#我来唠家常#
This Spring Festival, the small city of Kaifeng in the Central Plains quietly ranks among the top five popular tourist destinations in the country[1], second only to traditional popular cities such as Xi'an and Chongqing.
Kaifeng is no stranger to this. Back in the period of the capital of the Northern Song Dynasty, Kaifeng can be called the world's largest metropolis, with water running through the city, merchants everywhere, and coming and going in all directions.
Unfortunately, after suffering from floods and wars, and successively losing its status as a transportation hub and the political center of the Central Plains, Kaifeng, a city that has spent a quarter of its time as a local capital in history, is now inconspicuous in Henan Province. Among the 17 prefecture-level cities in Henan, the GDP ranks around 10th all year round.
For Kaifeng, a sentence in the preface of "Tokyo Menghualu" may have laid the groundwork for its ups and downs of the city's fate - "Looking back, isn't it Huaxu's dream".
How prosperous was Kaifeng in the past
If you travel back a thousand years, landing Kaifeng is a good choice.
In the early years of the Northern Song Dynasty, the population of Kaifeng, the capital at that time, exceeded one million[2], even surpassing the city of Beijing in the later Ming and Qing dynasties[3], and was the largest capital city in all dynasties, while the population of London during the same period was only tens of thousands[4].
As the name suggests, Kaifeng was an open capital, which provided great convenience for its ubiquitous trade bazaars[5]. Restaurants, restaurants, night markets, tile shops...... Eat, drink and be merry, nothing is lacking. At that time, there were more than 6,400 large and medium-sized industrialists and merchants with relatively large capital in Kaifeng, and another 8,900 small merchants and hawkers [5]. "The treasures of the four seas are all returned to the city", which is the true portrayal of the prosperous Bianjing.
In the "Sun Yang Zheng Store" in "Qingming Riverside Map", Bianjing people have their own five-star hotel
Photo/ Visual China
In 1997, the American magazine Life reviewed the 100 most far-reaching events that have affected human life in the past millennium, including 6 in China, and restaurants and snacks in Kaifeng in the Song Dynasty were among them [6]. What is more modern is that at that time, Kaifeng already had government-run welfare facilities such as the Pharmacy Bureau, the Salesian Bureau, the Nursing Home, and the Leaky Garden[6], which can be called "the city, make life better".
Being able to prosper like this has a lot to do with the advantages of water transportation in Kaifeng.
Kaifeng, which runs through the capital of four waters, was once a veritable northern water town, with accessible waterways. As early as the Warring States Period, King Wei Hui moved his capital to Daliang (Kaifeng), diverted the water of the Yellow River through Daliang City, and eventually joined the Huai River, so that the main rivers between the Yellow River and Huai were connected to each other to form the famous "chasm", and Kaifeng has been associated with the canal since then [7] .
The opening of the "four waters", the waterway is accessible / picture insect creativity
In the Sui and Tang dynasties, the Beijing-Hangzhou Grand Canal became the busiest transportation route at that time. Kaifeng, just located in the north mouth of the Tongji Canal section, west of Heluo, south of Jianghuai, to and from the north and south of the material, must stay in Kaifeng. The Bianhe, Caihe and Wuzhang rivers in Kaifeng City are all connected to Cao, and the unique shipping advantages have laid the prosperous tone of Kaifeng [5].
It is a pity that Kaifeng is also the Yellow River, and the Yellow River is declining.
The vast and open terrain of Kaifeng is conducive to commerce and economy in peacetime, but it is easy to attack and defend in times of war, and it is very vulnerable to destruction. Li Zicheng once attacked Kaifeng three times, diverted water to flood the city, and the population of Kaifeng dropped from "378,000 zero" before the flood to "more than 30,000 people who were dying" after the flood [8].
Kaifeng Lankao section of the Yellow River / Visual China
In addition to man-made disasters, there are also natural disasters. After the Yellow River was diverted several times, Kaifeng gradually became close to the Yellow River bed, and the Yellow River was near the mouth of the river on average once every two years, flooding the city of Kaifeng seven times [5]. Under the influence of the frequent flooding of the Yellow River, all rivers were silted up, and the important canals were "almost intermittent"[9], and it was difficult to return to the status of the center of water transportation, and the city's commerce and trade also declined.
