When people mention Beijing, it is a super city with a permanent population of 21.89 million and an area of 16,410 square kilometers, with a developed culture, mature commerce, and powerful in all dimensions. But no one dares to say that they know Beijing very well, the city is still in the process of rapid change, some areas are mixed with different atmospheres and faces, and the last stop of the subway is the third space between the city and the countryside, between convenience and inconvenience, between crowded and empty.
Text | Xu Qing
Edit | Golden turn
Operational | Tsukimi
Settle in the city
For many people, the last stop on the subway is the first stop they make in Beijing.
In October last year, Chen Xi, a graduate, came to Beijing with 4,000 yuan, and for her, 4,000 was an embarrassing number. In Xi'erqi, the housing subsidy of the Internet factory has raised the rent nearby, and the monthly rent of a two-bedroom apartment is 8,000 yuan. In Sanlitun, 4,000 yuan can barely rent a small room in two bedrooms. In most places within the fifth ring road of Beijing, the price of a single room is at least 2,000 yuan.
In the end, Chen Xi chose to live in her cousin's house. My cousin works in Beijing, the house is rented in Chaoyang District, a room, two people have to squeeze a bed. During the day, her cousin leaves home to work, she goes out for interviews, anxiety surrounds her, and finding a suitable job is just as urgent as a cheap house, and the former affects the choice of the latter. This is not a good time to find a job, the policy is tightened, Beijing's Internet factories are almost all layoffs, Chen Xi cast 200 resumes, only interviewed four, a month later, she joined an online education company, the monthly salary is 8,000 yuan, last year's same position, the salary is twice her.
She quickly joined the company, browsed the major rental software, took a fancy to the single room near the Tiangongyuan, the last stop of Metro Line 4, and moved in the next day. This is the choice she made comprehensively: 12 square meters of space, monthly rent of 1900 yuan, counting her a total of four, three of which are girls. The new company, near Zhongguancun, lives at the last stop on Line 4, and although commuting is lengthened, it also means that she may have a seat and sit the whole time without changing trains.
▲ Photo / Visual China
5 years ago, Xu Haiyang graduated from university and then did sales in Beijing, he lived in Xiyuan in the northern section of Metro Line 4, the biomedical base in the southern section, Jiukeshu on Line 1 Batong, and Fengtai Station on Line 10, all of which were places where rent was relatively cheap. Two years ago, he moved to Xiaoyuan, the penultimate stop of Beijing's westernmost line S1, and then to the last stop, Shichang. Over the years, his salary has gotten higher and higher, and his living has become cheaper and cheaper. He mastered a way of renting: The north side of Beijing is usually more expensive than the south side, and the closer the subway is to the last stop, the cheaper it is. At Fengtai Station, a 12-square-meter one-bedroom monthly rent of 2100 yuan, but in the small garden, 2200 yuan can be rented to a 42-square-meter studio, "with a qualitative leap", to the stone factory, the same house will be cheaper than 200 yuan.
If you want the price to be lower, you can set your sights on the northeast corner of Beijing, where the largest automobile logistics park is home, and Wang Chao's company was once the leader in this industry, so he rented a house in qianfengbo village near the last stop of Line 15, Fengbo. Rents there are amazingly cheap. Some bungalows are old, the monthly rent is only 500 pieces; some are contracted by outsiders, converted into a two-story small building, after fine decoration, there are water, electricity, wifi, air conditioning, toilet, water heater, rent more than 40 square meters of the second floor, as long as 1000 yuan per month. In the former Fengbo Village, where prices are the same as those in small counties, the most expensive ice cream in the store sells for two dollars, and most of the ice creams that are packaged in green and unbranded ice cream are fifty cents a piece.
But at the same time, Dynasty also saw that many people wearing ByteDance badges would get on the bus at Fengbo Station – from here it took 18 subway stops, which took 56 minutes to reach an office near ByteDance's Liudaokou. It is a building called Xueqing Jiachuang, in addition to bytes, SF Technology, Sina VR is also in this office, the rent of a nearby one-bedroom room is about 6,000 yuan. If you work here and live in Fengbo, it means that the rent can be reduced by at least half.
