Not every river flows into the ocean

After watching "Not Ending" with my former colleagues in Nanjing last week, a colleague asked an unexpected question: In Beijing in 2003, was the rent really as cheap as in the movie?

For someone like me who bought a house in 2007, it is difficult to realize the impact of housing prices on the appearance of a city.

Around 2019, I once couldn’t help but "enlighten" my young colleagues, you live in Beijing, how can you stay at home all day? All kinds of people either go to Halloween or Sanlian Bookstore on their days off, or attend various lectures and salons.

In my opinion, Beijing has gathered the top cultural resources in China, which is incomparable to any city. What is going on when you arrive in Beijing but stay at home?

My confidence as a life mentor is actually a kind of arrogant ignorance. Before 2003, the place where I lived basically did not exceed the third ring road, and the young people who I thought did not cherish the welfare of Beijing were also outside the fourth ring road, some even outside the sixth ring road, and in the cities inside Beijing’s third ring road, almost It was a parallel world; my rent was no more than one-fifth of my income at the time, and they could take one-third of it.

Beijing is no longer the Beijing in my memory.

At that time, the restaurants on the streets of Beijing were even worse than they are now. At that time, the air in Beijing was really dirty. At that time, Beijing would really catch the blind flow to Changping to sift the sand. In 2002, a colleague of mine got off the night shift and rode back to At home, sweating profusely, he was taken to Qinghe as a migrant worker, and he was tortured on the radiator all morning before anyone asked him.

But at that time, many people wrote articles such as "N Reasons to Love Beijing". There was a version written by my colleague who was from Shanghai. His version did not include the cat who is not afraid of people in the Wansheng Bookstore and Qin who is waiting in line to pay. Hui, but there are small theaters and bars that I have never been to.

Beijing at that time was different from today. It was full of childish and vigorous magic. You could often see young Ito Hirobumi, Takasugi Shinsaku, Sakamoto Ryoma, and Fukuzawa Yukichi at roadside stalls. At the level of being too familiar with home-cooked dishes, there will inevitably be liars who either have the blood of the Eight Banners or the blood of the red.

In 2003, a colleague talked freely about his life plan. He was a 40-year-old Chaoyang District People's Congress representative, a 45-year-old Beijing Municipal People's Congress representative, and a 50-year-old China's first democratically elected senator. Because that year, a doctor of law surnamed Xu was elected as a representative of the Haidian District People's Congress. Now, it was ten years ago that this Dr. Xu was arrested and sentenced.

In "Not Ending", the old reporter Huang Jiang has a line: We are reporters, and we can't change anything.

However, 2003 was the year when people felt that journalists could change things. In 2003, Sun Zhigang died in a shelter in Guangzhou. A letter was submitted to the Standing Committee of the National People's Congress, and the detention and repatriation system was finally abolished.

But the detention and repatriation system was abolished for one month, and Southern Metropolis Daily's general manager Yu Huafeng and its director Cheng Yizhong were taken away. What happened at the same time in the Southern Metropolis Daily in 2003 made you feel that the one who was really changed was probably yourself.

Similar examples can be found by going back to 2003 and going back 20 years:

On October 16, 1980, the front page of the "China Youth Daily" criticized Wang Lei, the Minister of Commerce, for eating too much and paying less at Fengzeyuan Restaurant in Beijing, and Wang Lei resigned. But then there was a news discipline: central newspapers must be approved by the central government to criticize senior cadres. Criticism of cadres at or above the vice-ministerial level of the central government or members of the Standing Committee of provincial Party committees must be approved by the Secretariat and the State Council. To criticize the provincial department and bureau chief, it is best to say hello to the provincial party committee.

In my memory, I have always been a relatively calm and not so optimistic person, but people will tamper with their memories. But some memories cannot be tampered with.

In 2003, I successfully lobbied at least two people to leave their hometown and go to Beijing to work in the media. One is from Hunan and the other is from Henan. The one from Hunan, I saw many of his unfinished youth novels on the Internet, vigorous and unrestrained, the one from Henan, I saw him interviewing a petitioning mother who complained for her son on the Internet, calm and restrained .

In fact, after the 2008 Olympic Games, Beijing is no longer that Beijing. I remember that from then on, the lectures and salons held in bookstores and teahouses seemed to have completely disappeared by posting news in various BBS communities.

Beijing is filled with another kind of enthusiasm. The air is full of Shanghai in the 1930s, Guangzhou and Shenzhen in the 1990s, and America in the Gilded Age. Salon lectures and cafes talk about another kind of ideal. Hirofumi Ito, Shinsaku Takasugi, and Yukichi Fukuzawa became middle-aged Konosuke Matsushita and Kazuo Inamori.

There's nothing wrong with that either.

But I firmly believe that in the minds of many people, the former Beijing is more worthy of yearning and nostalgia. The latter Beijing will not let people like me catch the last 44 bus on a whim 20 years ago, and go around the second ring road. Turn around, just to see the lights of Beijing, and then take a taxi home.

