Farewell, Xierqi

In 2003, when I graduated and reported to Digital China, I got off at Xierqi station on the commuter rail and nearly dropped my jaw — between the Shenma Building / Jingmeng Hi-Tech across from the station and the station itself was a deserted little road, and a horse cart (or ox cart, I can’t remember) loaded with agricultural produce was ambling along in the middle of it as if it were a country lane. I wanted to slap myself: was this godforsaken place really the Beijing I had been longing for?

In 2005 I changed jobs and left Xierqi for Wudaokou, which was much more comfortable. Compared with Xierqi’s desolation, Wudaokou at that time wasn’t yet the center of the universe, but it was already fairly lively; besides, when I got bored I could stroll through Tsinghua and look at the girls from the Academy of Arts & Design to find inspiration for coding.

During that period I seemed to go back to Xierqi once for personnel file transfer, but that was at most 2006, so I hadn’t been to Xierqi in eight years.

Yesterday I went to Oracle to give a class, and finally had a chance to revisit the old place.

When I got off the subway a bit after eight, I was already startled by the crowd waiting to board — that godforsaken place in my memory was now packed with people! He who has never been to the Great Wall is not a true man; he who has never been to Xierqi is barely human! Relieved, I escaped the subway and found that the road outside the station had basically not changed: still just as narrow, except there were many more motor vehicles on it. Digital China had moved into its new building; the Jingmeng Hi-Tech sign was still hanging there. More than a decade — how many companies had it outlasted?

Because I had misunderstood the email from Uncle Cat (a friend at Oracle), I thought Oracle was not far from Xierqi. I hummed a tune and strolled leisurely to the entrance of the new Digital China Building. I looked left and right and saw no trace of Oracle. So I asked the young security guard at Digital China where the Oracle building was. The guard said, ‘Oracle… I remember… I passed by it not long ago… not too far…’ He thought hard and then said firmly, ‘Go straight (north), then turn left (west) and keep going; you’ll see it.’

Thanks so much to the young guard; at least his general direction wasn’t wrong. But I have always held to the principle ‘hearing only one side makes you benighted,’ so while asking I had already opened Baidu Maps to search and navigate. Baidu Maps should be reliable in Baidu’s own backyard, I thought as I walked. If it led me wrong, I’d go to Baidu’s LBS department and make my little brother there pay for my taxi, heh heh.

Ten minutes later, just as I was wondering whether it was mobile GPRS or Baidu Maps that was letting me down, I finally heard that familiar navigation voice. By then, reading street signs, asking people, and walking, I had already gone at least a kilometer. Baidu Maps told me I still had two kilometers to go…

So it isn’t easy to do gigs in Beijing. In all 360 trades, every trade is physical labor. Keep walking. As I walked I sighed that life in Wudaokou was better — whatever you want, it’s there. Here, after walking for a while, I felt I was about to walk out of Beijing.

At last I reached Shangdi Software Park. If I were to design an advertising slogan for the software park, I’d say: ‘This is the place closest to heaven.’ Who told it to be God’s software park?

The software park was indeed high-end; it even had an artificial lake. If Tsinghua Science Park weren’t backed by Tsinghua University, it would absolutely be crushed by the software park. Vast land and abundant resources are good.

According to my understanding of Einstein’s theory of relativity, I walked another half century, and finally arrived at Oracle. 8:47. I congratulated myself on my good habit of leaving early and building in enough preventive margin: after walking for more than half an hour, I was somehow still not late.

Uncle Cat’s first sentence when he saw me was: ‘Why didn’t you take the shuttle bus?’

Therewasashuttlebus~

Companies in the software park are truly high-end. Since childhood my dream was ‘to ride a school bus to class and a company shuttle to work.’ In the end I got neither.

I’ve been to Oracle’s Guomao office; it was high-end. The one in the software park is even more high-end. But nowadays the ‘software’ industry is gradually declining (still a cash cow, just no longer so flush with cash), and foreign companies have passed their golden age of ‘lots of money, few people, come quickly’; in recent years they’ve been utterly overshadowed by internet companies. If you go on Zhihu and look at the offices people show off, you’ll know what ‘comparison makes one die of envy’ means. As far as office environment goes, Oracle crushes Juniper, but Oracle is in turn crushed by companies like NetEase.

Next time I’m on a business trip to Juniper headquarters, I’ll take a few photos and post them on Zhihu, and crush domestic companies for a change. After all, hanging an iPad at the conference room door just to show whether the room is occupied — such high-end, luxurious, ostentatious stuff — domestic internet companies probably can’t pull off, right?

On the way home after class, I passed through Xibeiwang. A noble property development called ‘Xishan · XX’ stood there. I recalled a rainy day more than ten years ago, when dark clouds covered the daytime as if it were night. Half-asleep on my way to work, I took bus 328 and accidentally rode to Malianwa, two stops before Xibeiwang. In those days Malianwa really was Malianwa: after getting off the bus there was nowhere to put your feet, potholes everywhere, dirty and messy. So by association I had an extremely bad impression of Xibeiwang too.

Ten years later, Xibeiwang had become, as its name suggests, a hot commodity. Thinking back to when I had just graduated, my vision was too poor to see the ‘road to the future’; at the time I even looked down on houses in Huilongguan, let alone a barren place like Xibeiwang. In Huilongguan then there was a kind of housing called ‘affordable housing’ (now there are only ‘budget tryout men’), only 2,600 yuan per square meter. My ‘good buddy’ who shared a room with me desperately urged me to buy a quota (only 50k; if I gritted my teeth I could come up with it) and get an apartment. I desperately refused: ‘I don’t want my future tied to this godforsaken place.’ As a result, in 2008 I joyfully bought an apartment in another godforsaken place at five times that price, and took on a mountain of debt.

Life is just like that — heh. Every once in a while, revisiting old places is quite interesting. Suddenly I began to miss my hometown, Jiuquan. It has been twenty years since I left. Do those blurry memories of West Street and the Drum Tower still exist? I think the poem by Li Bai in the park is probably still there: ‘If Heaven did not love wine, the Wine Star would not be in the sky; if Earth did not love wine, Earth should have no Jiuquan.’

As I thought and thought, I thought of Aksu, where I was born. I can no longer remember at all what she looks like; it has been 26 years since I left. The only things connecting me to Aksu now, apart from relatives still there (who are about to leave too), are my colleague’s wife (she is actually from Aksu) and Hongqipo sugar-core apples. I really don’t know whether I’ll have another chance in this life to go back.