A large factory employee has lived in Shenzhen and Beijing, in her opinion, Shenzhen is blocky, each piece has a center, and Beijing is ring-shaped, the second ring, the third ring, the fourth ring, the fifth ring around several concentric circles, the subway is like a fine square grid, superimposed on the concentric circles, the closer to the center of the circle, the higher the rent may be, and embedded in the grid of large and small urban villages, is the absolute depression of rent.
Shao Jun, who has a deep feeling for the difficulty of renting a house, is also a product manager at an Internet company, and two years ago, he specially produced a map to count the cheapest rental land in Beijing. In his eyes, a cost-effective house should meet three conditions: the rent is less than 1500 yuan, there is a separate bedroom, a separate bathroom, and the landlord rents it directly. Most of the houses that meet these conditions are urban villages, Kangjiagou Village in Sihuidong of Line 1, Dongliu Village in Shuangqiao on Line 1, Pi Village in Caofang on Line 6, and rural self-built houses in the last station of the subway, such as Dongsanqi Village and Banduta Village near the north of Tiantongyuan, Qianfengbo Village and Houfengbo Village of Fengbo, and Caochang Village of Bei'anhe. This rental map has been collected 4097 times on Zhihu. At the end of the article, Shao Jun wrote: "If Beijing does not clear all the listings in my answer within 10 years, then I still have room for the remaining 10 years in Beijing." ”
At the last stop on the subway, cheap rents are sometimes paid for the sake of certainty and security. Xiao Han, a young girl, once lived in a tube building in the village of Banduta, which was flanked by ruins on both sides, and messy wires split the sky into pieces. After dark, a short walk home from the subway station without street lights, the wind blew, the plastic bags rattled, Xiao Han felt scared, her father bought her an alarm, electric shock function flashlight, let her always carry on.
In order to reduce the rent as much as possible, some people not only stay at the last stop on the subway, but also come up with other ways. Hu Yingjun, 23, who works for an internet company on Suzhou Street on Line 10, moved to Bei'anhe, the last stop on Line 16, last July, and rented an 80-square-meter house, then put on a partition, one room to live in, and the other two to rent out. Being a second landlord reduced his monthly rental cost to 1200 yuan, but soon, he found that tenants were not easy to find, and many people left Bei'anhe or Beijing after only three months of rent.
In this house in the northwest corner of Beijing, there was once a boy born in the 00s. The boy graduated from college, and the internship company cooperated with the school, but after coming, the salary of 5,000 yuan that was originally agreed upon was deducted to 3,000 yuan. When renting a house, he borrowed money from his parents to pay the deposit and rent, and did not have time to buy a futon, and slept in a room with only an iron bed that night. Hu Yingjun couldn't look past it and gave him a blanket. Three months later, the boy's mother fell ill, paid for all his savings, and then said he wanted to go back to his hometown, and after leaving, he never came back. There was also a tenant who worked as a milk tea shop employee, real estate sales, and finally mistakenly entered a financial company suspected of violating the law, he suddenly disappeared for a month, and called Hu Yingjun one night, saying that his ID card was pledged, and people were also sent back to their hometown to let Hu Yingjun help send the luggage back.
In these tenants, Hu Yingjun saw a trajectory similar to his own. He didn't go to college, he worked as a security guard, he was cheated by recruiters, and he lied to others. It wasn't until he went to a computer training class with an online loan of more than 10,000 yuan and got a certificate of completion that he found the job that he is still relatively stable. The city is like a big sieve, and people who come may also fall from large and small gaps, Hu Yingjun said, he is the lucky one who has not been screened.
▲ At the end of 2021, the Beijing Metro opened 9 lines (sections) including the remaining sections of the third phase of Line 8, with an operating mileage of 783 kilometers. Photo/Visual China
Commuting journey
Chen Yuanying, a post-00 subway enthusiast, said that Beijing is so big that no rain can cover the whole of Beijing, and the weather in the suburbs is often out of sync with the urban areas. Beijing's construction speed is also very fast, the subway connects the four sides, in 2001 there were only Lines 1 and 2, and from the end of 2003 to October 2007, there were only two more lines, but after 2008, there was an explosion of growth, and if you did not pay attention, new lines appeared.
