Economic Observer reporter Liu XuEvery year, Pixar's wife and daughter go back to their hometown in Jilin for the New Year.
On February 9, noon on the Chinese New Year's Eve, Pixar sent his wife and daughter to the station after their last meal of the year. At seven o'clock in the evening, on Jiangtai Road, Chaoyang District, this Indian man wearing an orange down jacket and a little balding head stepped into the Taj House Indian Restaurant and said, "Friends, I've been waiting for a long time! ”
As in previous years, he booked a seat at the restaurant in advance and invited more than a dozen Indian friends and work partners to spend the Spring Festival together.
Indian restaurant during last year's Chinese New Year holiday Photo courtesy of the interviewee.
Behind a table in the Indian Restaurant in the Taj House, there is a television. Pixar walked over, turned on the TV, tuned to the Spring Festival Gala program, and turned down the volume. Fried dumplings, spinach cheese, butter scones, tortillas, Pixar chatted with friends about the latest advances in biomedicine, while tearing the pancakes into small pieces and dipping them in various curries. The chef of this restaurant is from India and has entertained many Indian businessmen and businessmen. The curry and crepes made by the chef reminded Pixar of the taste they ate in their hometown many years ago.
Indian cuisine Courtesy of the interviewee.
For Chinese, Spring Festival is a festival of hometown, longing and reunion, and the same is true for Pixar.
Having eaten and drunk, Pixar hummed hometown songs in Hindi with the people around him, and then got up and danced in pairs. With the Spring Festival Gala of the Year of the Dragon on TV, the party lasted until 11 o'clock in the evening, Pixar called an online car-hailing car, and almost fell asleep on the way home.
This is the ninth Chinese New Year that Pixar has spent in Beijing. While Chinese New Year is not a traditional festival in India, here at Pixar, "Chinese New Year is already a festival".
Nine years at Pixar
At a very young age, Pixar left his hometown to go to a boarding school in the UK, and then completed primary, secondary and university in the UK with honors. After graduation, Pixar worked in research institutes at the University of Cambridge, University College London, King's College London and other places, engaged in biotechnology research and development for 8 years.
After that, Pixar gradually got tired of the monotonous and boring scientific work, and finally filled out a project application form to go to Beijing for a research project.
In 2015, Pixar came to Beijing for the first time. Due to his lack of experience, when he bought water at the supermarket and checked out, he only had some pounds and euros on his body, and he did not understand Chinese, so he could only explain aloud while comparing at the counter. The last Jilin native who could understand English helped him settle the bill, "She also wished me all the best in China, and I was so moved that I don't know how many times I thanked her."
By chance, Pixar soon met a girl from Jilin. The two chatted very speculatively, and soon they got married together and gave birth to a daughter. In order to live with his wife, Pixar gave up his stable laboratory job in the UK and came to Beijing with his suitcase.
"I also see the vast pharmaceutical market in China, and there are too many opportunities for new drug research and development and drug industrialization," Pixar said
Without much effort, Pixar got job offers from a number of companies, and after weighing, he chose a pharmaceutical company in Daxing, Beijing, and became the company's deputy general manager. With the status of foreign high-level talents, Pixar has successfully obtained the qualification of permanent residence in China, according to official data, as of September 2021, only about 150,000 people, less than 1,000 in Beijing.
Pixar has been working for the company for nine years and has become very good friends with the company's principals. At a time when masks and alcohol were soaring and there was nowhere to buy, Pixar received boxes of supplies sent to him by his boss; After he caught a cold and fever and was refused to buy medicines by two pharmacies one after another, he received fever reducers and antigen reagents from his boss.
Although many pharmaceutical companies with good momentum have closed down during the epidemic, Pixar's long-term optimistic view on China's biopharmaceutical industry has not changed. "In the long run, momentary ups and downs don't have a fundamental impact," Pixar said. Recently, he also succeeded in persuading a colleague who had been in the UK to come to China.
