From Township Clerk to Civil Servant

[Civil Service Exams + Official Career + Rural Development + Lighthearted + Experience + Notes on Governing]

Recommended for readers aged 25 and up, unless you’ve already decided to enter politics!

Chen Mo arrived in Qingchuan Town with his provincial exam top-scorer’s notice in hand. Waiting for him was a leaky dormitory and the “symphony of catching drips.”

He used a washbasin to calculate the intervals between drops with precision, prompting the passing Party secretary to tease him: “Young man, did you major in physics?”

And so began the “high-achiever’s” fantastical drift through grassroots government:

He helped the old village secretary use Excel to track pig births and was hailed by the whole village as the “Spreadsheet Immortal.”

He mediated a water-rights dispute between villagers and discovered that the source of the problem was a river blocked by influencers filming TikTok check-ins.

After staying up all night writing reports, he was fed a late-night snack by the cafeteria auntie and unexpectedly got exclusive gossip about the town mayor.

When torrential rain washed out a dangerous bridge, he waded barefoot through the water to evacuate the people. A photo of him covered in mud even made the provincial newspaper’s front page.

Ten years later, County Magistrate Chen Mo stood on a newly completed bridge and reflected:

“That washbasin I used to catch the rain was my very first notebook on how to govern.”