The person I instigated from Hunan to Beijing, when I dragged him to a netizen gathering for the first time, wondered whether the boiled pork slices that were served at the end could be taken away untouched, and at the same time talked about social ideals broadly.

The person I instigated from Henan to Beijing, when I dragged him to a netizen gathering for the first time, I couldn’t help but whispered to him by pressing his shoulders, of course you need to know all kinds of people to be a reporter, but Don't get too close to some people, don't get involved in some things blindly, it will hurt us as a media.

If I had sold them the latter Beijing, I would not have attracted them.

Around 2012, that friend who was instigated by me to leave Henan to work as a reporter in Beijing found me again. We have not been in touch for a long time. I only know that he went to Guangzhou to work as a reporter. My egoist advice obviously did not work. He finally reached the point where he often wanted to drink tea and no one dared to take him in.

At that time, I hadn’t resigned to start my own business. I seemed to have promised him on the phone that I could come to our place as an investigative reporter, but when we met, I didn’t leave any room for my words: In order not to implicate us, you must be willing to work hard to restrain yourself. But I don't believe you can do that.

Another ten years have passed, and now I have no news of him.

In 2017, the friend who was instigated by me to leave Hunan and come to Beijing approached me. He wanted to make a Chinese version of "When Happiness Knocks on the Door" and asked if there was a suitable character prototype. I said you are not it? Then I read out a bunch of names of our mutual friends in one breath. Was rejected by him, no, too famous.

Finally, I remembered another name, Han Fudong, the prototype of Han Dong in "Not Ending", was my first object of incitement and bewitchment. Compared with the people I listed above, his experience is relatively unremarkable, but the degree of legend is far beyond the prototype of the protagonist of "When Happiness Knocks on the Door". That's right, in the past two decades, many Chinese dreams around me have been more exciting than the American dream.

At the beginning of the writing of the script of "Not Ending", there was a strong intention of chasing the Beijing Dream. Its source of power is of course nobler and more profound than the red Ferrari that stimulated the protagonist in "When Happiness Knocks on the Door", but It concentrates too many people's emotional experience, it is very easy to lose focus, and it is very easy to drive people crazy if it wants to present the spirit of that era.

I remember that in the first version of the script, the sliced boiled pork that was missed was transplanted to Han Dong. The second half of the real story is like this: That friend came to Beijing for the first time and hadn’t eaten a decent meal yet. He wanted to pack the boiled pork slices and bring them to his girlfriend who was waiting at home. He thought of many lines, but in the end someone put out the cigarette butt in the boiled pork slices.

It finally gradually focused on the story of a reporter, rather than an era. The title of the film was finally taken from the title of the 2004 New Year's speech of "Southern Weekend". I have watched six or seven versions of "Not Ending". In most of the versions, the proportion of hepatitis B is not so high, and Miao Miao and Zhang Songwen also have more roles. It is more like telling a story about ideals and courage in the past.

It is far more Hollywood than the current version. At the end of the film, the film is based on real people, and then the prototype Han Fudong's resume, from the intern of "China Times" in 2002 to the chief reporter of "Southern Metropolis Daily" later, this is a more than American dream. Burning story, and finally the easter egg - an old reporter in the film said to Han Dong: Some people have been reporters for a long time, and regard it as a profession, not an ideal, I hope you are not like this - this old reporter is Han Fudong myself.

Today, when many young people crusade against public intellectuals, they don't mention the "Southern faction" at all. Before they became sensible, the "Southern faction" had been wiped out, but those people really changed something back then. Nothing that touches the above will appear on the screen , and the parts that should be climax and sensational are restrained and stopped abruptly. Many young audiences who don't know what is going on will feel that the movie is unclear. What about Han Dong? What happened to him after writing that report?

It is still quite surprising to see this unusually concise "Endless" in the cinema. I remember that a few months ago, the investors had almost lost hope that it would be released.

"Unstoppable" has a sense of dislocation to some extent today. For those who have passed through that era, many of the things it wants to present have to be imagined, but for those who have not experienced that era, it cannot resonate at all. Not only is Beijing no longer a lifestyle choice, but even more opportunities to make a living are rapidly disappearing.

Twenty years is just a blink of an eye, everything we love is fading, and people we used to know are gradually disappearing from our lives. There was a movie in my childhood that I watched countless times. I never knew the specific plot of it, but I liked the name "Big Wave Washing the Sand".

In the legacy of the times, I believe that the more spiritual the part, the less dependent on the external environment it may be, and it has a self-motivating sustaining force.

At the last Pingyao Film Festival, Jia Zhangke's "Swim Until the Sea Turns Blue" was screened. The title of the film was taken from a sentence in Yu Hua's interview. I don't have much feeling for literary films, but this sentence really moved me. There is a kind of stubbornness and strength that transcends the times, and it is highly isomorphic in spirit with the title of "Unstoppable".

I like everything firm and powerful.