Autumn is supposed to be the season of harvest, but in cities it is also the season when two groups of workers brace for trouble: urban management officers and sanitation workers. It is not that they dislike harvest. They dislike the particular harvest that autumn brings them.
When the leaves turn yellow, ornamental fruit trees planted along streets and in parks reach maturity. For the sake of the landscape and public safety, city managers generally forbid people from picking the fruit, especially for sale. Yet there is a group that is not afraid of regulation and cannot easily be regulated. Every year they appear on schedule to collect whatever value they can from the city's ornamental trees. In autumn, urban management officers play cat and mouse with them, spending energy and risking trouble. If enforcement is too strict and an accident occurs, the officers cannot bear the responsibility and will be drowned in public criticism. If enforcement is too loose and the trees are damaged by destructive harvesting, they are still held responsible. (Not every city puts ornamental trees under the chengguan's authority, but that is not the issue here.)
Sanitation workers are responsible for keeping public spaces clean, but fallen leaves constantly create small troubles for them. Some cities, in their campaign to become 'civilized cities,' even set limits on how many fallen leaves may be visible per unit area; exceeding the limit brings fines. To protect a meager monthly wage of one or two thousand yuan, sanitation workers are especially busy when the autumn wind rises, battling leaves all day.
I have never understood the relationship between fallen leaves and urban civilization. I remember that when I was a child, the city was old and shabby, and there were few sanitation workers. Every autumn, leaves would swirl in the wind and pile thickly on the sidewalks. They felt soft underfoot. I did not think the old city was uncivilized because of the leaves. Today's city construction seems to be growing younger, even the ornamental trees. Young ornamental trees, tender new branches, new leaves—yet when these leaves return to the root, they are said to threaten the civilization of the new city.
As cities pursue civilization, there are always people who walk against it. When the autumn wind rises, they move through every corner of the city, looking for quiet roads shaded by tall trees, stepping on leaves that sanitation workers have not swept away, even scooping up handfuls of leaves and letting them fall again. If they are with someone of the opposite sex, so much the better: this is rare romance. When a secluded spot becomes known and is checked in by more people, the authorities will either designate it as an internet-famous spot or send more sanitation workers to clean it. If it becomes an internet-famous spot and is promoted to attract visitors, then fallen leaves are culture. If more workers are sent to sweep it clean, then fallen leaves are damaging urban civilization. Culture and anti-culture lie in the turn of a manager's mind.
When the autumn wind rises, what dances is not leaves but civilization.
A little sketch could end here. But what I want to discuss is the part below.
Why do cities forbid people from picking ornamental fruit, and why does picking nevertheless continue?
First, why forbid it. Ornamental trees, as the name suggests, exist for the landscape. Although some are formally fruit trees, their essence is part of the landscape, and many are chosen precisely because their fruit is beautiful. If people pick freely, those trees lose their landscape function, which contradicts their purpose as a public good of the urban landscape. Second, even when a fruit tree is not chosen for attractive fruit, free picking can easily lead to branches being broken off, seriously damaging its landscape value. Third, some ornamental species are tall and brittle-wooded; climbing to pick fruit can lead to falls and injuries. Safety is another consideration.
Ornamental fruit trees are fruit trees, but when planted as ornamentals their function is landscape, not economic fruit production. Their value as landscape is far greater than their value as fruit. Picking the fruit is a loss for the city, so managers usually prohibit it. At the same time, ornamental trees are public goods: they offer visual pleasure to everyone who sees them. If one person picks them, that person is privately appropriating a public good, which violates public order and good customs.
People sometimes condemn the government for planting ornamental fruit trees and then not letting anyone eat the fruit, calling it waste and an insult to nature. That is a cognitive error. They see only the private gain from picking and not the enormous value of the trees as public goods. The math is easy enough for anyone to see. Suppose a road has mango trees on both sides. Hundreds of thousands of nearby residents can witness the long process of flowering, fruiting, and ripening, enjoying the seasonal pleasure of spring blossoms and autumn fruit. Now suppose that at the moment of maturity all the fruit is harvested at once and distributed equally among everyone who had seen the trees. Each person might receive one yuan's worth of fruit, or less. Ask people to choose: keep watching the trees until the fruit gradually ripens and falls, or divide the fruit immediately. If most people agree to divide the fruit, then the managers who forbid free picking really are wasting it. If most prefer to keep watching, then the managers' approach is correct. I suspect the latter, because it is based on experience and is highly credible. (This ignores the labor and transport costs of a centralized harvest and distribution, as well as social costs such as reduced traffic efficiency.)
Now, why does picking continue despite prohibitions?
City managers forbid free picking and assign people to supervise, yet private picking is common. That only shows that the gain from picking exceeds the cost of violating the rules. The usual response is persuasion and criticism; as long as a person ignores persuasion and is not afraid of criticism, they can pick public fruit with a clear conscience.
Who is not afraid of criticism? Criticism costs a person only dignity. If someone does not care about dignity, or if dignity is worthless, criticism cannot reach them. Who does not care about dignity? Anyone for whom the fruit gained by stealth is worth more than their dignity will choose fruit over dignity. This sounds like circular reasoning, but it is not—at least here we can quantify the problem and analyze it more easily.
Many ornamental fruit trees in cities are local superior varieties, usually cultivated commercially on a large scale. In other words, the fruit is not worth much. In addition, ornamental varieties are not managed for fruit production, so their fruit is inferior in appearance and taste to commercial varieties and is worth even less locally. There is also a noteworthy phenomenon: private pickers regard public fruit as ownerless, so they all want to take it for themselves. But the fruit is limited, and many people want it. Everyone fears being too late and losing out to someone quicker, so they compete to pick early—before the fruit is ripe. In this situation, how much can a private picker earn in a day? Probably less than a hundred yuan, perhaps only twenty or thirty.
Why are dignity and time so cheap? Simply because these people are poor. Even the best pasture has skinny horses. In an era of great economic development, we should pay more attention to people who are visibly poor instead of simply criticizing them.
Value is always relative, not absolute. Many people think it is unwise and irrational to be criticized for a few dozen yuan, but they ignore the value system of the poor. How much is dignity worth? More than life? A lifetime of wealth? A year's income? A month's income? Or just a steamed bun? People at different levels see it differently. Those willing to pay a lifetime's earnings for dignity are not nobler than those who trade dignity for a steamed bun. A person who sells dignity for a bun may well lose his life for the sake of a bun; compared with life and a lifetime's wealth, life is clearly worth more.
Therefore, to root out behavior such as private picking of urban ornamental fruit, the cost of violating the rules must be made greater than the gain. If the only punishment is criticism and education, then dignity must be made worth more than the gain from violating the rules. This is the logic connecting the elimination of extreme poverty with the maintenance of social harmony and stability. It is simple and easy to understand, yet often misunderstood by people who consider themselves 'wealthy.'
To stop people from picking ornamental fruit, managers knock it down before it ripens. To keep the number of fallen leaves on the road from exceeding the limit, sanitation workers' first task at work is to shake the trees hard, or even send water trucks to blast the leaves down.
When the autumn wind rises, who is walking against the wind?