Shanghai, Chinese mainland the ceiling of the city.
Every year, countless young people, spending the price of living in a big house in their hometown, come to Shanghai, commit themselves to more than a dozen square meters, get up early and work in the dark, squeeze into the subway, stuff into the car dragon, and covet a cup of coffee in Wutong District.
In the eyes of these young people, or many Chinese, Shanghai natives, in a sense, were born with a golden key.
But some Shanghainese chose to leave Shanghai.
"Leaving Shanghai,
Prove that you don't want to enjoy the birthplace bonus. ”
I was born in Shanghai and work in Shanghai. The Shanghainese around me are almost like me, this kind of growth path. We take a small ten thousand yuan a month, live in the family house, drive the family car, and really have no worries about food and clothing.
In the first two years, the taste of struggle in the north, Shanghai and Guangzhou was particularly strong. The young people who come to Shanghai to work hard and our local young people in Shanghai even have a little hostile meaning.
These young people call themselves "Shanghai Drifters." The Shanghai drifters always said to us, "You live too easily." ”
The biggest confusion of my Shanghai friends around me at that time was:
"Is it really wrong that we are local, live in our own homes, and don't want to fight so hard?"
I used to have a few very good friends, three of the five were locals, two were studying in Shanghai and then staying in Shanghai.
In the first year after graduation, everyone often played together, and at that time, "Beijing Women's Picture Book" and "Shanghai Women's Picture Book" seemed to have just been broadcast. One weekend, we were eating hot pot and watching a drama at a friend's house, and we watched it for a while, and one of our friends in Shanghai said, "It's a bit too much."
But another girl who stayed in Shanghai because of her work cried and said, "You will never understand this kind of hardship." ”
Perhaps, secretly, there was an urge to "understand this pain", so I decided to leave Shanghai.
A lot of people around don't understand. In their hearts, like me, to be able to live a stable and comfortable life in Shanghai is their ultimate goal.
The ones I didn't understand the most were, of course, my parents.
They repeatedly said: "As long as you stay in Shanghai, everything is convenient, you stay in Shanghai we can take good care of you, you stay in Shanghai to live a life that does not let us worry." ”
They couldn't believe that I would give up a life that most Chinese flocked to.
The place I chose to go was Yunnan, where I wanted to open a coffee shop or a homestay, get away from the big city, and make myself comfortable.
Now, I have settled down in Yunnan. It was a completely unfamiliar place and it took me two years to get used to. Although it is still different from the young people who work hard in the big cities, at least I can tell my friends who dare to fight all the time:
"You see, I'm not a person who only enjoys the dividends of my birthplace."
"Equality in love,
It was only realized after leaving Shanghai. ”
My girlfriend and I are studying at university in Shanghai, I am a local, she is from a second-tier city in the central region. We talked for almost four years, the relationship has been very stable, planning to get married after graduation, and both parents have met.
When I met with his parents at that time, his mother said to me: "You two will stay in Shanghai to develop in the future, it is very good, you are still a local, it is more convenient, you can also take care of each other." ”
In the eyes of the older generation, "Shanghai native" means stability and is the perfect marriage partner.
After my girlfriend graduated, my job has always been very difficult. When we were in Shanghai, we lived together in another house in my house, and there was no pressure in life. However, she is a very enterprising girl, and she just happened to meet her own industry, and the overall setback was frustrated.
She is in the online education industry. Last year, she changed jobs three times in a year, all three times being "optimized". In fact, she and I both know that it is a problem of the industry, but she can't get over the hurdle in her heart, and the whole person is particularly depressed. Following this emotion, our feelings also have problems.
She always felt like she was dragging me down, and once in an argument, she said, "If you find a local girl in Shanghai, you should be able to live better." ”
We've never argued before because we're from different places, so when she said that, I was quite surprised, I think, it was something in her subconscious.
In the month when the contradictions were most intense, we quarreled three times over the topic of "Shanghai local". The last time she mentioned breaking up, she said she felt bad and didn't want to delay me. Then moved out of Shanghai.
I decided to leave Shanghai and get her back. She left on Tuesday, and I left on Friday, bringing only a box of clothes and boarding the plane without even thinking about it.
In the past two decades, I have not thought for a moment that I will leave Shanghai. But after I actually left, I realized the need to leave with hindsight.
I went after her. We were in a new city, rented a house, and each got a job. Living together until now, we are about to get married.
In this second-tier city, our identity has become more equal. I am no longer an international metropolis native who does not need much effort to sit on the dividends, and she no longer needs to worry about becoming a burden to me.
Like young people from all places in this second-tier city, we are fighting and living on an equal footing.
I need to think about how to save money to buy a house and how to save money to buy vegetables here, and all this has made my life in more than twenty years have a different sense of touch and vitality for the first time.
"The struggle became political correctness in Shanghai,
I don't like it. ”
Although everyone is now saying "lying flat", as a young person in Shanghai, lying flat in Shanghai has become very delicate.
Some of my friends who used to have stable jobs and live at home were indeed close to a certain state of lying flat. But unlike other young people who choose to lie flat, I am always encouraged, and when my local friends choose to lie down, they always hear some prickly words, such as:
"Shanghainese, normal."
Over time, you will feel that lying flat in Shanghai as a Shanghainese is something that will be looked down upon. As a result, more and more people choose to "roll up" like other young people who come to Shanghai.
People who come to Shanghai to work hard may not be able to lie flat, and young people in Shanghai dare not lie flat.
One of the friends, who had a comfortable life before, later left his job with more money and less trouble and began to "struggle". He felt that it was not okay to live at home, and he had to move out to have a sense of struggle, so he rented his own house from a location close to the city center and moved to the suburbs.
I don't really understand this kind of behavior. They are busy, not for the life they want, but for not to be like other people. But now this atmosphere is getting stronger and stronger.
That's why I left Shanghai. The people around them are too rolled, and most of them can be called "rolls for the sake of rolls." As for me, I don't care much about what others will say, so I still want to choose a flat life.
Since lying flat in Shanghai has become "politically incorrect", I might as well change places.
Many local young people in Shanghai like me don't want to pretend to struggle in Shanghai, and everyone wants to choose their own lifestyle.
Now, I'm in Chengdu. When I joined the new job, my colleagues knew that I was from Shanghai and asked me incomprehensibly: "Why do you Shanghainese still have to come out and suffer hardships?" ”
I would love to tell her that, in fact, I stayed in Shanghai and probably more bitterly. Either the work is bitter, or the heart is bitter.
Write at the end
In the eyes of many people, Shanghai is a playground. Work hard to get a ticket to this playground.
But not everyone in this world likes playgrounds, especially after being in this playground for a long time, some people will become an imagination, a landscape, a symbol about the city, but they can't be ordinary themselves.
Therefore, there are still thousands of Shanghai natives who have left Shanghai, and there are certainly thousands of reasons.
The question "Where did I come from?" is a good answer.
Instead, the question "Where am I going?" may be more difficult for some of them.
Interviews | pp, tower cat
Written by |pp, Tower Cat
Images courtesy of interviewees