Life is the day between several Olympic Games.
Wen / Ba Jiu Ling
On July 13, 2001, Beijing successfully bid for the Olympic Games. We stood in front of the TV and heard IOC President Samaranch say the name "Beijing", thinking about 2008, and it felt so far away.
Seven years in a row, another seven years, another Beijing Olympic Games are about to open.
Between the two Beijing Olympic Games, the world is changing, China is changing, and we are also changing.
Some foreign media refer to 2008 as the "first year of China", and many Chinese also regard 2008 as an epoch-making year as 1978. Therefore, China's contemporary history may be divided into three segments: before the reform and opening up, "thirty years of agitation", and the new era since 2008.
The British newspaper "The Independent" january 1, 2008 front page "2008: the birth of a new superpower"
However, this division makes it easy to ignore the great changes that have taken place in China since 2008, as if 2008 and 2022 have a similar era profile.
In fact, many of the things that you and I are accustomed to, and even have become necessary for life, only appeared after 2008.
Today, taking the opportunity of the opening of the Beijing Winter Olympics, we will count the changes in the past 14 years.
01. Infrastructure
- High-speed rail
Around 2008, in preparation for the Olympic Games, Beijing built a number of projects that at the time seemed to be called the "Project of the Century." But looking back now, they can only be regarded as a few small footnotes in the wave of China's large infrastructure.
On August 1, 2008, China's first high-speed railway, the Beijing-Tianjin Intercity, was officially put into operation, with a total length of 120 kilometers. From this day on, it is possible to board a high-speed train with a speed of more than 300 kilometers per hour.
By the end of 2021, China's high-speed rail operating mileage exceeded 40,000 kilometers.
In front of the Juyongguan Great Wall, the Winter Olympic train sped by
Along with the Beijing-Tianjin intercity, there is also the reconstructed Beijing South Railway Station. 13 sets of 24 lines, with a total construction area of 320,000 square meters, was known as the largest railway station in Asia at that time.
When the station was built, a reporter asked: Will such a large station be a waste?
Zheng Jian, former deputy chief engineer of the Ministry of Railways, responded: The design of the passenger station and the prediction of passenger flow are matched. It is predicted that by 2015, the annual traffic volume of Beijing South Railway Station will exceed 66 million passengers. Looking at it this way, the South Station, which can accommodate 10,500 people at the same time, is a suitable size. ”
In 2015, the annual passenger traffic of Beijing South Railway Station was 150 million passengers.
At the same time, whether it is the scale of the station or the construction area, Beijing South Railway Station is no longer the largest, and has been surpassed by many descendants such as Xi'an North Railway Station, Zhengzhou East Railway Station, Kunming South Railway Station, Hangzhou East Railway Station, Nanjing South Railway Station, guangzhou South Railway Station and so on. (The main station building area is still the largest, but it is about to be surpassed by Beijing Fengtai Station)
These high-speed rail stations pull apart the skeleton of a city. This high-speed rail network has changed the pattern of China's economy.
- aviation
At the end of 2007, the expansion of Beijing Capital International Airport was completed, and Terminal 3 was put into use. The world's largest single terminal, described by foreign journalists as "like a dragon", became the gateway to welcome international visitors to the 2008 Olympic Games.
Today, the world's largest single terminal is Beijing Daxing International Airport.
That record may be difficult to break by another city ( Chengdu Tianfu International Airport has a larger long-term plan , but not a single building ) But since 2008 , more Chinese cities have had their own airports.
In that year, the State Council approved and passed the "National Civil Airport Layout Plan", opening a new round of aviation infrastructure investment, and the new ones were mainly regional airports.
For some remote mountainous areas and tourist resorts, the cost performance of building regional airports is higher than that of high-speed rail.
In the past 14 years, the number of civil aviation airports in China (excluding Hong Kong, Macao and Taiwan) has increased from 158 to 241, and the throughput of passengers has more than doubled, and the throughput of cargo and mail has also doubled. But by rough estimates, there are still 1 billion people who have not been flown.
According to the National Comprehensive Three-Dimensional Transportation Network Planning Outline, the number of civil transport airports will reach about 400 by 2035. "Except for some remote areas, the basic realization of ... The municipal prefectural administrative center is 45 minutes on the high-speed railway and 60 minutes to the airport. Basically realize the same day between prefecture-level cities. ”
The more than 100 cities without airports, and the residents there, might want to look forward to.
