The Unconventional Village Official

"An Unusual Village Official" is a long novel on officialdom by the internet writer Dongfang Bubai. It has been serialized on Century Bookstore since July 2014, with a complete text of about 1.3 million Chinese characters. The work can be seen as a related sequel to the author's previous novel "An Unusual Secretary": some endings left unresolved in the earlier book are filled in here, and the author also deliberately uses this book to make up for the previous work's relatively weak depiction of grassroots village life. The protagonist, Gao Xuan, graduated from Yanhua Agricultural University, and his father, Lu Jianhong, holds a high position. Gao Xuan rejects the official career arranged for him by his father, signs up for the college graduate village official examination, passes the selection, and takes up a post in Lihua Village, Nanba Township, Qinnan County. He makes clear that he does not want to be a "second-generation official" or a "second-generation rich kid," and is determined to carve out a path of his own. In Lihua Village, while handling trivial village affairs and complex relationships among villagers, he moves from friction to cooperation with village party secretary Fan Lihua, and at the same time has differences in development philosophy with village committee director Wei Xinxin. The storylines of fellow village officials Yu Zhen and Feng Xiaowei, as well as township cadre Cheng Yang and others, are also interwoven, and Cheng Yang's grievances and entanglements with the local Huang family further enrich the narrative layers. With grassroots political ecology and village affairs conflicts as its main thread, the work blends science fiction, wuxia, and other elements into its officialdom narrative, making it a relatively distinctive work among mid-2010s internet novels on officialdom.