As of December 2020, Beijing has 25 subway lines, 450 stations, and a total mileage of 783 kilometers, equivalent to the distance from Beijing to Xuzhou, Jiangsu Province. In Beijing, a person can take the subway from Mentougou to Tongzhou, only need to change once; you can also change twice, from the southernmost Tiangongyuan to the northernmost Tiantongyuan. In 2020, the number of passengers on the Beijing subway reached 2.294 billion, an average of 6.285 million per day, which means that congestion on the subway may be unavoidable.
On the first day of moving to the Tiangongyuan, Chen Xi found that living in the last station of the subway may not be able to get a seat, and after standing for more than an hour, she arrived at the company, "the legs are no longer mine." Later, she learned her lesson - wait for three subway passes, can be the first outside the door, sit down and have hope. Every morning at seven o'clock, the local iron roared in, and Chen Xi, who was sleepy-eyed, would immediately be awakened by the surging crowd. The closer the subway got, the more nervous she became, like an athlete about to participate in a tug-of-war, and she competed quietly, waiting for the moment when the door opened.
Chen Xi is 172 centimeters tall and weighs 60 kilograms, participated in the school sports meeting in high school, and won the first place in long-distance running. She prides herself on being physically strong, but at that moment, being strong doesn't work very well. The subway did not go up, a huge thrust push pushed her into the carriage, the rest of the people filled the space as fast as possible, there were many moments, Chen Xi felt, "My feet seem to leave the ground."
It is hard for people who do not live in the Tiangongyuan to imagine that one of the reasons for this crowding is related to Gu'an, 50 kilometers away. It is a small county administratively subordinate to Langfang, Hebei Province, across the river from Beijing's Daxing District.
Line 10 Tiangongyuan Station Exit B is a gathering place for taxi masters or black car drivers, "Gu'an Gu'an, just one person." "30 yuan, Gu'an can't go?" Further ahead, there is the Beijing-Gu'an special line. Since 2015, this special line has distributed cars at 5:30 a.m. every day, departing from Gu'an and arriving at Tiangongyuan after 1 hour, and there are 3,000 or 4,000 people going back and forth between Tiangongyuan and Gu'an through this special line in one day.
Office workers who live a "twin-city life" nourish the local real estate developers in Gu'an. Walking into the headquarters of Gu'an's largest real estate company, you can see a huge map hanging on the wall, marking the distance between Gu'an and Beijing. There is a model about four meters long in front of the map, and every building in Gu'an, every highway, hospital, school, park is scaled down. The model is followed by a small string of lights, the switch is turned on, the lights are lit one after another, flashing regularly, and everyone standing in front of the map is inevitably excited about the city in front of them.
In May last year, the post-90s pavilion wind bought a house in Gu'an. For a while, he tried to commute between Gu'an and Beijing, taking a 1-hour special line to the last stop of Line 4, Tiangongyuan, then taking the subway, or carpooling with neighbors, taking the Daguang Expressway to Beijing's South Sixth Ring Road, and then changing to the subway or bus. How long it takes depends on luck, there are two checkpoints between Gu'an and Beijing, and everyone has to get off the bus once when entering Beijing and undergo identity checks. Once there is an epidemic in Hebei, it is necessary to check the health code when entering Beijing, the congestion in front of the checkpoint will be longer, and the taillights of each car on the road will be lit, a red light.
▲ In Gu'an County, there are many people who need to commute across the city like Tingfeng. Photo / Visual China
On the Beijing subway road map, the Tiangongyuan, which connects Gu'an, is the southernmost subway station in the city, corresponding to the last station on line 5, Tiantongyuan North, and the congestion of the two stations is difficult to distinguish.
Duo Le, a native of Beijing, moved her family from the East Fourth Ring Road to the Tiantongyuan community more than a decade ago. This is the largest community in Asia, developed in 1999 by Suncheon Real Estate Group, with an area of only 8 square kilometers and more than 400,000 residents, more than the entire country of Iceland.
The subway shoulders the heavy responsibility of many Tiantongyuan people. From north to south, there are three stations that pass through the community - Tiantongyuan North, Tiantongyuan, and Tiantongyuan South. Every morning, the queue at the entrance to the station is long and crowded, and it surrounds the subway station like a snake. Just a few stops before getting on the train, "the mobile phone is impossible to pull out", of course, there is no need to hold anything, the pressure from all directions to the people are stuck steadily, even if the brakes, will not let these people fall to the ground. Duo Le has always wondered how people broke through the blockade and squeezed in like a needle in the few stops after Tiantongyuan North?
