The epidemic has made it difficult to take the high-speed rail into Beijing
In the eight years since the implementation of the national strategy for the coordinated development of Beijing, Tianjin and Hebei, the effects of "integration" and "same city" of the three places have become more and more obvious, and in the inadvertent changes in life, the boundaries and barriers caused by the administrative divisions of the three places have become less and less.
According to incomplete statistics, there are currently about 100,000 commuters in Beijing and Tianjin every day, and in recent years, the two places have issued many policies and measures to provide various conveniences for commuters, such as the implementation of Beijing-Tianjin intercity operation of public transportation, the launch of payment discounts with the city, the mutual recognition of subway Apps, and the Beijing-Tianjin intercity discount card. This makes many Beijing-Tianjin commuters feel like they are living in one place.
Until the beginning of 2022, an epidemic swept through Tianjin. The high-speed rail stopped, the high-speed was sealed, and the commuting road of the 100,000 Beijing-Tianjin commuter army was cut off.
This article is about an extremely ordinary member of this army, from ten years of drifting north to moving to Tianjin, she has experienced the entanglements, hesitations and struggles experienced by many people.
Li Xiao, female, 34 years old, engaged in the media industry, travels to and from Tianjin Binhai New Area in Beijing's Chaoyang District every day.
Written by | Du Junqing
Coordinate | wang reform
North Drift
Before moving to Tianjin, Li Xiao had imagined countless times when he had insomnia in the middle of the night what it would be like to commute to work for nearly five hours a day. However, she did not expect that after just two days of running, she was trapped in Tianjin.
She chose to move on Christmas Day for the simple reason that she wanted to celebrate the first day of 2022 in her own house. The day of the move was the coldest day of the winter in Beijing. She and the driver of the cargo Lala began moving at about 7:30 a.m., thinking that they would abandon all the furniture and appliances and that the things would be moved quickly, but in fact they moved for three hours in the biting cold wind.
Li Xiao didn't even bother to look at the house for the last time, the house where she had lived for nearly four years, the house that had witnessed her son go from falling to the ground to "revealing the tiles in the upper house".
This is Li Xiao's fifth "home" in Beijing. In 2011, she was admitted to a graduate school at a university in Beijing, and her husband (who was still a boyfriend at the time) followed her to Beijing. Like countless "North Drifters", Li Xiao's husband's first stop in Beijing was a damp basement of only about five square meters. She still remembered that there was a McDonald's downstairs in her husband's company at that time, when it had just launched a 15 yuan value-added lunch, and in half a year, Li Xiao's husband grew thirty pounds of meat like a balloon.
After graduation, Li Xiao entered a media company. They had a wedding, rented a one-bedroom apartment, and the husband finally didn't have to put up with the weird tenants. At that time, they were still living easily, going out to travel from time to time, and they didn't have much idea of what the word "North Drift" meant.
Until they were suddenly driven out by the landlord's order.
From the first day of moving to a new house, Li Xiao and her husband began to consider buying a house in Beijing, and they no longer wanted to deal with landlords and intermediaries.
Buying a house requires five consecutive years of social security to be eligible, Li Xiao's husband lost the qualification to buy a house because of a gap in social security, and they can only narrow the choice to commercial and residential housing.
During that time, as soon as the two of them arrived on the weekend, they followed the house watching group around, Yizhuang, Daxing, Shunyi... Houses on the outskirts of Beijing were seen almost every time, but finally they were abandoned because of the restrictions of commercial housing.
Not long after, Beijing issued a policy on the sale and purchase of commercial housing, and Li Xiao secretly rejoiced that he had not started to lose money, otherwise it would be too difficult to sell. And Li Xiao's girlfriend Xiaoxue bought a loft apartment in Changyang, Fangshan, and when she accompanied her girlfriend to see the house, Li Xiao was envious: When will I have a home of my own in Beijing?
No house, no hukou, for Li Xiao means no sense of security. When faced with the question of "when do you want children" from the people around her, she panicked in her heart. When she thought that her son would return to his hometown in Shandong to attend high school (or even leave junior high school), she did not know what the point of staying in Beijing was. They must consider whether or not to leave Beijing.
