We just some country boys - country walk, country talk

...Don't bring it round here 'less ya know fa sho' it's jumpin off

Shen Congwen with Zhang Zhaohe (later his wife)

So the last paper I translated contained this passage:

It can be said that works of the Beijing School always manifest two types of clearly opposed worlds: one is the world of the rural villages, one is the more civilized cities and towns. But even though they clearly bring a critical eye to the representation of the urban world, actually this is mostly a foil for their beloved rural world. This is also extremely strange, because the Beijing School writers are mostly sophisticated intellectuals, yet they praise the pastoral, frequently taking on their own “pastoral” personae with great satisfaction. Shen Congwen put it well when he said, “I must ask you to compare two of my short works, “Baizi” and “Portrait of Eight Steeds” (Ba jun tu), so you can understand my moral sensibility, what is good, what bad, about rural villages, those great loves of intellectuals. You’ll see what makes a country person country, and how this is reflected concretely in my work.”

"Country person" doesn't sound as good as I'd like, but it does sort of remind me that there is a similar aesthetic at work between American and Chinese celebrations of unsophisticated rustics.