Author: Liu Honglin
Only by walking through the vast can one understand human insignificance. Only by wandering through history can one comprehend the brevity of life. Walking and imagination will help us empty external things and discover our own smallness. Knowing that truth is not easy to grasp, we will no longer argue forcefully. Knowing that all things have spirit, we will no longer be self-centered.
This is from the beginning of "Jia Thoughts" by director Jia Zhangke, written in the sandy winds of Dunhuang.
From Linfen, Shanxi, to Dunhuang nearly two thousand kilometers away, the journey is long. My bedtime reading comes from this native of Fenyang, Shanxi. Reading his life journey from Fenyang, those memories revolving around video halls, cassettes, and county cultural troupes, he says the county is the most authentic and substantial part of Chinese society, his starting point and lens for observing China.
Therefore, Jia Zhangke's films always revolve around counties. He doesn't film skyscrapers but people from Linfen, Fenyang, and Taiyuan. In the documentary "Fenyang Boy Jia Zhangke", he recalls when the teacher made the whole class watch "Dong Cunrui" and the class monitor cried, and everyone must learn from her. At that time, he didn't know "expression" could become a profession, but times change rapidly, and reality is more dramatic than scripts. What he did was use a county as a viewfinder to supplement the out-of-focus shots of China's transformation.
The county is China's intermediate state, neither traditional rural nor first-tier urban. You can see government buildings, department stores, and well-decorated wedding companies, as well as tricycles near the market, utility poles covered with "certificate advertisement" posters, and elderly people wearing flowery cotton-padded jackets. The county has a commercial society's atmosphere and interpersonal relationship stickiness; a modern skin and a traditional society's framework. It is China's most authentic mixed reality.
But in this reality, Bitcoin is almost non-existent.
In Shanghai and Shenzhen cafes, people discuss Bitcoin as a technological revolution and global value network; you can hear entrepreneurs talking about RWA, L2 expansion, DAO governance, on-chain settlement; Web3 conferences, Hong Kong licensing, Singapore compliance, Token economy... as if we're witnessing a wave about to replace the old world. But once you enter a county, the reality of virtual currency is completely different.
A lawyer friend in a county told me he's received many cases related to "virtual currency", almost all occurring in prefecture-level cities and counties in Northwest and Central China. He mentioned a real case: a young town resident who, through WeChat, helps people exchange USDT for RMB, earning dozens of yuan in handling fees per transaction. In his early twenties, with little education and no financial knowledge, he thought this "side job" had low barriers and risks. With a few WeChat messages, a card, and a few hundred yuan in fees, "I'm just helping people exchange currency, not scamming anyone." Until the police came, he didn't know he was a fund channel in a fraud chain. Facing the judge's questions, he couldn't even explain where the funds came from or went.
This story is not an exception. In counties, "Bitcoin" is not decentralization's dream, but account freezing, fund risk control, fraud allegations, and unresolvable cases. There's no need for USDT cross-border settlement, no Web3 ecosystem entry, and no KOL explaining cold wallets and MetaMask. People first hear about "virtual currency" usually because someone was scammed, trapped in a group, or lost money that never returned.
Over time, county residents' impression of virtual currency is not technology or the future, but two words: "scammer".
This creates a visible fracture: Within the Fifth Ring Road, virtual currency is startup financing, policy observation, Web3 conference speeches, a terminology world discussing compliance, stablecoins, Payfi, and tokenization; Outside the Fifth Ring Road, virtual currency is account freezing, group exit scams, public security announcements, and court cases, conversations like "Do you know that crypto guy from your hometown?"
Counties aren't lacking smartphones or information channels, but they lack the trust foundation and usage scenarios to understand these technologies. Here, Bitcoin is not "digital gold" but a "high-risk synonym"; you say Ethereum is an asset issuance platform, which sounds like a scam code; you say Web3 is a decentralized ideal governance method, and people might think of a "pig-killing plate".
In the information dissemination system, this misunderstanding only gets amplified. In big city friend circles, you see who completed Pre-A round, which project made TechCrunch's homepage, who gave a "global asset circulation" speech in Singapore; in county WeChat groups, what circulates are "female college student loses 600,000 yuan in crypto" or "local public security warns against virtual currency trading" and painful experience sharing about bank card freezes.
Counties aren't backward; they just live in a different order. In this context, Bitcoin and Web3 are hard to explain, even with technical content and global potential. Reality won't automatically grant positive perception just because you have technology.
This is why when we discuss compliance paths, infrastructure construction, and stablecoin global settlement capabilities in the industry, we must admit that this industry operates "in layers" in China. Inside and outside the Fifth Ring Road are two financial languages, two information systems, two risk perceptions, two life orders. County residents are never outsiders, but they are often the "last to be told".
Bitcoin isn't unable to enter counties; we just haven't found an appropriate way to describe it. Facing grassroots civil servants exhausted by "USDT money laundering" or "telecom fraud channel" cases, explaining token economic models seems distant and powerless; for families who've lost money in fund schemes, no matter how advanced the technology, it's hard to earn a second chance of trust.
But sometimes we need to change perspectives: For many grassroots law enforcement personnel, they aren't opposing technology but lack extra energy to understand it. Daily cases already keep them running—telecom fraud, money laundering, cross-border funds, account freezes—each line involves countless family losses. They can't see "blockchain technology's" future, only the reality of "on-chain funds" causing bankruptcy. They don't not want to understand; reality just doesn't give them time.
Ordinary county residents also struggle to distinguish marketing rhetoric from fraud. The difference between stablecoins and Ponzi coins, the boundary between platform coins and points, the distance between on-chain projects and fund schemes—for most county users, there are almost no judgment tools. This lack of "financial literacy" is the deep reason scams repeatedly succeed. When you see someone around you being scammed, you naturally label the entire industry.
If technology wants to truly enter life, it must first learn to speak life's language. Counties aren't marginal areas but reality contexts we haven't seriously conversed with. It's not about making them adapt to our vocabulary, but us trying to understand their language. Perhaps Bitcoin's story, besides being told at Web3 conferences and funding news, should also happen in more ordinary places.
The wave of technology will ultimately come, but what it must pass through is not just yellow earth and wind, but also misunderstanding, vigilance, and silence.