Nowadays, Kaifeng's special archaeological phenomenon "City Stacking City" is a portrayal of the ancient city of Kaifeng that has been deeply buried under the ground for many generations because of sediment accumulation. The dream of prosperous Tokyo has gradually turned into a corner of history.
Repeatedly missed cities,
No longer centered
The continuous bursting of the banks of the Yellow River and the blockage of the waterways are like butterflies flapping their wings. In modern times, Kaifeng has missed more opportunities for development, and has gradually been reduced from the political center of the Central Plains to an ordinary fourth-tier small city [10].
At the turn of the 19th and 20th centuries, before the construction of the Jinghan Railway, the first north-south artery in Chinese history, began, according to the original plan, the railway would pass through Kaifeng, the capital of Henan Province at that time, and form a cross with the Longhai Railway, which would run east-west in the future, in Kaifeng [11].
However, because Kaifeng is located in the middle of the axis of the Yellow River's frequent flooding, the Westerners who regard "the railway as the main end of the new deal" do not dare to take risks. Eventually, the Jinghan Railway departed from the closure and moved westward to the vicinity of Xingzekou, which had not been affected by the Yellow River burst, and the entire line was connected from Zhengzhou [11].
In the Kaifeng Museum, the Kaifeng Railway Station during the Republic of China is restored
Photo/ Visual China
This change has directly affected the status of Kaifeng and Zhengzhou. Decades later, in 1953, the Longhai Line was completed, and Zhengzhou became a transportation hub city at the intersection of the Beijing-Guangzhou and Longhai lines, occupying a dominant position in commercialization and industrialization.
On the contrary, due to the limited railway transportation capacity and natural resource endowment, it was not included in the key industrial planning cities after the founding of the feudal state.
During the 1st Five-Year Plan period, Kaifeng accounted for only 1.5% of the total capital construction investment in Henan Province, while Zhengzhou and Luoyang accounted for 30.2% and 21.9% respectively [12]. Kaifeng's economic marginalization has become an indisputable fact.
As a result, it is almost inevitable that Kaifeng will lose its status as the capital. In 1954, the capital of Henan Province was officially changed to Zhengzhou. Jiang Xin, then mayor of Kaifeng, mentioned in his mobilization report that "Zhengzhou is the focus of national construction, its location in the province is relatively moderate, and it is also a transportation hub, extending ...... in all directions", and for the sake of "the interests of the people of the province", the provincial capital must be moved from Bianto Zheng [13].
The "Big Corn Building" and Ruyi Lake in Zhengzhou CBD have witnessed the rapid development of the provincial capital's economy
Picture / Picture Worm Creative
Lacking policy inclination and business conditions, Kaifeng is no longer prosperous. In the era of planned economy, the degree of freedom of resource flow was low, and the development gap was not obvious, and Kaifeng also developed a number of light industrial enterprises under the state-owned system. For example, the Kaifeng Match Factory was one of the three major match manufacturers in the country at that time, and the Kaifeng Tractor Motor and Electrical Appliance Factory was once the largest specialized enterprise in the manufacture of tractors and internal combustion engine motors and electrical appliances in China [14].
With the help of the "seafood culture" model, Henan people can eat locally produced Penaeus vannamei shrimp
Photo/ Visual China
It is a pity that these light industries did not integrate into large-scale industries, and then promoted the overall industrial transformation of Kaifeng, but each declined and went bankrupt. After 1991, the gap between the industrial output value of Zhengzhou and Kaifeng steadily widened, and in 2005, when the integrated development strategy of Zhengzhou was officially implemented, Zhengzhou's industrial added value was even more than five times that of Kaifeng [15].
Lost Kaifeng,
Catching up again
Ji Sidao, a well-known columnist for the New York Times, once wrote an article titled "From Kaifeng to New York - Brilliant as a Passing Smoke", which describes the decline of Kaifeng in one sentence.
It was this article that prompted the provincial party committee and provincial government at that time to propose to support and attach importance to the development of Kaifeng, which promoted the promotion of Zhengbian's integration strategy [16]. Since then, Kaifeng's GDP has risen from 40.801 billion yuan in 2005 [15] to 265.711 billion yuan in 2022 [17] .