Home is at the last stop of the subway, and the weather will determine how to get around Dole. She found that when it was windy, rainy or snowy, there were fewer people driving in Tiantongyuan, and there would be extra-long queues at bus stops and subway stations. After living in Tiantongyuan for a long time, Duole has mastered a set of riding rules: "If you want to go to a far place and want to have a seat, then go to Tiantongyuan North; if you go to work normally and feel that your physical strength is OK, go to Tiantongyuan to squeeze; if you encounter rain and snow, go to Tiantongyuan South, at least don't have to queue in the open air." ”
Staying at the last stop on the metro also means a long travel time. Tiantongyuan is known as the "Sleeping City", and most residents work in the main urban area, with commuting distances of more than 10 kilometers. Hu Yingjun lives in Bei'anhe, the last stop on Line 16, but his girlfriend lives near the Communication University on Line 1. Because the distance is too far, it takes two hours to take the subway, and I only meet once a month, and the two people in Beijing seem to be talking about a long-distance relationship.
▲ Outside Bei'anhe Station, the northernmost point of Line 16, the skyline is not high-rise buildings but mountains. Photo / Xu Qing
Caihua used to live in the former Fengbo Village, when he worked in Zhongguancun, and the commuting route ran through the entire northern part of Beijing, from the far northeast to the far northwest, close to 45 kilometers, which meant he had 5 hours a day on the subway. For one attendance, he has to go through four steps of walking, bus, subway, and shared bicycle, and each section of the journey is carefully calculated. After commuting for a long time, he found the regularity, and if he could not get to Wangjing at 8 o'clock in the morning, he would definitely be late. After work, he used to order takeout at the company and go home after eating, otherwise dinner would be delayed until 9 p.m.
Originally he wanted to move quickly after getting his first month's salary, but in time for the epidemic, many inconveniences, half a year later, he moved to a place only 10 minutes walk from the company, he suddenly had a blank time, and some freedom that he did not know how to dispose of.
Chen Xi's house is about 5 minutes walk from Tiangongyuan Station, take the subway for 70 minutes, and then walk for another 10 minutes to the company. She left work at 6:30 p.m., and it was almost 8 o'clock when she arrived home, and after a simple meal and washing, it was time to go to bed. She had to make sure she fell asleep before 10:30 a.m. to get up at 6:30 a.m. the next morning to squeeze the subway, and the time was compressed to the point where there was no room for waste.
In Beijing, young people like Chen Xi endure the longest commute times. The 2018 Beijing Residents' Time Utilization Survey Report released by the National Bureau of Statistics puts it this way: Youth aged 15 to 39 commute an average of 1 hour and 52 minutes per day, middle-aged people aged 40 to 64 are 1 hour and 15 minutes, and elderly people over 65 years old are 52 minutes.
Because of the long commute, the subway may be the third most important place besides work and home for people staying at the last stop, it is a transit station, and it is also a combination of the two. Someone once saw a girl running on the subway in Lucheng, the last stop of Line 6, her hair still wet, and the heat squeezed out of the crowd acted as her hair dryer. There are also people in the subway makeup, sleep, study, Hu Yingjun even finished a set of programming classes related to his work in the subway, in the noise, he wore noise-canceling headphones, peace of mind to listen to the class.
Chen Xi would download the variety show the night before and watch it on the subway the next day. She was reluctant to face the similar weakness, numbness, and exhaustion on everyone in the carriage. But crowding could interrupt her at any moment, several times, someone forced her to "wall" her, her body hanging above her phone, and another time, a middle-aged man's stomach was about to be attached to her glasses. She had also seen a fierce quarrel, it was the morning rush hour, two men were waving their fists on the platform, and an uncle stood up and persuaded two words, which was useless. At this time, the subway pulled into the platform, people trotted and rushed to the car, and the quarrel disappeared, as if nothing had happened.
The third kind of space
The westernmost ancient city of Line 1, the community where dynastic life lived, has three names. On the map, it is called "Healthy Nanli", and the elderly nearby call it "North Boiler Factory", but if you ask the neighborhood committee, it is also called "Cement Pipe Factory Staff Building". For a long time, The Dynasty was very troubled by what to write on his courier address, and some new courier brothers were often lost in this area, and it was common to send the wrong thing.