Settled
Li Xiao and her husband's jobs belong to the media category, and of course there are more opportunities in Beijing, and the salary is higher than in other cities. And the reason why she is reluctant to leave Beijing is largely because she is reluctant to leave her sister.
Li Xiao's sister belongs to the "new Beijingers" who got their Beijing hukou relatively early, and found a company to solve the hukou as soon as they graduated. She has always been envious of her sister's good luck, and she also understands that times have changed, and now there are too few companies that can solve the hukou.
Her sister told Li Xiao that a colleague of hers settled in Tianjin and bought a set of "old and broken" with more than 40 square meters in Nankai District, just to let her children go to school. At that time, Li Xiao knew that so many people had chosen to settle in Tianjin.
There is a saying circulating on the Internet - mixed in Beijing, sooner or later it is a Tianjin person. Although it is a joke, Tianjin's educational resources and housing prices are indeed very attractive to children who urgently need to go to school and seek stable housing.
As early as 2014, many people ran to Tianjin to buy a house for their children's college entrance examination, and at that time, as long as they bought a house in Wuqing District, they would send a blue seal account, which was equivalent to sending you a college entrance examination quota.
Different from Shandong, Hebei, Henan and other major provinces of the college entrance examination, Tianjin only has about 56,000 candidates per year, and adopts independent propositions, the difficulty of the test questions is recognized as the lowest in the country (comparable to Beijing), and the undergraduate admission rate ranks among the best in the country.
In 2021, 343 of Tianjin's 56,000 candidates scored more than 700, far surpassing other provinces and ranking first in the country. This is equivalent to about 163 people will have a super high score of 700 or more.
"Don't think about it so much first, settle down in Tianjin, just reserve a way back for yourself." My sister advised her so.
Since Tianjin canceled the blue seal hukou in 2014, the only way to settle in Tianjin is the introduction of talents and the settlement of points, and the talent intermediary who does the settlement business on behalf of the agent for a time quickly emerged. Li Xiao chose an intermediary company that seems to be more reliable, and throughout the first half of 2016, Li Xiao and her husband sat on the high-speed rail enough. They travel back and forth between Beijing and Tianjin almost every weekend, submitting various materials one after another.
They can feel the difference between the two cities very clearly, for example, they have just squeezed the No. 4 subway in Beijing and can have seats in Tianjin.
Li Xiao felt that he might have masochistic tendencies, he was used to squeezing the subway in Beijing, and when he came to Tianjin, there were not many people anywhere, and he was not used to it at once, and he was still a little inexplicably lost in his heart.
In 2018, Tianjin promulgated the Haihe Talents Program, which attracted a large number of north drifters to settle here, and at one point there was a grand situation in which 300,000 people applied for settlement in 20 hours and the number of single-day network visits exceeded 800,000. Don't spend a penny, online application can be settled, Li Xiao heard the news, very helpless, for their own thirty thousand yuan and that high-speed rail is not worth it.
But on second thought, it didn't matter, at least, she got the Tianjin hukou one step ahead of schedule. The heart finally settled down a bit.
Buy a house
Li Xiao only handles the collective account through the intermediary. In the face of the "intimidation" of the intermediary company's "possible investigation", Li Xiao and her husband began to buy a house without stopping. Only by buying a house can you be truly solid.
Where to buy it? Li Xiao and her husband were confused, they couldn't even figure out how many districts in Tianjin were in the city, and they could only start with Wuqing, which was very popular at that time. Wuqing is a must-pass place between Beijing and Tianjin, from Wuqing to take the Beijing-Tianjin Expressway, Beijing-Shanghai Expressway can reach Beijing in half an hour, so it has long become a major "stronghold" for Beijing-Tianjin commuters.
