【Editor's Note】
This year marks the 40th anniversary of reform and opening up. This is the 40 years of great changes in the land of China, and it is also the 40 years of the same frequency resonance between the fate of individuals and the fate of the country. People who have grown up with the pace of reform and opening up have been promoted by the times and also promoted the times. As the bearers, witnesses and inheritors of the cause of reform and opening up, they have deduced vivid samples of the "Chinese Dream" in their own way. Litchi News, I Su Client and Jiangsu Provincial Radio and Television Station Documentary Creation Center jointly launched a series of character reports to capture the vivid and colorful Faces of China in the new era for you, and take you to feel the vigorous driving force of China's development and people's unremitting pursuit of a better future.
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"I once dreamed of fighting the sword to go to the end of the world, to see the prosperity of the world, the young heart is always a little crazy, and now you are home from all over the world." My name is Zhang Tianyi, and I am a map collector. I like Xu Wei's song "Once Upon a Time You", the lyrics in it are like being written for us.
This kind of work as a map collector is probably unheard of for most people. Many people think that the data in the electronic map is collected through satellite remote sensing technology, thinking that as long as you are in the control room, you can get the information of each city and each road with the touch of your finger. In fact, what people don't know is that the massive amount of information data in the electronic map is collected by our collectors.
Our means of transportation is an off-road SUV panoramic collection vehicle equipped with black technology. This collection car is our home on the one hand, and a symbol of our identity on the other. For the past two years, I have driven it alone for 170,000 kilometers.
We are on the road every day and stay outside for more than three hundred days a year. Although it is very hard, you can see a lot of beautiful scenery, you will also encounter some fun things and friends, and the harvest along the way is also quite rich.
The world is so vast, there are many places outside our sight, waiting for us to find, mark, and then present to the world. For example, the Kami Mountain Dairy Village in Erguna, Hulunbuir City, Inner Mongolia Autonomous Region, is a natural village composed of scattered villagers. Previously, this village could not be found on the map, and it was hidden in the depths of the inland like a "peach blossom garden".
For map collectors, whenever it's a place where someone lives, we'll go. A road of several tens of kilometers may lead only to a herdsman, but even then we have to walk.
The green dots are where we are, and the red dots are the trajectories we drive. Two hours later, the Village of Mount Garmi Cows appeared on the electronic map. This "covered-up" village finally has its own "status" in front of the outside world.
In the past, the way to take maps was to walk, or to take some older equipment. Now, we drive the car to collect fully automatically, and there are more drones and backpacks to support, which is more convenient, fast and accurate than before.
As Li Chuanxue, senior architect of Baidu Maps, introduced, with the advent of the 40th anniversary of the country's reform and opening up, China's economic and infrastructure capabilities have developed by leaps and bounds, and the map industry is also changing rapidly.
At present, we have more than 300 field collection vehicles, more than 400 staff, and a data processing team of more than 700 people, which deals with tens of millions of real-life pictures every day. Combined, a team of about a thousand people supports data collection for the entire map.
In order to maintain the timeliness of the map at all times, some highly time-sensitive data, such as the trunk road network of first- and second-tier cities, must be updated once a quarter. Dunhuang Mingsha Mountain, Sichuan Kangding Xindu Bridge, Sichuan Daocheng Bowa Mountain, Sichuan Qionglai, Gansu Guazhou, Chongqing Dongdamen Water Bridge, Xiamen Huandao Road... Every year, we need to collect about 10 million kilometers of mileage, covering all parts of the country.
Of course, in addition to the scenery along the way, we will also encounter some unexpected difficulties in the process of collection. The road we take is often the road that few people take, so the possibility of collecting vehicles facing tire pricking is relatively large. In the wilderness, there is no one around, and the vehicle has problems and can only be repaired by themselves. The collection process is more day and night, sometimes if you run far, you have to spend the night outside at night, so I will carry a tent, a quilt and some lights with the car, and my car is like my mobile home.
Friends around me said that they were very envious of my job, and I could run around and play everywhere. In fact, the feeling of not being able to go home for many years is something that others cannot experience. For us, life is always running endlessly to distant places. We're not playing, we're at work. Every road we update is to enable everyone to reach the destination more accurately and quickly when using navigation.
When we go out to collect and rest outdoors at night, I plan my route for tomorrow in advance to see if I will pass some towns or villages along the way tomorrow, which is very important to me, because it means whether I can eat a hot meal at noon tomorrow.
Before I came to this industry, I didn't know that maps could make routes so accurate. From the beginning of the paper map to the electronic offline map, real-time online map, and then to the use of high-precision mapping instruments to collect the map, the map version is constantly updated and developed, changing the world we live in. With that, the mapping industry is also growing rapidly. We walk more just to make others walk less.
Editor's Note:
In modern society, in the process of travel, we rely on the navigation of electronic maps all the time, from finding a gourmet restaurant to traveling around the world, because of the existence of electronic maps, our lives have become more convenient and fast. Behind the convenient life, there are countless map collectors who go deep into all corners of the world, leaving footprints and sweat on the road. The world is so big that you can easily reach the far away place without having to search hard, but someone has "guided" you in advance. Thumbs up for map collectors on the road
(Editor/Sheng Mingzhu)