In the ancient city area, most of the buildings and roads were planned around the Shougang Group, and later ushered in demolition. The community that originally belonged to Shijingshan Stadium was only demolished in half due to planning adjustments, and the remaining half did not know where to belong. There was no water in the community, no electricity, no gas, and the people who initially lived here drank well water, and a filter was installed at home, and later, everyone went to the next neighborhood to buy water, electricity, and gas, and paid for the property next door. The purchase time was fixed, Monday morning or Friday afternoon, it was the time when the dynasty was still at work, and he had to ask the neighbors for help. When the neighbors can't go, Dynasty will order takeout in the company, go back after eating, and buy bottled water near the house to solve the problem of drinking water.
There was a vacant lot behind the house where the dynasty lived, overgrown with weeds, very deserted, and on weekends, tricycles that did not know where they came from were lined up one after another, and men and women in thick cotton jackets shouted and sold vegetables. At night, it's usually pitch black, with no street lights, only small light bulbs hung up by nearby residents that glow dimly. Another community 200 meters away, with everything that a modern city should have, is a few hundred dollars in rent, which is two completely different worlds.
At the last stop on the subway, Dynasty found a strange and familiar feeling. He likes to cycle around, and when he lived in the former Village of Fengbo, he set off from the village and rode all the way down the main road to the Niulan Mountain Winery, where all the 10-storey buildings along the way were relocation houses, flanked by open wheat fields. In June and July, the people in the village began to harvest wheat, and the whole village was filled with the smell of grass left by a sickle cut through the plants.
Xu Haiyang compared the stone factory with the small garden, although the stone factory is farther from the city, it is more convenient than the small garden. There are many relocated houses in the small garden, and the bottom merchants downstairs have not moved in, which is particularly empty. The cheap rent here has attracted many people, and there are gradually more supermarkets and shops nearby. At the stone factory, Xu Haiyang can walk to Wumart supermarket every weekend to buy some daily necessities. Interestingly, there is everything in the supermarket, but only the most basic one, potato chips have only one taste, cigarettes only have two brands, and Red Star Two Pot Head only has the classic red version. There are also two parks around, and at night or on weekends, a lot of children and the elderly gather. Xu Haiyang is used to this kind of life, he does not have many friends, does not often go out to socialize, does not like to watch short videos, and in his spare time, he goes to the basketball court in the park to play with a group of teenagers.
Line 16 the northernmost bei'an river is also the same, the neighborhood is very clean, movie theaters, shopping malls, KTV, nothing, most of the houses are relocation houses, the elderly are mostly, a 70-year-old uncle will come out in the afternoon of good sunshine to walk, chat with his 80-year-old good brother, and then go back at night. Uncle is a local, sitting on several sets of relocation houses, he feels that the air in the city is not good, and he is reluctant to enter the city. In the evening, he sat on a stone chair next to the subway entrance, listening to the last cicadas of autumn, a group of young fish bursting out, and he had some feelings: "I can't see them during the day." ”
But Hu Yingjun felt that his house in Bei'an River had the feeling of home. The rent was not expensive, he had spare money, bought a sofa, a coffee table, bought a projector, and could watch movies at home. At noon on weekends, the sun shines through the window into the room, the washed clothes are hung on the hangers one by one, the laundry detergent is a light citrus smell, and on the wall is an old-fashioned wall calendar, "the kind that tears page by page".
Home to the last stop on the subway, like an extension of small town life, back in time. Walking on Bei'anhe Street, two old people met face to face, a chat is half an hour, the next trip does not matter, time can float and flow at will. There are restaurants, laundromats, and car repair shops on both sides of the main road of The East Village, and the signboards are named after the owners, such as "Wang Jia Noodle Restaurant", chain brands, standardized services, but familiar and humane. A few hundred meters from the village there is still a market, at four or five o'clock in the afternoon, the old man pulls the children to the market, where there are ten yuan and three pounds of kiwifruit, five dollars a pound of honey bread, and then go inside, a small stall is selling dentures, some people trade in paper money, some people forget to bring money, you can take credit with the stall owner.