The Beijing-Tianjin intercity high-speed railway makes life in the twin cities more convenient. Li Xiao calculated an account at that time: take the high-speed rail for half an hour, and then work two subways, the daily work time is nearly 2 hours, 4 hours in the morning and evening, and the daily transportation cost is 120 yuan. Taking the 90-square-meter house as an example, in Wuqing, the expenditure of a suite is 700,000; but in Beijing, even if it is a house close to the sixth ring road like Daxingchang Pingfangshan, the average price is about 40,000 / square meter, and the 90-square-meter house is 3.6 million, which is nearly 3 million The difference is equivalent to the transportation cost of 70 years of non-stop work every day.
In August and September 2017, Li Xiao's husband went to see two communities south of Wuqing Station, claiming to walk ten minutes to Wuqing Station, which is also their biggest selling point. At that time, there was a mood of not buying today and rising prices tomorrow, in the mouth of the intermediary, the two communities in the first half of the year were only five or six thousand and one flat, and in the second half of the year, it was already over twenty thousand. At that time, Wuqing still had a long time to clearly stipulate the prohibition of the existence of things - "room tickets", want to buy popular real estate, you must first give the intermediary a sum of money, about 100,000 or 200,000, this money is not the money to buy a house, but to buy "house purchase qualifications". Give money so that there is an agent to take you to see the house. Individuals can not buy a house directly to the real estate sales office, and the sales office will generally be sold out or handed over to XX Company for exclusive sale.
The chaotic intermediary market scared off Li Xiao and her husband. They moved to the city again. The first factor to consider must be the school district, the heping district housing prices are too high, out of reach, they set their sights on Nankai district. However, the corresponding junior high school in Nankai District is not particularly good as a whole, because the junior high school is a precinct lottery, and I am afraid of shaking the worst one. And according to the intermediary, the policy of the school district housing in those years has changed very much, and no one knows what the policy will be next year.
After looking at the school district room for a few days, Li Xiao realized that his previous understanding of "old and broken" was too inadequate. It was the real old - the 1980s corporate maternity room, broken - the wall of the corridor fell straight down, small - forty flat sets are considered large.
Looking for a house to find the end, Li Xiao and her husband had no patience. What school district is not a school district, the supporting is not matched, they do not want to run back and forth, directly from the city to the Binhai New Area, in a good friend's home near the choice of a house, with large floor-to-ceiling windows, and her favorite terrace and attic, "is not to settle down, everywhere is the same." Li Xiao said.
When he really planned to move to Tianjin, Li Xiao regretted his childish decision. If she were given the choice now, she would not hesitate to choose the "old and broken" school district room.
In fact, at that time, Li Xiao's attitude towards buying a house was so casual, and there was another reason why she did not dare to tell anyone - she always felt that she could stay in Beijing, and as for the Hukou in Tianjin, it was just a back road.
She also didn't know where the confidence came from.
Li Xiao settled his home here, Tianjin Binhai New Area
Stubborn
The back road was done, and Li Xiao and her husband began to prepare for pregnancy. In 2018, his son Guo Guo was born. His son grew up day by day, but Li Xiao became anxious day by day. Go? She didn't want to go back to the "back road", and she kept refusing to face the problem head-on, like an ostrich with its head stuck in the sand.
In fact, she is not very nostalgic for life in Beijing. The city is so big, but no place belongs to her, "the café and the square have three blocks, like the distance from neon to the moon", she feels that the distance between herself and Beijing is the distance between the neon and the moon. Although every day at two o'clock and one line seems to be stable and happy, she understands that she does not have a real sense of belonging.
Girlfriends Xiaoxue and Li Xiao have known each other since junior high school, they came to Beijing one after the other, she came to Beijing to study for graduate school, and Xiaoxue went directly to a large factory after graduating from graduate school, becoming a relatively rare female "code farmer".
The two men faced a similar situation, neither of whom had a Beijing hukou. Fortunately, Xiaoxue finally has a house of her own. When they moved into the loft apartment, Li Xiao took her son to congratulate her, and she asked Xiaoxue: "Do you have any plans?" Do you want to settle in Tianjin like us? ”
Xiaoxue shook her head, her job is actually very suitable for staying in Beijing, Beijing concentrates China's top IT companies, to let her leave from an Internet factory, not only the salary gap, she is also psychologically difficult to convince herself.
