Daci Tea Garden is located in the bustling center of Chengdu. (Hua Xiaofeng/Photo)
One cannot step into the same river twice, but one can be in two worlds at once. Parallel worlds are not the fantasies of science fiction movies about the future, but the real life in Chengdu.
At 8 o'clock in the morning on weekdays, waves of people poured into Chengdu Metro Line 1, and they were office workers rushing to work in the chengnan high-tech zone. When the spacious carriages are full, the subway heads south to transport passengers to Tianfu 3rd Street, Tianfu 5th Street and other stations. People walking out of the subway, holding Starbucks in their hands, walked into the CBD buildings in the Financial City, Software Park, Jingronghui and other places with great energy, and began the day's work.
Rotate the hour hand 360 degrees in a downward direction, switch time to 8 p.m., and another world will come to life. The daytime suits and leather shoes ended perfectly, short sleeves, slippers have appeared one after another, and the Starbucks in the hands of office workers have also been replaced by red oil skewers in the fly restaurant downstairs, one by one, one by one, it is really "ba fit".
These are two "parallel worlds" that exist in Chengdu at the same time, but not like the mathematical concept of "never intersecting". Here, leisure and exuberance, the intersection of the two ways of life, is the open, inclusive and innovative character that runs through thousands of years.
Post-80s and post-90s "Rong drifters"
"The plane encountered serious turbulence!" The sudden heavy snowfall on the Sichuan West Plateau has given Wang Liguang and his party a new challenge to the performance test of the UAV. After 5 minutes of persistence in the snow and wind, the plane landed on a steep slope of the plateau at 30 degrees. Before the members could climb up, the fuselage was covered in snow and there was no trace.
After joining Chengdu Zongheng Automation Technology Co., Ltd. (hereinafter referred to as Zongheng Shares), Wang Liguang from Jiangnan Water Town often ran to the plateau. "Each of our drone models must undergo altitude testing before they are available." Since 2015, the director of the technology center has led dozens of test flights, large and small.
The hour hand is dialed to 7 years ago. Stepping on the winter snow, Ren Bin, chairman of Zongheng Co., Ltd., made a special trip to Northwestern Polytechnical University to dig up people, and the two had a long talk at a hotel near the school. In 2015, when he resigned and welcomed the new, Wang Liguang not only bid farewell to the past year, but also bid farewell to the work of the postdoctoral mobile station of mechanics at the School of Aeronautics and Astronautics of Xigong University. "Industrial drones have broad prospects, Chengdu has a high degree of market activity, and I want to do research closer to the market and live a more challenging life."
In chengdu in early spring, the hibiscus outside the window is tender and green; the entrepreneurial team of 25 people is immersed in hard work indoors. Drawing, retouching, calculating and demonstrating, adjusting design parameters, repeated deliberations and experiments day and night have become Wang Liguang's daily routine. Six months later, Zongheng co., Ltd. released the "CW-20 Dapeng" oil-electric hybrid, vertical take-off and landing fixed-wing UAV, redefining the new form of industrial UAVs and kicking off the legendary prelude to the CW Dapeng series.
The times and heroes always achieve each other. In 2015, when the fate of individuals quietly changed, the industry also changed dramatically. This year is known as the first year of civilian drones. Subsequently, a large number of UAV-related enterprises sprung up and competed to be registered.
Chengdu, on the other hand, is the place where "spring shoots" are most concentrated. Guo Liang, founder of Sichuan Aoshi Technology Co., Ltd. (joined Geely Technology Group in September 2020 and renamed Wofei Changkong Technology Co., Ltd.), said that focusing on industrial-grade drones or high-end drones, Chengdu is undoubtedly the highest place in the country. Chengdu Aircraft Design and Research Institute, Chengfei Company and other aviation research institutes and manufacturing enterprises gathered, and the production of the whole industrial chain can be completed without leaving Sichuan.
Still in this year, the Tencent Building on Tianfu Third Street, "Glory of the King" turned out to be the "King's Wind" in the country. Phenomenal products announced the bottoming out of Chengdu's mobile game industry, and more and more game companies have established R&D centers in Chengdu. The gamma data report shows that in 2018, the growth rate of game companies and the proportion of R& D enterprises in Chengdu were the first in the country. Chengdu has become a well-deserved "mobile game fourth city".