Today, Pixar is proficient at ordering coffee and simply communicating the weather in Chinese — even though the act of communicating the weather itself is not very "Chinese." Every week, he also takes his family to one of his favorite Yunnan restaurants. Every time he eats, he orders a tofu soup, chats with his wife, lets his daughter swipe through the little red book on her phone, and then strolls around the mall to enjoy an afternoon with his family.
In the Spring Festival of 2022, Pixar once returned to his hometown in Jilin with his wife and daughter for the New Year. From dawn to dusk, from high-speed rail to bus, after a long journey, in the ice and snow at minus 40 degrees, Pixar, who was sitting cross-legged on the hot kang head, was sweating profusely, eating Northeast food, and chatting with the family until nearly 12 o'clock under the interpretation of his wife and mobile phone.
When the host began the countdown, Pixar put on his coat and walked out the door, and saw the fireworks in the sky that were more dazzling than the stars in the sound of bursting firecrackers.
A trip back to the United States for the Spring Festival
At around five o'clock in the afternoon of February 8, in a hardcover apartment in Sanlitun, foreign teacher James opened his suitcase. Like the massive migration of hundreds of millions of Chinese every year, James also has to embark on his "Spring Festival". The next Chinese New Year's Eve, he left for Capital International Airport early in the morning to catch a flight to Orange County, California. The Californian, who lives in Beijing, has been waiting for the trip for more than 18 hours for four years.
The day before, James was sitting in the school's auditorium, watching the students perform various programs on stage in red dresses. Five or six-year-old Asian, European and American children, sitting cross-legged on the ground, beating a drum the size of a watermelon; The older students, three or four, stood around the big red drum, beating the drum with a hammer in both hands; The senior students stood in a row, holding the microphone and singing "Friendship Lasts Forever".
James sat in the audience, applauding and lamenting that a few years ago, people could only stay at home during the Chinese New Year and use their mobile phones to wish each other well.
Over the years, he has learned one thing in Beijing: the Spring Festival is a festival that symbolizes reunion.
James misses Orange County, California, where it's warmer across the ocean, and he wants to go to the beach on a sunny day, skateboarding for an hour in canvas shoes like he did in Beijing's Olympic Park; He also misses his parents, and he doesn't know if his Japanese mother has prepared the red envelopes he received when he was a teenager for the children in the family this year.
Prior to coming to Beijing, James traveled to Spain, the Philippines, Saudi Arabia and South Korea, where he was a professor at many universities. He is a typical "slash youth": teacher, social expert, skateboarder, martial arts enthusiast. And Beijing seems to have met all his needs for life.
Today, James is a Language Acquisition Specialist at a leading international school in Beijing, where he is responsible for providing language teaching and advice to foreign teachers. He lives in an upscale apartment in Sanlitun, and at 9 a.m. every day, a custom-made shuttle bus to school stops downstairs at his house, and at 4:30 p.m., the same shuttle bus takes him home from work.
If you go to the gym near Sanlitun in the evening, you may see him practicing martial arts, or in a pub on Sanlitun Bar Street, you may see him eating steaks, drinking and chatting with friends. In addition to drinks at the bar, James also attends the Mexican Embassy Ball, the British Social, and various themed evenings organized on campus. Sometimes, he would take off his suit, change into a hoodie, and put on a peaked cap and skateboard in front of the Olympic Park or the Italian Center.
After three years of the pandemic, James is sensing some changes. On some Saturday evenings, when James walked into the usual hot bar, he found that the hall was not crowded, the bartender had nothing to do, and there was little mixed conversation in Chinese and foreign languages. "Maybe it's because the bar culture has changed," James explains, "and my friends and I had a hard time getting into some bars and restaurants because of our status [as foreigners]."
After three years of the pandemic, some resident expatriates choose to live in a different city or country. A Beijing foreign model (foreign model) agent is close to unemployment, his two *** once had 10,000 contacts, of which more than sixty percent are foreigners, and now there are only a few dozen people left in Beijing.