"What about children?" Li Xiao asked a soul question.
Xiaoxue said: "We have discussed it, and we plan to let Sugar Sugar study abroad after graduating from junior high school." ”
"What if Sugar Sugar himself is not willing to go abroad?"
Xiaoxue was silent.
When Li Xiao was tangled, he did not think about this way out, and finally gave up. She couldn't make decisions for her child so early. When Guo Guo's classmates are preparing for the middle school entrance examination, and Guo Guo is not even qualified to take the middle school entrance examination in Beijing, she does not know how to explain to the child why, is she going to tell the child: Because the mother does not have a Beijing household registration, so you can not take the middle school entrance examination, you can only go abroad.
Without a Beijing hukou, it's not the child's fault. This fact existed before he was born, but why let him bear the consequences?
If he wants to study abroad, of course, he can choose the path he wants to take, but she does not want her son to "have to" go abroad to study.
This is her stubbornness as a mother.
It's not that she didn't think about the points settlement, but when she found a simulation score software on the Internet, it was completely cold. She made up her mind to move to Tianjin in 2019. Since you have to leave sooner or later, why bother in Beijing?
Demon
But who knows, at the beginning of 2019, fate opened a window for her. No, it's a slit.
The company's personnel suddenly informed her that there were several quotas for the introduction of talents in Beijing, and she was included in the company's declaration list. Hearing this news, Li Xiao was dizzy, she had already planned to decorate the house and move to Tianjin, but at this time, she suddenly had the possibility of settling in Beijing.
Li Xiao was really reluctant to give up, although she also knew that this was only a declaration, and the probability of success was only fifty percent.
But it's better than zero!
She quickly prepared all the materials needed, put down the arrangements for moving to Tianjin, and then, it was a long wait.
That's more than a year.
This year can be said to be the most difficult year that Li Xiao has lived since he was so old. Before applying for the introduction of talents, Li Xiao did not have a very strong luxury for the hukou, because she understood that it was impossible to reach; and in the year of waiting for the news, she found that she was so eager to get this paper hukou, just like the devil was scared.
Almost every day, she wonders, when will the results come out? She now has the qualifications to buy a house, and she even looks at the second-hand housing information for half a day in the middle of the night, thinking about where to buy a house after the hukou comes down? After the house in Tianjin is sold, there will be at least a gap of more than 200,000 yuan, what to do?
Looking at it now, Li Xiao felt that his self at that time was simply ridiculous. People always have more expectations for what is close at hand, and the more there is no result, the more they look forward to the result.
Until the beginning of 2021, Li Xiao learned from colleagues that there was no such quota for the company's talent introduction, and it is likely that there will be no such quota in the future.
Hopes were dashed. Li Xiao went to the bar for the first time after work that day, while drinking and crying to call her girlfriend, she later did not remember what she said at that time, her husband told her the next day, after taking her home from the bar, she lay on the pillow and cried for half a day, almost waking up her son.
It was also good. She persuaded herself so much, at least there was a result, and she finally didn't have to wait.
commuting to work
The hope of settling in Beijing was completely gone, and they decided to renovate the house in Tianjin according to the original plan, and the two of them began to take the high-speed train to and from Beijing and Tianjin almost every weekend.
One day during this period, Li Xiao received a call from Xiao Xue, saying that they were going to Wuqing next week to open a household registration, and wanted to see how they were decorated. predictable! They have been good friends for many years, Li Xiao knows Xiaoxue, and like them, they are easy to tangle people. But in the end, everything was lost to the word "child". As a mother, she knows how powerful these two words are enough to make them give up their jobs, opportunities, friends, and relatives in Beijing.
