"In the World" is a realistic novel about the real ecology and individual growth within the system. It does not tell about machinations and promotions, but calmly records how an ordinary young man understands the operating logic of a huge system and finds his own position in the collision between ideals and reality.
Lin He, 26, passed the student selection examination and entered the Qingjiang Municipal Development and Reform Commission. From the anxiety of reporting on the first day, to discovering the traces of power behind the documents when sorting the files; from learning to listen to the undertones in meetings, to facing the gap between policy implementation and people's demands when stationed in the village; from the frustration of repeated revisions of materials, to the growth of completing important reports independently; from the alienation of high-level secondments, to the subtle alignment in personnel changes - in three years, he has experienced a complete cycle of a civil servant career.
The novel restores the unspoken rules within the system with detailed strokes: the human network in the canteen, the avoidance of responsibilities in the circulation of documents, the art of balance on the conference table, the information game in emergency situations, and the departmental barriers in the advancement of reform. Through Lin He's eyes, readers see not only documents and meetings, but also how documents shape reality, how meetings allocate power, how policies are deformed in the layer-by-layer transmission, and how ideals maintain a glimmer of light in trivial matters.
This is a story about "understanding" and "reconciliation". Understanding rules is not to make use of them, but to do practical things within the rules; reconciliation with reality is not to give up ideals, but to still choose to be down-to-earth and responsible after recognizing the complexity. Lin He finally understood that in this huge system, the important thing was not to be the center, but to be a cog.