On January 18, 2024, at a press conference held by the National Immigration Administration, the relevant person in charge introduced that in 2023, the national immigration management agency will issue a total of 71 residence permits for foreigners living in China10,000 people, and the permanent residence of foreigners in China has recovered to 85% of the level at the end of 2019.
James' mind has not changed, and he has decided to live and work in Beijing for the next few years. "In Beijing, I have enough money to pay my college tuition loan and rent a nice house," says James, "and the air in Beijing is so good that I always have a cough in the Philippines."
"Old Pekingese".
On February 7th, Edison posted a lunch**: on the table was his favorite spicy soup, small crispy pork, fried cabbage, and a bowl of big peel. He wrote: "After eating this working meal in the unit, I will have a New Year holiday!" ”
Working meal Courtesy of the interviewee.
The middle-aged man from Albania has lived in Beijing for nearly 20 years, and his social profile picture is posing with Tiananmen Square. He has visited the Spring Festival temple fair in Beijing many times, and he was deeply impressed by the crowded temple fair. "I know what Chinese New Year represents," Edison said.
On February 8, at 8 p.m. the day before Chinese New Year's Eve, Uncle Edison sent a boarding slip. In the dim airport lights outside the window, he is about to fly to Tokyo, Japan. Edison went to Beijing alone and liked to travel during the Spring Festival holiday. During last year's Spring Festival holiday, he lived in the Yanqing Winter Olympic Village, speeding down the slopes during the day and pressing the shutter on the brightly lit Winter Olympic Village at night.
Edison on boarding Courtesy of the interviewee.
On February 9, the thirtieth day of the Chinese New Year's Eve, the Albanian uncle sat in a small restaurant with a menu plastered on the wall and posted a circle of friends: "Sushi in Shinjuku is delicious. ”
Restaurants in Shinjuku Photo courtesy of the interviewee.
This time he went to Japan, and his plan was to go to Tokyo first, and then follow his feelings to the next place he wanted to go. "It's a habit I've developed in Beijing. He said.
When he was in Beijing, he would always carry a camera and a computer with him, and work in a café after walking the streets of Beijing. Addison will always be unable to find the north in the alley. Later, he found that looking around along the way, regardless of the direction, he could find a lot of additional gains. Instead of a large mansion hidden deep in the alleys, he could notice the old-fashioned kiosks along the way, the orange cats pacing on the roofs of tiled houses, and the dusty bicycles crooked on the walls.
In 2005, Edison, who had just arrived in Beijing to work, rented a two-bedroom house near Babaoshan in Shijingshan, a quarter of an hour's walk to the subway station. At that time, the largest shopping mall in Shijingshan was Hualian, and if you wanted to buy imported goods, you had to go to Wangfujing, 20 kilometers away, or further afield. Chinese people are very friendly and can communicate with their hands. He recalled.
He loves Beijing's crowded subway and Beijing's noisy traffic. In his eyes, these are the fireworks of the city. "During the Chinese New Year, there were no people on the streets, and it seemed deserted. Edison said that a few years ago, he liked to watch people set off fireworks.
Edison used to be a TV host, but later resigned to become a self-aware, observing and documenting Beijing and China from his perspective. He would stand in front of the chef for a long time, watching a whole roast duck being sliced into several pieces and placed on a delicate plate, and he would also walk into a restaurant in the early morning and share with netizens how delicious the stewed duck in front of him was. Not long ago, he also went to the Ming Tombs and posted many ** of the emperor's tombs on Facebook, and many people liked it.
Screenshot of Peking duck** taken by Edison Courtesy of the interviewee.
Edison moved from Shijingshan to Chaoyang and felt the rapid development of Beijing. In the past, he only went to Haidian or Chaoyang to feel like entering Beijing. But now, suburban cities such as Fangshan and Changping also have subways and large shopping malls. He went back to Albania for more than ten days last year and found that he had to prepare cash when he went out, "In Beijing, an Alipay is enough." Edison said.
I will always live in Beijing, which is my second hometown. Edison said.