But if you change the judging criteria, you will find that the story may not be so optimistic. Compared with 2005, Kaifeng's GDP ranking in the province in 2022 has only risen from 13th to 11th, even worse than Xinyang and Zhumadian, only about 10 billion yuan higher than Anyang, and the proportion of Henan's GDP is still hovering at 4.3% - an improvement, but not much [17].
Unlike the eastern region, which is closely connected to industrial clusters, the regional integration strategy in the central region is often accompanied by the siphoning of emerging core cities. The same is true for Kaifeng, which is adjacent to Zhengzhou, and it is not yet known how the integration effect will be if its own industry is not based on its own industry.
"Manufacturing the city" and "strengthening the city of cultural tourism" are the ways that Kaifeng has sought for itself in recent years.
Qingming Shanghe Park Scenic Area in Kaifeng
Photo/ Visual China
In the last century, one of the main reasons why Kaifeng missed the opportunity to change the industry was the lack of industrial-scale R&D investment. In 2021, Kaifeng, which has learned lessons from history, has a coverage rate of 72.5% of the R&D activities of industrial enterprises above designated size, ranking first in the province, and in the same year, Kaifeng has 400 national technology-based small and medium-sized enterprises, a year-on-year increase of 82%, ranking first in the province [18].
Science, education and manufacturing have always supported each other. Fearing that Henan University would move to Kaifeng in Zhengzhou, he chose to "hold his thighs" and said that "Kaifeng will support Henan University with the strength of the whole city and the love of the city" to better realize city-university cooperation [19] and promote the local construction of two 100-billion-level industrial clusters of automobiles and parts and high-end chemicals [20].
has also experienced the pain from the "top stream" to the ordinary, from the early years of the Republic of China comparable to Tsinghua Academy and Nanyang College, to now only one discipline has been selected as a double first-class, Henan University looks at Kaifeng, I am afraid it can also see a trace of sympathy.
Henan University was once China's "top-notch" university
Picture / Picture Worm Creative
As far as cultural tourism is concerned, Kaifeng is blessed as the ancient capital of the Eight Dynasties. is active in film and television dramas such as "Menghualu" and "Know", which gives it the potential to become an "Internet celebrity city".
In 2019, Kaifeng's cultural tourism revenue accounted for more than 30% of GDP [21], which is higher than the 26% of Luoyang next door [22]. Since 2015, when the proportion of Kaifeng's tertiary industry GDP exceeded that of the secondary industry for the first time [23], Kaifeng's cultural tourism revenue has maintained a rapid growth rate of more than double digits, doubling the proportion of GDP in five years[21][24], which has an obvious pulling effect on economic growth.
As of November 2023, Kaifeng City's cumulative comprehensive income from culture and tourism is 70.568 billion yuan, almost the same as the annual tourism revenue of 71.35 billion yuan in 2019, and the small goal of receiving a total of more than 100 million people in 2025 has been completed ahead of schedule [25]. The Great Song Dynasty Martial Arts City and the Qingming Shanghe Park were among the top five popular scenic spots during this Spring Festival holiday [26].
The fire tree and silver flower never sleep, and the intangible cultural heritage iron flower appeared in Kaifeng
Photo/ Visual China
Under the bustle, Kaifeng Cultural Tourism is also facing new challenges.
The first is transportation, compared with the high-speed rail trips of more than 700 trips in a single day at Zhengzhou East Railway Station next door in 2022 [27], Kaifeng's average daily high-speed rail trips of about double digits are obviously different, and there is no civil airport, and the long-distance radiation is poor. According to the Spring Festival data, Kaifeng is mainly from Shandong, Hubei, Hebei, Anhui and other places [28], which is not attractive enough to economically developed areas.
Second, the important tourist areas of Kaifeng are concentrated in the old city, the roads are narrow, and the infrastructure is difficult to rebuild, which to a certain extent has brought problems such as traffic congestion and parking difficulties.
The platform of the old railway station in Kaifeng
Picture / Picture Worm Creative
For Kaifeng, the thousand-year history means the glory of the past, but also the lessons, opportunities and challenges of the present. No one wants to stay in the credit book of the past, and the same is true of the ancient capital of the Eight Dynasties, which is catching up.