From Guo Liang to Wang Liguang, from aerospace to e-sports cultural creation, the flow of talents and the trajectory of industry development gradually coincide. This shows that industrial advantages and economic vitality are the most hard-core talents "gold absorbing stones", and talent gathering is the "golden key" for the industry to burst out of greater vitality.
According to the data of the seventh census, the permanent population of Chengdu exceeded the 20 million mark in 2020, an increase of nearly 5.82 million people in ten years, second only to Shenzhen and Guangzhou. According to the "Chengdu Release" report, as of 2021, the total number of talents in Chengdu will reach 5.876 million, and the cumulative number of newly settled young college students will be close to 580,000. Not only the two post-80s doctors, but also more young talents regard "Rong Drift" as a fashion expression and Chengdu as a city of opportunities.
Xiao Yi, a post-90s man from a game company in Hangzhou, is one of them. "I came to Chengdu because I was attracted by the Glory of Kings project. Game practitioners definitely want to make a phenomenon-level work, even if they can't do it, it is good to learn experience in it. ”
At the same time that Xiao Yi bid farewell to his friends and prepared to leave, Han Jianfeng, who was the same age as him, made the same decision. With the high morale of "changing the way humans navigate", Han Jianfeng, a master's student in Tsinghua Aeronautics and Astronautics, left Shanghai and joined Guo Liang's team in August 2020 to start studying "flying cars".
Responding to various technical consultations and building a set of challenging work such as the configuration and airworthiness system for flying cars made Han Jianfeng feel that Chengdu High-tech Zone and Shanghai Pudong New Area were no different, just as active and just as busy. "People in the high-tech zone are also in a hurry, rushing to various meeting sites. But when you return to your life after work, you are much more comfortable. ”
4 hours to Kangding to listen to love songs
Han Jianfeng felt this comfort after work, which came largely from the smaller pressure of life in Chengdu. He had also thought about settling down in Shanghai, but after a year's business trip, soaring housing prices made him seriously think about whether he could stay.
According to the Southern Weekend City (Regional) Research Center, it takes 37 years in Shanghai to buy a 40-square-meter commercial house based on the average annual income of residents in each city. In Chengdu, the time is shortened to 16 years.
Today, thanks to Chengdu's talent settlement policy, Han Jianfeng, who has just returned to Chengdu for a year, has purchased a talent apartment in Chengdu. "After a while, I plan to take my family over and celebrate the New Year in Chengdu together." This sense of solidity allows him to have no worries and enjoy work and life more attentively.
A bed in the house, a cup of tea in the tea house. The tea house has long been integrated into the daily life of Chengdu people and has a rich social function: small couples drink tea, look at each other and laugh and whisper; middle-aged people close their eyes slightly, shake their heads and hum to enjoy themselves. For Han Jianfeng, there are friends from afar who first take them to the Chuanxi Tea House on the jinjiang river to "pick up the wind and wash the dust". Under the century-old ginkgo tree, rattan chairs, green brick walls, a cup of tea, three or two friends, one sitting is an afternoon, and the thoughts have long been drifting to nowhere.
Xiao Yi, who has a free personality, also likes to sit in the tea house occasionally. But he longs for freedom and likes to challenge, and he prefers to "go out and around". "In November 2020, Heluogou in western Sichuan soaked in hot springs; in December, he climbed Qingcheng Mountain; in April 2021, he drove to western Sichuan; in July, he climbed Siguniang Mountain..." Xiao Yi carefully counted his travel experience in Chengdu for more than a year.
"There are so many beautiful views to be reached around Chengdu, and for someone like me who loves to drive and climb mountains, it is paradise!" On a Friday afternoon in August 2021, Xiao Yi temporarily wanted to go to Kangding. After 4 hours, people were already listening to love songs and eating supper in Kangding.
No longer far away from the big thing of buying a house, enjoying the riverside teahouse, free self-driving travel, the "Rong Drifters" from all over the world have established a unique connection with the city, and everyone has their own way of enjoying life.
For Xia Xia, the builder of the worldview of "Glory of Kings", this connection method is even more special: "Our work is to live, and the perception of life provides inspiration and creativity for work." ”
As Ma Huateng said, "The glory of the king is a gift from Chengdu to Tencent." "As a creative industry, games need to accumulate technology and precipitate creativity. The former comes from the basic skills and cold benches, and the latter comes from the tea houses in the old street and the winter sunshine.
Listening to stories, writing stories, and passing on stories are the daily work of Xia Xia. In her view, in a way, the game world is a projection of the real environment. The city of Chengdu provides itself with a coupling channel between illusion and reality.
