In 2009, Beijing's housing prices were still more than 10,000 square meters, and they had just recovered steadily from the turmoil of the financial crisis. In the same year, Alibaba ushered in the first Double 11 shopping festival, Sina officially launched Weibo, and China's Internet began to brew the take-off of mobile Internet with the issuance of 3G licenses and the popularization of smartphones. In Beijing's high-tech production area, a new round of Internet giants is about to be born, and the talent war to seize the market has sounded the clarion call.
I can't go back to my hometown
In the summer of 2009, 22-year-old Xiao Tang just stepped out of the school gate, looking childish. As for the future, he is as confused as most graduates. In his fourth-tier hometown, only the jobs of teachers and civil servants are decent, but for Xiao Tang, who is out of nature, this is not his ideal. So Don picked up the programming he taught himself in college and decided to give it a try as a developer.
At that time, not to mention China's fourth-tier cities, even in China's second-tier cities, there were not many Internet companies, and there was basically no Internet atmosphere to speak of, and it was difficult for Xiao Tang to find a decent development job.
When the limited ceiling of a small city cannot give young people a stage to make a big move, the pursuit of a larger world has become an inevitable choice. At the end of 2009, Don Jr.'s college roommate gave him a ** and beckoned him to go north. At that time, more than 80% of China's Internet was concentrated in first-tier cities, and Beijing occupied half of the country. The clustered headquarters of Internet companies, first-class salaries and huge development space make Beijing a mecca for dreamers. Xiao Tang, who was in a difficult situation, did not hesitate and embarked on the road to the north with great hope.
Photographed in Beijing in 2009.
Beijing, Beijing!
Don Jr.'s first job was when he met a noble person in his workplace.
His supervisor is an experienced senior engineer who knows how to adapt to the situation. When he first joined the company, his boss recommended him several technical books and encouraged him: "Every great engineer is a beginner step by step solid training, at the beginning is not terrible not to be proficient, terrible is not to take the initiative to learn." Xiao Tang took these words as a guideline. Every time he throws a project, he needs to make up a lot of knowledge, and in the evolution process from a novice to a proficient one, Xiao Tang encounters countless problems. Thankfully, whenever Don Jr. was stuck in a technical difficulty, his boss would take the trouble to help him clear his mind, point out the problem, and provide solutions. Good guidance is the best booster for growth, and with the patience of his boss, Xiao Tang's skills and thinking have been greatly improved.
In order to exercise his project management ability, in 2013, Xiao Tang, as the leader of the project team, took the initiative to strive for a product about home auction, which was the only new project in China at that time, with high requirements for system performance and the need to use many new technologies. Although the project was difficult and the task schedule was tight, Xiao Tang still led his team to work overtime to rush out with his basic skills over the years. When the project was finally successfully launched, Xiao Tang saw tens of thousands of people participating in the auction with the ** system he wrote, and a huge sense of accomplishment arose.
Beijing is a fair city, and it gives everyone a chance to turn around with great inclusiveness. Compared with the complex interpersonal background in a small city, the unsociable Don prefers to struggle in such a fair and simple environment and rely on strength to win his career.
Beijing's rich cultural resources are also popular among young people. Don Jr. likes the strong technical atmosphere in Beijing the most, and there are many technical conferences in Beijing every month, so he can not only get in touch with the industry's leading development results at any time, but also meet many like-minded people. He likes the developer community very much, and the developers who have worked with computers for many years have a simple personality, and everyone is willing to share their technical experience. In this professional circle, he found his belonging.
In 2015, it was photographed on Chuangye Street in Zhongguancun.
Crush the ideal reality
According to the seventh census of Beijing in 2021, there are 8.41 million people in Beijing, and the massive opportunities and high salaries attract countless people to go to the soup. But how beautiful the dream is in Beijing, how cruel the reality is. Between the difficulty of living in Beijing and the difficulty of living, there is only one house missing. In the face of high housing prices, all illusory uncertainties will eventually show the fangs of reality.
In 2010, spurred by a $4 trillion investment plan, Beijing's housing prices began to climb rapidly. As of 2022, housing prices in Beijing have reached more than 60,000 yuan per square meter, an increase of five or six times in ten years. With the influx of national elites every year, housing prices will continue to rise. The staggering increase has led many people to realize that buying a home may be the fastest way to make money.
