An elevated view

He remembers when he was little, his father ran a repair shop for farm machinery, where he discovered that, curiously, his father seemed to know every customer very well. The father would wear a big smile, welcome the customer and start fixing the problem. After finishing the work, he would tell them that the repair was free of charge, and at the customer's insistence, he would offer a very low price.

After the customer left, the father would tell the son that the customer was some distant relative from a village that his married sister lived in, so the charge was low because of the relationship. If the rule of "six degrees of separation" applies to the world at large, Gezi says, in the village, it is "two degrees".

Growing up in such a web, villagers have mastered the rules of living in an acquaintance-driven society, and even if they leave the village and visit a city like Beijing, they tend to turn the strange surroundings into a similar network of acquaintances, Gezi says.

"When my father came to Beijing, he talked to people wherever he went. Both he and I see the world with a level of friendliness and openness that can go over and above the norm."

In an essay, Gezi amusingly writes: "My father, who had been living in the countryside for too long, tended to talk to anyone he met. When he took me to the town, he would stop to talk to 20 to 30 people, so shopping was the only thing that we would have time to do in the morning. When he came to live in the city, he still liked talking to people as if they had known each other their whole lives. You could easily tell by the response of the other party whether they came from the city or the countryside. City dwellers would cast a wary eye at him before deciding to answer or not, but those from the countryside would always reply without hesitation."