In Xia Xia's eyes, the owner of the dessert shop in Chengdu who cares about the emotions of customers and records the story of the encounter has friends who killed all the scripts in the city with interest, has a history and culture of three thousand years, and also has a new era fashion trend to play. Embrace all things, and all beings are free. "We will reproduce the values and emotional orientation of Chengdu people in the language of the game, and hope that more people will feel this openness and romance."
There is time to live, to feed back work with life, leisure and passion coexist in the collision. If you only understand "Bashi" as "comfortable life", in fact, you do not understand the temperament of Chengdu, and freely shuttle between the two parallel worlds of "active work" and "free life", which is the correct annotation of Chengdu's "Bashi".
Chengdu citizens eat hot pot while enjoying the Sichuan drama changing face. (Southern Weekend reporter Weng Huan/photo)
Parallel to the intersection of Chengdu
Some people rush the project in high-rise buildings, and some people have a leisurely life in a street teahouse, and they seem to be in two parallel worlds. The charm of Chengdu is that in the change of day and night, everyone can freely travel between two parallel worlds.
Do more than a dozen technical tests during the day to change the way humans navigate, and relax at night listening to LiveHouse to relieve stress. Usually coordinate research and development, users, technology to promote the game online, the holiday on a whim to go away on the philatelic mountains and rivers. Weekdays in the game to convey human values and emotions, affect tens of millions of users, weekends with the dessert shop owner casual conversation, share stories to understand life...
Enthusiastic and laid-back, two temperaments that seem to be completely different, but harmoniously unified in one city. Respect all lifestyles, support all whimsy, there is no golden rule that must be followed, everyone is the yardstick of their own life.
In an open and inclusive atmosphere, the two parallel worlds began to intersect, and infinite vitality and creativity were contained in the intersection and transformed into productivity, which promoted the rise and prosperity of new economic industries such as cultural and creative e-sports and intelligent manufacturing. Heaven has tolerance, zeal for all things; the earth has tolerance, nurturing sentient beings; the city has tolerance, toward the future.
Official data show that the number of new economy enterprises in Chengdu has increased by more than 70,000 households per year for three consecutive years, and the number of new economy enterprises in the city has reached 560,000 in the first three quarters of 2021, with operating income of more than 1.4 trillion yuan and more than 4 million employees.
Behind the vigorous development of the new economy is the innovative character that Chengdu has inherited for thousands of years. More than 2,000 years ago, Li Bing's father and son built the world's earliest damless water diversion project Dujiangyan; the ancient Shu people created the "Southern Silk Road" starting from Chengdu; during the Northern Song Dynasty, Shu commercial "Jiaozi" replaced copper coins to facilitate circulation, thus opening the era of world paper money... Thousand years of history, the road is not exhausted chengdu innovation.
In the 21st century, Chengdu still dares to be the first. In 2009, Chengdu became the first city in China to host the WCG World E-sports Competition, and Dayang, who was a sophomore in high school, took a bus with his 35 classmates after class and went to the outside of the new convention and exhibition center of the competition venue to "feel the eager atmosphere of world-class e-sports competitions".
Today, Dayang has become a team leader of Chengdu's local e-sports team "Chengdu Hunter Team". "Hunters don't work overtime" is the slogan of the team, every time he hears the audience shouting before the game, he remembers watching football games with his father as a child, and the Sichuan accent of "Xiongqi" resounds throughout the stadium. The Chengdu arena culture and the spirit of striving for innovation behind "Xiongqi" have also left their mark on his memory.
Along Chengdu's new economic track, Guo Liang, a drone graduate, is thinking about a new question: airplanes can fly in the sky, why can't cars?
He enthusiastically depicted the application scenario of "flying car": from Shuangliu Airport to Taikoo Li, it takes at least 1 hour by taxi. However, if you use the city low-altitude flight method, the mobile phone places an order to make an appointment, and the person is directly picked up from the roof, and it can be reached in 20 minutes. Behind this is not only the sharp reduction of time costs, but also the great changes in human travel patterns, living habits, and consumption scenarios.
This is one of the samples of Chengdu's "scene camp city" concept. Chengdu will continue to release 1,000 new scenarios and 1,000 new products to the world, and continue to share the city's opportunities with the world.
(In the text, Xiao Yi and Xia Xia are pseudonyms)
Southern Weekend researcher Guo Qianqian and Deng Liping