What can you do in half an hour? Eat a meal, run 5 kilometers, or watch an episode? In fact, on the Beijing-Tianjin intercity railway, people can still run from one municipality to another.
In the 10 years of coordinated development of Beijing-Tianjin-Hebei, Beijing and Tianjin have already formed a half-hour "commuting circle", and on this basis, a new "living circle" for the people in the two places and an "industrial circle" for optimizing the layout of the industrial chain have also been "delineated". This brought more surprises to the insiders and profoundly changed the trajectory of their lives.
Entrepreneurs in the "commuting circle": meet customers in Beijing, watch the Spring Festival Gala in Tianjin
On December 18, 2023, the Jinxing Intercity Railway will be put into operation.
In 2014, the coordinated development of Beijing-Tianjin-Hebei was elevated to a national strategy, and the "Beijing-Tianjin-Hebei on the track" was accelerated. Looking at the recent Beijing-Tianjin high-speed rail timetable, you can see that the fastest time from Tianjin Railway Station to Beijing South Railway Station is 30 minutes, and the fastest time from Tianjin Wuqing Station to Beijing South Railway Station is 22 minutes. In December 2023, the Jinxing Intercity Railway will be opened, and it can be reached from Tianjin West Railway Station to Daxing International Airport in 41 minutes at the earliest.
The "commuting circle" between the two places quickly formed. Taking Wuqing Station as an example, more than ten years ago, the average daily number of people in San Francisco was only more than 3,000, and now there are 8 or 9,000 people in San Francisco, which is about three times that of before.
Wang Xiucheng, the head of an environmental protection equipment company in Beijing, is one of the "commuter circles".
On the evening of Chinese New Year's Eve, Wang Xiucheng saw off the last customer, turned from the fourth ring road in southwest Beijing to get into the subway, and then changed to the high-speed rail, and rushed to his home in Hedong District, Tianjin, without delaying to watch the Spring Festival Gala.
In 2013, Wang Xiucheng founded the company with a friend. Sitting at home and watching the Spring Festival Gala, Wang Xiucheng recalled that environmental protection talents and technologies were all in Beijing, and the technical partners were also from Tsinghua University. "Going to various places to talk about projects, mentioning the company in the capital, can also increase the reputation of the new company. Wang Xiucheng said with a smile.
As a result, starting a business in Beijing has become the best choice. Fortunately, commuting between the two places is becoming more and more convenient, and he has lived in Tianjin for many years, starting a cross-city entrepreneurial life that travels back and forth every week. Running around at both ends, neither end falling. By the end of 2023, the company's business covers more than a dozen provinces such as Shanxi and Zhejiang, with an annual output value of nearly 100 million yuan.
According to data from the railway department, by August 2023, the Beijing-Tianjin intercity railway has transported a total of 340 million passengers in 15 years, which is equivalent to transporting four or five round-trips for the permanent residents of Beijing and Tianjin.
The elderly in the "life circle": went to Tianjin to support the elderly and recognized their goddaughter
Wu Zhao (front row, first from left) celebrates the Chinese New Year with his neighbors in Tianjin.
In the past 10 years, people have become more and more frequent between Beijing and Tianjin, providing infinite possibilities for exploring new lifestyles. Now, "new ways to play" such as Tianjin life, Beijing party, Beijing retirement, Tianjin pension, Beijing watching the mountains and Tianjin watching the sea, have appeared around more than 30 million residents in the two cities. This Spring Festival, the people in Beijing, Tianjin and Hebei are enjoying the taste of the New Year. Among them is Wu Zhao, an elderly man in Beijing who is retired in Tianjin.
On the fifth day of the first lunar month, 71-year-old Wu Zhao and his wife visited the National Maritime Museum, and then went to Yang Liuqing, where the lantern exhibition was held, for a big meal. This is the second Spring Festival she has spent in Tianjin, singing and playing mahjong with her neighbors, and she is very busy.
"My daughter is abroad, and I made a phone call for the New Year. The younger brother and nephew are in Beijing, and they come to pay their respects on the Chinese New Year's Eve. The silver-haired Sister Wu laughed heartily.
Wu Zhao has worked and lived in Beijing for decades, and under the recommendation of his old colleagues, he came to Wuqing District, Tianjin in 2021 and fell in love with the beautiful and quiet Oasis Bay Community.
No matter where they care for the elderly, the elderly are concerned about medical treatment. This community is not far from the Wuqing District Hospital of Traditional Chinese Medicine and the People's Hospital. "A few months ago, a neighbor had a heart attack, and it took less than two hours from the time he called 120 to the time he finished the operation. Wu Zhao is still amazed at how fast it was in retrospect.
Wu Zhao's neighbor is a young couple with a child, and he used to commute between Beijing and Tianjin. Now, the two families, an old man and a young family, are getting closer and closer, and Sister Wu recognized her neighbor as her goddaughter in 2022, "Tianjin is my second home."
At present, Beijing, Tianjin and Hebei are working together to build a regional collaborative pilot area and demonstration area for the modernization of elderly care services, and the blocking points such as reimbursement for medical treatment in different places will be gradually opened, and millions of elderly people in the two cities will enjoy more convenience from "twin cities" to "same cities".
Strugglers in the "industrial circle": expand new worlds, with an output value of 1.2 billion
Yang Wankun took the high-speed train to and from Beijing and Tianjin.
In the past 10 years, Tianjin has taken the initiative to connect with Beijing to promote the implementation of "Beijing R&D and Tianjin transformation". By the end of 2023, the total number of registered enterprises in Binhai-Zhongguancun Science and Technology Park and Beijing-Tianjin Zhongguancun Science and Technology City, Tianjin's two major undertaking platforms, has exceeded 6,500.
Yang Wankun, 51 years old this year, came to Tianjin along the industrial chain.
In 2014, Yang Wankun's China Academy of Railway Sciences Group Co., Ltd. established Tieke Zongheng (Tianjin) Technology Development Co., Ltd. in Tianjin, which mainly produces rail transit braking systems and traction systems. In 2021, Yang Wankun went to Tianjin to serve as the general manager of the company.
For nearly three years, Yang Wankun has traveled back and forth between Haidian in Beijing and Wuqing in Tianjin almost every day. In order to be in a hurry, he took Metro Line 4 in Beijing and was used to the last carriage, which was the closest to the elevator after arriving at the station, and could be directly upgraded to the entrance of the high-speed rail station. He also developed a new habit of sorting out his work ideas on the high-speed rail.
Hard work pays off. With the efforts of Yang Wankun and his colleagues, the new enterprise has taken root and grown in Tianjin, from the registration of the company in 2014, to the completion of the first phase of the productive project in 2016, and then to the company's output value exceeding 1.2 billion yuan in 2023, the company is getting bigger and bigger. Now, the company has an average of more than 300 sets of brake calipers off the assembly line every day, loaded onto the Fuxing and Harmony high-speed trains.
"Collaborative development has opened up a new track for the company and brought me new opportunities. On the Beijing-Tianjin intercity railway, Yang Wankun commented on his three years of traveling, "In the future, there will be more opportunities waiting for us to create."