▲ Every afternoon market in The East Village. Photo / Xu Qing
Become Beijing
At the last stop on the subway, Duole saw how a community grew longer and more like Beijing.
For a long time, Tiantongyuan was known as the "most chaotic community", people's mobility is high, the number of houses is large, a few years ago, Duole's neighbors wanted to rent a house nearby, met a second landlord, stayed for a few days, the other party said that the meter was broken, the electricity bill was more than 3,000 yuan, and the students who needed Duole and the other two roommates were evenly shared. The classmates took out the rental contract, which had the expression of wordplay, and finally, several people frowned and paid the money. In the early years, many of those second landlords were employees of the rental platform, they found the landlord through the platform system, rented privately, laid a good partition, and then rented out, earning both the difference in price and the intermediary fee.
In the past ten years, the community has changed a lot, there is a police office under the overpass, and the black car driver waiting outside the subway station has disappeared. Hospitals, cinemas, schools, and large shopping malls have gradually been built, and people have become more and more dense, which in turn has promoted the improvement of public spaces in the community. In 2014, there was the first tertiary hospital, Tsinghua Changgeng, and in 2019, Tsinghua Affiliated Tiantongyuan Branch School enrolled for the first time. In order to alleviate traffic pressure, the Beijing Municipal Government issued the second five-year plan of the "Huitian Area", two subway lines, Line 17 and Line 13, must pass through the Tiantongyuan community.
A unique community culture is slowly emerging. Tiantongyuan has a group of "violent walking tribes", no matter what the season, at six or seven o'clock in the evening, when it is dark, the uncle and aunt take the subwoofer to play ethnic wind songs, and people from Hubei, Henan, Hebei, Shandong and Shanxi are lined up, walking quickly around the community, the steps are neat, and the rhythmic sound is emitted. Most of the time, the team is led by a great uncle, while walking, while joining the new people, the team is getting bigger and bigger. Duo Le once met a 260-pound uncle, who lost 100 pounds after walking for several years, and his body was full of muscles. She felt more and more that Tiantongyuan was a miniature city. "It didn't exist in the first place, because urban development, population migration gradually formed, it was very inclusive, all kinds of people were available, from all over the world."
The local railway stretches to the more periphery of the city, and more places become the last stop. At the end of 2014, Line 14 Shangezhuang Station was not opened, everyone traveled mainly by bus, on the only way into the city, there was a train lane, as soon as you heard the sound of the train, you knew that it would be blocked for half an hour. When he lived nearby, Li Yangyang always heard the sound of "ding-ding" coming from the construction site, like Wang Feng sang in "Goodnight Beijing": "I will sleep in the rain tonight / accompanied by the sound of domestic road rollers." And the searchlight hanging high in the air emitted a white light that pierced through the curtains and hit him on the quilt. The house he lives in is not very soundproof, but he is used to these background sounds and knows to buy himself a curtain with the best blackout performance.
The blood of the city gradually flowed through the nerve endings, and in the years that followed, the road became wider and wider, more and more, and a new road could lead directly to Wangjing, which used to be 30 minutes to 10 minutes. The longer the house, the more regular it became, and the tall buildings were built, most of them above 10 floors. Now it is difficult to see the wasteland and weeds of the past, only the willow trees planted decades ago, with thick trunks and slender willow branches hanging in the summer.
But it also means the disappearance of some regions and some people. Near the easternmost point of Line 14, near Shangezhuang, there is a community called the north bank of the Xiangjiang River, which was a weedy wasteland 5 years ago, and when it rains, it is very congested, and people and cars will fall into the mud. When the north bank of the Xiangjiang River was newly built, the developer said that it could only rent out, not buy, but also promoted a model of paying 50 years of rent, which was equivalent to buying 50 years of residency at a price of 17,000 per square meter. But in October last year, the north bank of the Xiangjiang River was reclaimed by the government and will be used as public rental housing in the future, and the original residents can only move, they become part of the change. Walk into those emptied houses and you can see the haste of people leaving. Some rooms are hung with couple photos, or children's dolls, awards, and slippers are placed at the most convenient angle next to the bed in one bedroom.
