporter Lin." Zhao Shuyao did not take the opportunity Lin Jing offered and shook his head decisively.

He leaned forward, placed his hands on his knees, looked directly at Lin Jing, and spoke with unprecedented seriousness.

"I've always thought my dad was an extremely cultured person."

Lin Jing was taken aback: "Culture?"

"Yes, culture." Zhao Shuyao nodded. "Of course, it's not the kind of culture that people generally think of, like knowing a lot of obscure characters or being able to recite a few Tang and Song poems. There are many kinds of culture."

Zhao Shuyao stretched out a finger and pointed in mid-air.

"The highest form of culture is when a person can recognize their place, uphold their moral principles in this complex society, face the ups and downs of life with the most stable mindset, and pass on this peace to the next generation."

Looking at the young man in front of her, Lin Jing suddenly understood where Zhao Shuyao's composure, which far exceeded that of his peers, came from.

That was the confidence instilled in him from a young age by his father, who, despite being from a humble background, possessed an extremely rich inner world.

"It's clear that you highly value your father's influence," Lin Jing said with a smile, her tone filled with respect, "you could even say you admire him."

"It's not just a little." Zhao Shuyao waved his hands repeatedly, leaned back, and let out a hearty laugh. "It's a great admiration, hahaha. This admiration isn't because he left me so much wealth, but because he instilled in me an extremely powerful cognitive system from a young age."

Zhao Shuyao looked at Lin Jing, a sharp glint in his eyes.

"Weren't you just curious why I, at my age in my twenties, have such absolute confidence in our society? Why I can see through those smear campaigns and manipulative arguments online at a glance?"

Lin Jing nodded immediately, gripping the pen tightly in her hand again.

"Because my dad gave me an extremely vivid history lesson more than ten years ago."

Zhao Shuyao picked up his water glass to moisten his throat and began to steer the conversation further.

"That was when I was in the second year of junior high school. At that time, life in our village was much better than when I was in elementary school. We could have meat on the dinner table every few days, and I no longer had to wear old clothes that had been altered."

Zhao Shuyao's gaze softened, and his thoughts reconnected to that early summer night.

"One evening, my dad and I were sitting in the yard enjoying the cool air. He looked at the starry sky, took a puff of his cigarette, and said to me with emotion, 'Ten years ago, I never dreamed that I would live a life where I wouldn't have to go hungry or cold.'"

Zhao Shuyao interlaced his fingers and rested his elbows on his legs, forming a highly persuasive conversational posture.

"Reporter Lin, at that time I had just taken a few history classes at school and learned a little bit. I proudly showed off to my dad, saying that times have changed and we can't stay poor like before."

"My dad glanced at me and asked me a question."

Zhao Shuyao stared into Lin Jing's eyes: "My dad asked me, 'You've studied for a few days and think you understand history? Then tell me, what kind of lives did those ordinary farmers lead in the dynasties you described in your books?'"

Lin Jing's breathing involuntarily slowed down.

She looked at Zhao Shuyao, a history major who had read millions of words of top-secret historical materials and was a top lecturer at the university, who was now recounting a farmer's questioning of history.

"I was stunned at the time." Zhao Shuyao spread his hands, making no attempt to hide his embarrassment back then. "I flipped through the books and found that they were full of stories about kings, generals, scholars, and beauties, with very little about how ordinary people farmed the land."

"My dad put down the pipe and used his decades of experience working the land to give me an extremely cold historical summary."

Zhao Shuyao's voice was exceptionally clear in the quiet suite.

"He told me that for thousands of years, as long as you were a farmer, whether you lived in a so-called prosperous era or a chaotic one, there were always three swords hanging over your head."

"The first knife is natural disaster; if it doesn't rain, you'll starve. The second knife is exorbitant taxes; if the court wants to wage war or the emperor wants to build gardens, all the money has to be dug out of the land. The third knife is landlords and gentry; they can take away your last two acres of land at any time with IOUs, forcing you to sell your children."

Lin Jing felt a chill run down her spine. These few words directly tore away the idyllic pastoral veil of feudal society, slamming the bloody, underlying logic onto the table.

"My dad told me that throughout history, even in those supposedly prosperous times, if farmers could manage to get by and their families wouldn't starve, it was a miracle that God had been kind to them."

Zhao Shuyao sneered as he finished speaking.

"Then, the year came to 2006."

Zhao Shuyao pointed out an extremely crucial time point, which may be vague in the memories of ordinary people, but in the hearts of hundreds of millions of farmers on this land, it is nothing short of groundbreaking.

That year, the country announced the complete abolition of agricultural taxes.

Zhao Shuyao's tone suddenly rose, revealing an irrepressible excitement.

"Reporter Lin, can you imagine that scene? More than two thousand years ago, starting with the implementation of the 'First Tax on Land' in the State of Lu during the Spring and Autumn Period, farmers paid grain taxes. This was called imperial grain tax, an iron law etched into the bones of farmers!"

"But in that very year, it was completely free!"

Zhao Shuyao chopped down heavily with both hands in mid-air.

"Not only were they exempted, but various agricultural subsidies were subsequently introduced: money for buying seeds, subsidies for buying agricultural machinery, and even the government would deposit money into your account based on the acreage simply by planting on that land!"

Lin Jing nodded repeatedly. This turning point in history was incredibly impactful for those who had experienced it.

"My dad sat on the doorstep for a long time, holding that red passbook used to pay subsidies. He later told me with emotion that, going back hundreds of generations from our ancestors, it was always the imperial court that asked the people for grain; he had never seen the government pay the people to grow crops."

Zhao Shuyao looked at the camera, his eyes filled with an extreme sense of identification with this era.

He said that based on this alone, even with all the difficulties we face now, this is the first time in thousands of years that such a life has been possible. This is truly for the benefit of the people.

The atmosphere in the suite reached a small climax. Without any impressive data, just a red agricultural subsidy passbook was enough to shatter those attacks on the system.

Lin Jing calmed herself down and continued, "But people always look upwards. Abolishing agricultural taxes was indeed an innovation, but at that time, the incomes of urban workers and business people grew even faster. Didn't your father feel a sense of loss when he saw these disparities?"

Upon hearing this question, Zhao Shuyao suddenly laughed, his smile carrying an absolute clarity.

"That's what I asked my dad back then. I said, 'Dad, look at the TV. City people earn so much money and live in apartments. Our subsidies are still far behind theirs.'"

Zhao Shuyao stared directly at Lin Jing, his smile fading and replaced by an almost solemn expression.

"Guess what my dad replied to me back then?"

Lin Jing shook her head, her eyes full of anticipation.

"I remember it clearly to this day." Zhao Shuyao's voice became deep and powerful. "My dad put down the bankbook and looked at me very seriously, even very sternly."

He pointed his finger at me and said, "Shuyao, remember this: you can't settle accounts like this."

“If we’re going to compare, we should compare it to how our family lived before, to how our ancestors lived for generations. Look at us now, we have plenty to eat and drink, we have cooperative medical care, and the village has even built cement roads for our education. That’s what I call a good life.”

Zhao Shuyao clenched his fist and gently tapped his thigh.

"You can't compare yourself to those who have it all. There will always be someone richer than you, someone who lives in a bigger house than you. If you keep staring at those who are better off than you, and constantly wondering why you don't have what they have, you won't be able to live a normal life. You have to know how to protect what you have and be content with what you have."

These words resonated throughout the room like a resounding bell.

This is not simply a farmer teaching his son; it is a powerful and targeted remedy for the current society, which is engulfed by consumerism and the anxiety of keeping up with the Joneses!