I Passed the Civil Service Exam at Thirty-One

I’m Liu Zhijie, 31 years old. I passed the civil service exam and landed a township post in another region, the one nobody wanted. A week after reporting for duty, I was sent to a village more than ten kilometers from town to work on the ground.

When Party Secretary Li told me, “There are 1,100 people in the village, but only around 300 live here year-round, and most of them are over sixty,” I finally understood that the desolation of an “empty village” could be more unsettling than poverty.

I’m a village-based official. What can I do? What should I do?

Through the eyes of a village-based official, this book tells you the stories of rural China, from the campaign to eliminate poverty to the revitalization of the countryside.