- Urban rail transit
This is a map of the Beijing subway in August 2008, when there were only 8 lines and 106 stations, of which Line 8, Line 10, and Airport Line were still opened before the Olympic Games.
This is a map of the Beijing subway in early 2022, with 459 stations on line 27, as dense as a spider's web – and it continues to weave.
The world's longest subway loop, Line 10 of the Beijing Subway, was not originally a loop line. Beijing Railway Station, Beijing West Railway Station, Beijing South Railway Station, and Capital Airport were not connected by the subway at the beginning.
The great changes are not only happening in Beijing, but also in the whole country.
According to the Statistical Yearbook of Urban Construction, the length of rail transit lines built in 2008 was only 855 kilometers, located in 10 cities; by the end of 2020, 42 cities were close to 7600 kilometers, and more than 5,000 kilometers were under construction.
The "one-hour life circle" in 2008 and the "one-hour life circle" in 2022 have completely different scales.
02. Internet
In 2008, there was no WeChat. The mobile version of Taobao has just appeared, but Alipay's mobile payment function is still completed through SMS.
Of course, there is no Meituan, Didi, today's headlines, vibrato, Kuaishou, and Pinduoduo.
In 2008, I couldn't actually see a few iPhones. Although Jobs released the first generation of products in 2007, it was not until 2009 that Apple's mobile phone officially landed in the Chinese mainland market.
Remember that? 2009 was the first year of the 3G era – at the beginning of that year, the Ministry of Industry and Information Technology issued three 3G licenses. Then there are the contract machines between the iPhone and the communication operators, which opened the door to the 3G era.
In other words, 2008 is still the 2G era.
People generally use Nokia, Motorola or cottage machines, chat through text messages, watch the Olympic Games through TV, read physical books, use physical money, go out to ask for directions, take a taxi by beckoning, personally go to restaurants to eat, personally go to the mall to shop, personally go to the queue to buy tickets, and live a life without courier (and no bill).
5 yuan 30M traffic can be used for a month.
In 2008, the number of mobile phone users was less than 120 million. In June 2021, this figure officially exceeded 1 billion.
0.1 second can use up 30M traffic.
14 years, from 2G to 5G, from 120 million to 1 billion, from tv broadcasting the Olympics to the "Olympics on the Cloud". Behind this is infrastructure, 5G, cloud services and the high-speed railway above, all belong to the new infrastructure.
03. The state and the people
I believe there are many people who miss 2008, perhaps nostalgic for their younger selves, for low-flying housing prices, or for a sense of fulfillment. Anthropologist Xiang Biao said that the problem of modern society is "the disappearance of the neighborhood", when the "world around us" has not disappeared.
But then again, for many days, things in the South China Sea and North could not be eaten, worn, and used, and could not be eaten, worn, and used. Having seen the larger world, I may not be happy to go back.
When The Independent described 2008 as the birth year of a superpower, economic data for 2007 had not yet been released, and China's GDP ranked fourth in the world after Germany, with a per capita GDP of $2,000 and 40 million poor people.
Whether China is called a superpower or an emerging power, its GDP is only a quarter of that of the United States. The U.S. president apparently did not see China as his main rival and was willing to come to Beijing happily for the opening ceremony of the Olympic Games.
At that time, some people said that we were running the Olympic Games with national strength, and we ourselves thought that this was a grand event to show our image and enhance our self-confidence.
Nowadays, few people at home and abroad think like this again. Accounting for 18% of global GDP, per capita GDP has risen to $12,500, eliminating absolute poverty and increasingly enriching everyone's food and clothing.
We no longer need to present the world with high-rise buildings, brilliant buildings, and more confidence to see the real chapter in the subtleties and do some big and clumsy things. For example, we will strive to host a "carbon neutral" Olympic Games.
Looking forward to the next 14 years, our efforts at this moment can bear new fruits. Hopefully, the next 14 years will also be worthy of our nostalgia.
Author | Wood has a medicine man | When the value is edited | Fan Chengyuan
Responsible Editor | He Mengfei | Editor-in-Chief | Zheng Yuanmei | Image source | VCG