Decoration is a small thing, how to do the work? She does a good job in her current company, and her working hours are flexible and she doesn't need to work shifts. She also accepted video interviews with several Internet media in Tianjin, and when it came to salary, the HR on the other side told her very directly: "The salary level of our Tianjin branch is definitely incomparable with Beijing." She is also very blunt: "For this, I am mentally prepared." ”
She was still not fully prepared. My husband interviewed no less than thirty companies in Tianjin, and the salary he was given was almost half that of when he was in Beijing. Direct waist chop!
Li Xiao decided to let her husband find a job near home, and the salary was low. And she joined the army of 100,000 Beijing-Tianjin commuters.
On the first day of commuting, she met a "colleague" on the high-speed train. It was a post-90s girl who was very welcoming. As they chatted, they found that the two lived in the adjacent community and were engaged in media work. The girl said she had been running back and forth like this for years, "Just get used to it, it's fast." "The girl rented a single room in Beijing, and when the company is busy, she may not return to Tianjin once a week or two."
She left home at 8 a.m. and arrived home at 7 p.m. that day. The high-speed train station is not far from her, about 15 minutes by car. Then there's the 1-hour high-speed train, get off the high-speed train, and then take the subway for another hour. Then ride a 15-minute shared bike to reach the company.
Li Xiao can only laugh at himself: on the last shift, you have to take four different means of transportation, how "colorful"!
Fortunately, she didn't have to go back and forth every day, most of her job was writing, and the company allowed her to work from home. Thinking of this, Li Xiao felt that compared with the commuters around him, he was simply too happy.
In order to save time to the greatest extent, Li Xiao recorded his trip to the day in detail on the memo on his mobile phone. Line 6 inverted Line 14, Jintai Road interchange station is super crowded, from the No. 20 car, is the staircase; line 14 13 out of a escalator ... Li Xiao didn't even want to delay on the road for a minute or a second, and when she thought of a little person waiting for her to come home, she couldn't wait to run in the subway.
Another road into Beijing is also almost closed
Trapped
She has just started a few days of commuting, late at night on January 8, the Tianjin Municipal Government announced that from 18:00 on January 7 to 21:00 on January 8, 20 new cases of positive infection in Tianjin were urgently activated.
Li Xiao realized that the situation was not good, and quickly reported to the leader, and the class on Monday on the 11th was definitely not successful. What followed was round after round of nucleic acids, the high-speed rail was all stopped, the high-speed was not allowed to enter, and the last date of her commute was fixed on January 7.
A good friend joked: "Look, as soon as you come to Tianjin, the epidemic also follows." ”
She laughed along with haha, but her heart was very bitter: how could she be so unlucky?
On the 17th, Li Xiao joined a Beijing-Tianjin commuter group and saw that some people said that they had successfully entered Beijing by car, but they needed the community's proof of leaving Tianjin. She called the community and got a reply: The certificate of leaving Tianjin can be opened, but those who go to Beijing will not be opened.
There was no way but to wait.
On the 21st, the gossip in the commuter group said that the high-speed rail began to resume almost from the end of the month. But at the same time, Beijing reported that a cluster of outbreaks triggered by imported cold chain items had infected 18 people. After all, even if you can successfully enter Beijing, you will be in trouble to return to Tianjin.
Every day, the group is discussing the policy of entering Beijing and returning to Tianjin, how to do the nucleic acid proof, how to eliminate the pop-up window of the health treasure, whether to isolate from Beijing to Tianjin, which high-speed port has successfully passed... Policies vary from place to place and change frequently. Li Xiao looked through hundreds of chat records every day and only felt sad: We just want to go to work, how can such a simple request be so difficult?
There are not a few people like her who have not gone to Beijing for more than a month. Some people say that if you don't go to work again, you will lose your job, which company can allow employees to stay on the job for more than a month? Some say that they are ready to send a gift to the leader and let the leader understand, otherwise what to do?
Yes, Li Xiao also comforted himself so much. She is not the only one trapped here, and it will be better slowly!
Today it snowed a lot in Tianjin, and my sister in Beijing called for a video to show her the little nephew playing in the snow. Li Xiao wondered, will the snow in Beijing and Tianjin come from the same cloud? The two cities are obviously so close, why does the distance between them seem so far?