▲ In the emptied house on the north bank of the Xiangjiang River, the decorations on the walls and the dolls hanging on the cabinets record traces of the family's life here. Photo / Xu Qing
Xiulian, 51, and her wife came out of their hometown in northeast China in 2008 and went to Beijing to work with their sister and brother-in-law. Restaurant teller, mall cleaner, housekeeping aunt, she has done it all, but over the years, as she gets older, there are fewer and fewer job options. At the end of the subway, The Village of Milk East accepted her and her wife and made them sanitation workers, each earning 3,000 yuan a month, a figure that satisfied Xiulian.
About 3 years ago, the house in The East Village was renovated. Surrounding villages, such as Milk West Village, have been or are facing demolition, and the scope of cheap rental housing in the surrounding areas has been narrowing, and finally only the natural village that the Beijing Municipal Government wants to keep, Milk East Village. People who used to rent in the surrounding area moved over after the demolition, and when there were more people, the rent rose again. Xiulian remembers that 10 years ago, when the house in The East Village was just built, it was only 800 yuan a month, three years ago it rose to 1400 yuan, and then it increased year by year, first to 1700 yuan, and then to 2300 yuan.
In more than ten years in Beijing, most of Xiulian's income was given to rent, but she was reluctant to go home, her wife had chronic lung disease, she had to take medicine all the time, and his social security fell in Wangjing, which could reimburse a lot. At this time, Xiulian stood in the middle of Beijing and her hometown, standing in the middle of rising rents and social security reimbursements, and she hesitated, not knowing which direction to go.
Left, left behind
Before coming to Beijing, Chen Xi felt that she was a sensitive and inferior girl, and after a month of squeezing the subway, she found that she had changed. That day, she fell on all fours on the stairs of the subway, but she did not care about the shame, and the first thought that flashed in her mind was: "I have to get up quickly, otherwise I will not be able to catch this subway." After getting the first month's salary, Chen Xi immediately went to an agent to see the house, she did not want to suffer from commuting anymore, and finally set her sights on the last stop on the northernmost side of Line 4 - Anhe Bridge North, which was much closer to the company. She felt that when she moved away from the Tiangongyuan, the new life in Beijing would slowly unfold to her.
Xu Haiyang found that the cost performance of the last stop of the Beijing subway was disappearing. In 2018, the rent of a one-bedroom apartment in the stone factory was 2,000 yuan, and this year the contract expired, and the landlord rose to 2800 yuan, which was higher than the penultimate station Xiaoyuan. It's hard to tell if there are more people coming here or if it's some other reason. Li Yangyang also remembers that in the area of Line 14, "there was a year to rectify the group rental housing, the rent rose, once it caught fire, and the rent rose again, and for another year, the basement did not let go, and it rose again."
Although the rent is getting more and more expensive, Li Yangyang is willing to live here all the time. He felt like he was used to it. "Since I came to Beijing to live here, every year I will buy myself something new, more and more things, moving more and more trouble." Xu Haiyang turned from the last stop of the subway to the last stop of the bus, he learned that at the last stop of rapid bus line 4, a 40-square-meter one-bedroom apartment, the monthly rent is about 2100 yuan.
After Duole moved, he missed Tiantongyuan instead. In the barbershop in the city, the minimum amount of card application is 2,000 yuan, and the TiantongYuan is 500 yuan. Every night, the North Third Ring Road is bustling with traffic, the noisy sound does not dissipate until midnight, and the office buildings not far away are lit up day and night, while the night of Tiantongyuan is only quiet. Duo Le told his friend: "When I was young, I could live in the city to earn money, and when I retired, I must go back to Tiantongyuan to live, mainly because I didn't want to buy a coriander and had to go to the supermarket on the basement floor of the mall." ”
▲ Jiutai Daji near Tiantongyuan is rich in variety and relatively low in price. Photo/Visual China
As long as education is not mentioned, the life of Tiantongyuan must be convenient. There are always people who have to chase better opportunities, and "when the children go to school, it will be obvious that people are basically getting their children back to the city." This is also the biggest reason why Dole moved.
