This article is written for my friends; as I wrote it, I had in mind some of the friends I met during my school years. Therefore, while writing, on the one hand there is a lot of warmth, and on the other hand, there might be deliberate choices regarding what to detail, gloss over, delve into, or keep brief. It might be somewhat useful to people of my age who share the same background growing up; other readers may feel free to skip it, as I roughly know what criticisms you would raise.
Let me start with a small incident.
One day (during the lockdown when food was being delivered), I saw a Moments post by an upperclassman who was a few years ahead of me in college, which went roughly like this:
"These days, I feel that history and politics—subjects that were once treated as secondary—now need to be put into real-life practice."
I felt exceptionally sad. I think many of my former playmates and friends, lacking even a tiny bit of basic political literacy compared to children born into official families, ended up making choices at a very high cost—and it was utterly not worth it. That is why I wanted to write this article; the intended readers in my heart should be those who have known me from elementary school through college.
Where should I begin? There is a lot missing in the domestic education system. Although political education is heavily emphasized—political science is tested in almost every entrance exam—the teaching content is completely detached from reality.
Think about it: does what you learned allow us to understand the operating logic of your local subdistrict office? Does it allow us to understand who holds the most power in a prefecture-level city, or who checks and balances whom?
To put it most simply: do you know the administrative ranks of the officials around you who closely affect your life? How much power do different ranks hold? Where does their power come from? How is that power exercised? How does that power affect you? What is its operational logic?
We don't understand; all we can do is