Xiao Tang used to work for a real estate company, and he often had access to information about housing prices in Beijing. If you can buy a house in Beijing early, it will definitely be a valuable investment in the future, and if you miss it, I am afraid that it will never be possible to get on this train again in the future. Many of his colleagues saw this truth clearly and hurriedly bought a house. Xiao Tang also thought about buying a house, but he calculated that if he wanted to buy a two-bedroom house in Beijing, he would need more than 4 million, and according to the rule of a down payment of not less than 30% for the first house, he needed to pay off the down payment of more than 1.2 million yuan at one time. Although his salary has been growing in the past ten years, and he has long been a high-income group in Beijing, if he wants to make a down payment, he has to empty his parents' family funds and borrow from all over the world. After the down payment is made, you will have to face the pressure of a mortgage of more than 20,000 yuan per month, and you will be saddled with economic shackles for twenty or thirty years. Such a price, just in exchange for a place to settle in Beijing, is something he does not want to see.
Beijing housing price trend chart from 2010 to 2018.
Many young people like Xiao Tang who didn't catch the car can only sigh at Beijing's housing prices, completely cut off the idea of buying a house, and regard Beijing as a place to concentrate on making money and accumulating project experience.
Compared with Beijing's sky-high housing prices, the cities near Xiao Tang's hometown are much cheaper, needless to say that his fourth-tier hometown, even the nearby second-tier cities are far lower than Beijing, accounting for only 1 8 of Beijing's housing prices. With his current income, he can not only easily buy it, but also do not have to bear a huge amount of pressure to repay the loan.
Home is everyone's spiritual need, and a future without a house may be destined to leave. When they are getting older and need to start a family, and their parents are getting old, but there is no one to take care of them, how many people can still stay in a foreign land and continue to drift with only enthusiasm. In addition, it is not only the untouchable housing prices that force people away, but also the feeling of loneliness and drifting, which he has tasted.
Xiao Tang likes to meet up with friends on weekends to go through the mountains and mountains around Beijing to enjoy the natural scenery. But as friends start families one by one, the number of appointments gradually decreases. On unaccompanied weekends, when Don, who is accustomed to being busy, suddenly stops and has nothing to do, looks at the quiet mobile phone, thinks about his parents in a foreign land, and a feeling of loss suddenly comes to mind.
Once he connected to his mother's call**, but there was no sound on the other side, it turned out that his mother accidentally pressed his mobile phone number, listening to the familiar sound of speech and stir-frying on the other side, he was reluctant to hang up**. Xiao Tang is often too busy to have time with the family, and his parents are reluctant to disturb him on the weekend to rest, and when he remembers to take the initiative to dial **, he will always find that a new change has occurred at home: the family has a new sofa, his father has put on reading glasses, and his uncle's cousin is getting married...
During the epidemic, Xiao Tang was trapped in Beijing and could not go home, and the rare reunion time of the year was also erased. After talking to his parents, he went to see two movies alone. When he walked out of the theater, the lights were on, he stood on the overpass, watching the cars coming and going, the hard work of frequent moving, the distortion of squeezing the morning and evening rush hour subway, and the busyness of staying up late and working overtime, at that moment, he was in a mess, and the weight of his hometown became heavier and heavier in his heart.
In 2020, Don Jr.'s college roommate said goodbye to him, returned to his hometown of Wuhan to develop, and soon bought a house in the local area and became a home, although his salary was reduced, but his life was completely stable. Seeing his friends living a good life, Xiao Tang suddenly found that between the first-tier cities and the fourth-tier hometown, there are a large number of large and medium-sized cities with good infrastructure levels, which are also good choices for settlement. At the beginning, the second- and third-tier cities without an Internet atmosphere have established a number of high-tech industrial bases, and the housing prices far lower than those in Beijing have also made it possible for him to have a stable life, and a plan to escape from Beijing, Shanghai and Guangzhou is brewing in his heart.
In 2021, he set his sights on Chongqing, which is only 200 kilometers away from his home and whose housing prices are only 1 6 from Beijing. Soon, he passed the interview for a Chongqing Internet company, and without hesitation, he pulled up his suitcase and said goodbye to Beijing, which had been adrift for ten years.
Photographed in Chongqing in 2021.
For most people, North Drift was once synonymous with dreams, but in the end, drifting was left with a group of embarrassing young people. Leaving behind is unattainable housing prices and a sense of wandering, leaving is far below Beijing's wages and the loss of the soil for rapid growth.
The end point of the North Drift may still be his hometown.