The subway, which is getting farther and farther away, has become the hope for some people to stay in Beijing. Coming from a declining energy city, Tingfeng lived in the basement of the last stop of the Beijing subway after graduating in 2014, in small single rooms with bunk beds, in dormitories provided by the unit, and shared three bedrooms with strangers. In recent years, he has saved some money and wants to take root in the city, but all over Beijing, the only affordable houses are Yanjiao, Sanhe, Dachang, Xianghe in the east... After the comparison, he chose Gu'an. Gu'an's North City is closer to Beijing, and the average price of houses is about 14,000 per square meter. The distance from Beijing directly determines the house price, and the house in Gu'an South City is at least 3,000 yuan cheaper per square meter than in the North City. But that house was more of a consolation. Unable to stand the long commute from Gu'an to the Tiangongyuan, now, Tingfeng lives in the rental house of Fangshan, and has time to go to Gu'an on weekends. It is comforting that he has a love affair in Gu'an, and the object of his love is the neighbor of his new house, a girl who also lives a commute life in the twin cities.
For rose, a post-80s Internet person, buying a house in Yanjiao is the only option. In 2014, when his child was born, he didn't have a Beijing hukou and didn't have enough money, and Yanjiao opened his arms to the Ross family. From the map, Beijing and Yanjiao are only separated by a Chaobai River, standing on the bank of the river at night, the Beijing side is dark, and yanjiao is brightly lit, and the two cities form a Mandarin duck hot pot. The edge of the big city is less prosperous than the center of the small city, which provides Rose with a safe and stable home.
Li Yangyang likes Beijing, he feels: "This city is fair, it can weaken everyone's background, everyone can start from scratch, to re-establish their relationship with strangers." 」 In Beijing, as long as you are willing to work hard, you can get what you deserve. "At least for now he's not willing to leave. A few months ago, Li Yangyang's parents came to Beijing to see him and live with him, "They feel that there is nothing to do in Beijing, unlike in their hometown, they can walk around, but when I return to my hometown, I feel the same as when they come to Beijing, and there is nothing to do." ”
There are also pessimistic people who feel that fairness is like oil and water in a bottle, vibrating hard, oil and water can be temporarily mixed, but after a while, it will still produce layering. Wang Chao felt that Beijing was a city that was difficult to stay in, "with three mountains in front of him, hukou, house, and car." In his view, Beijing is just a pursuit, carrying his yearning for a better life.
Talent quickly became one of the 996 programmers after a brief chunk of time, and overtime and unfinished bugs filled in his extra gaps. He prefers Chengdu to Beijing. When traveling in Chengdu, it may be more than 12 o'clock in the evening, and there are still people walking outside, drinking tea, and a family of three come out to eat hot pot, "which is not very imaginable in Beijing." He added: "Beijing is taking all people's time. ”
Staying at the last stop on the subway, there was always not enough time, as Wagner described in the opera The Wandering Dutchman, the large ship called the Dutchman "had no course, could not anchor and could not remain still". Over the years, Xu Haiyang had a word in mind, hurry. "Nine to six, get up in the morning and wash up, eat quickly, take the subway quickly, I have to take the 7:54 trip today, it can't be late, and then I have to run to the company later." After arriving at the company, I am also in a hurry, the first thing is to take a post-it note to list the next work, the first, the second, the third... After work, I also rushed to take the subway, rushed home to finish eating, rushed to bed, and got up early the next day. ”
Only this year, he found that he had changed jobs 13 times and moved 9 times in the past 10 years. He didn't hate Beijing, but he didn't like it either. "I think I should change places after I reach the age of forty or fifty, this is not my time, it is the place where they should come after 00, 10, 20, I should quit this place." 」
Liu Le and his lover are preparing to leave Beijing and go to live in their lover's hometown of Xi'an. Maybe life is not so rich, but at least, "you can afford to buy a house." "When I first came to Beijing, I was full of chicken blood, and I was very happy every day, thinking that I could overcome everything. Now I can get more of what I want, but I feel particularly tired, particularly tired. Beijing brought me some things, and probably some things with me. The set of lofts bought in Yanshan, the last station of the subway, has not been seen by Liu Le for two years since it was handed over to the agent, and she does not know what the house has become now, as if it is an untouchable digital asset, "I have not lived in a day, I have such a thing, but it seems that I do not own it."
And those who live at the last stop of the Beijing subway are still struggling to find their place in the increasingly saturated city, as Caterina Camus wrote in her essay collection Loneliness and Unity: "He is one of all beings." He tried to be human as much as he could among all beings. ”
(At the request of the interviewee, the characters involved in the article are pseudonyms)
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