The year will end on the night, ten thousand miles of unreturned people.
A thousand years ago on New Year’s Eve, Dai Shu Lun, who was wandering in a foreign country, wrote the above poem, which will resonate more in the present Time.
In China, going Home for the New Year is a traditional concept deeply rooted in the hearts of the nation. Against the backdrop of the Epidemic, the Chinese New Year in 2021 is a special one, as the “New Year in Place” has gradually changed from a social call to a realistic choice for many people. For many, it will be a New Year “elsewhere”. According to Zhang Wenhong, no one takes the local New Year for granted; it is a contribution and a charity for the entire Chinese people.
We tried to observe and record this “elsewhere” New Year’s Day at Beijing‘s West Railway Station, which is free of the Spring Festival hordes, and among the local laborers who may not be able to spend New Year’s Day with their families. I hope that you, too, will have a happy Spring Festival elsewhere.
As the busiest railway station in Beijing, Beijing West Station, which has been opened for more than twenty years, is ushering in a special Spring Festival. Last year, in the fifteen days before the festival, the West Station carried more than 3 million passengers, which is equivalent to transporting the population of a small to medium-sized county every day. This year, some people went home early, while more people chose to spend New Year’s Eve in the same place. Although the West Station was lit up 24 hours a day and staff at every post remained on duty, the 70% reduction in passengers made the station quiet compared to previous years, the number of cancelled trains was increasing, luggage racks were half empty, kiosks were not stocked with noodles, and the room rates at nearby fast hotels were discounted by 50%.
February 10th, the last day before New Year’s Eve, was the peak day of the Spring Festival. Although the flow of people rose a lot compared to the previous days, it still seemed cold compared to this day in previous years. The people who were guarding their luggage in the waiting room had the same excitement on their faces as before, and they all had reasons for having to go home.
Even with the masks on, when you walk into Beijing West Station, you will smell a different smell from the previous days. The smell of bubble noodles, perfume and sweat has disappeared along with the Spring Festival hordes of previous years. Now, the strong smell of disinfectant water covers everything, whether from the subway, or the North and South Square into the station, such a smell will always remind arrivals, must bring a good mask.
Every four hours, the on-duty disinfection workers do a disinfection on an operating area of about 59,000 square meters. Wrapped in thick uniforms and carrying bulky spray cans, the fine disinfection mist sprinkled evenly, as seriously as if they were removing insects from farmland.
As in previous years, Beijing West Station was also decorated for the Spring Festival. Twenty Chinese knots and 76 large red lanterns have been hung high below the corridors inside and outside the station, and they are symmetrical and dignified. Inside the station, a “technology tree” with a huge canopy, nearly 5 meters high, is particularly noteworthy, with more than 500 full-screen leaves scrolling pictures of the delegation round. The tree is a brightly colored and warm tree with over 500 full-screen leaves scrolling pictures of the delegation round, cheering and other imagery. However, this Netflix tree seems to have lost the favor of travelers in the past. Within ten minutes, only three people came up for a photo.
When it opened in early 1996, it was one of the largest modern railway passenger stations in Asia, and it was designed and operated with the theme of spring transportation year after year. Over the past 30 years, China’s Spring Festival has grown from 100 million passengers to more than 3 billion in recent years, the equivalent of moving the total population of Africa, Europe, America and Oceania once.
Once, in order to cope with the Spring Festival, the enforcement team of the West Station City Administration Branch had to use at least 10 broken loudspeakers every year, and some team members once swallowed a whole board of Golden Voice Throat in one day. A staff member recalled that he graduated to participate in the first Spring Festival, because too nervous, ticket inspection pliers hit the palm of the hand chaps, just looking down to check the tickets, the neck can not turn when changing the post. The self-service ticket machines are growing, with numbers up to 136, and although it has become possible to ride without paper tickets, you can still see long lines during the Spring Festival and complaints on social media that there are never enough ticket machines.
This year, many things are different.
The army has disappeared
This time home, Zhang Jinping didn’t queue in the cold. on the afternoon of Feb. 4, only two of the 11 lanes in front of the north level entry gate were open. Even so, there was no congestion at all, and the crowds that lined the square in previous years disappeared.
Last year’s outbreak came after the return of the Spring Festival, when 3,085,000 passengers left Beijing’s West Railway Station in the first half of the 15-day period, the equivalent of transporting the population of a small to medium-sized county from here every day. With 7,456,000 outsiders in this megalopolis, it’s safe to say that a significant number of them have seen the crowded nature of the Spring Festival by using the West Station as a starting point for their return home.
Now and then, loudspeakers broadcast trains that have been canceled because of too few passengers, and they are played repeatedly on the displays everywhere. There are still unused seats in each waiting room, despite the spaced seating signs posted on the seats. Waiting room number three, which is near the entrance, was closed by the staff.
The 10 infrared thermometers distributed at each entrance lit up an average of 60,000 times a day. This number continues to decrease as the policy of prevention changes around the world, and on January 28, the first day of the Spring Festival, they even confirmed the temperature of only 25,000 people.
The Love Waiting Room on the second floor of the station is for passengers with limited mobility, and staff will take them directly to the platform in wheelchairs or on stretchers. In the past, more than 200 people had to be transported every day, and the shoulders, necks and arms of the pushers were inevitably sore. Now only single-digit numbers of people are sent down every day, and wheelchairs are left idle at the entrance of the waiting room.
Zhang Jinping did not buy noodles this year, he was afraid that eating in the car would be unsafe. In the past, the owners of the kiosk are to have more than 200 boxes of kimchi noodles in the warehouse, more than half of them are old pickle flavor. The bosses are confident that these goods can be sold out before New Year’s Eve, the peak period, an average of every two minutes to sell out a box.
But this year, the boss’s warehouse, a box of goods did not dare to prepare. The kimchi noodles and bags of Peking duck on the shelves are not yet half sold, and these two items are already considered the most popular goods at the station.
The owner of the store next door was rambling to the cleaning lady about the lack of manners of young people, and how a girl had just come in without saying thank you after asking for directions. In previous years, the crowd of people coming up to the checkout would have surrounded her, and she didn’t have the heart to chatter about it. The owner of the noodle shop is bored sitting in front of the door to solicit customers, occasionally someone stops and looks into the store, she will quickly add a sentence: “This year, there are fewer people”, afraid that customers The owner is bored sitting in front of the door, soliciting customers.
Compared with the interior, the space outside the station seems more quiet. Occasionally, you can hear the sound of sirens on the road not far away, and the sound of cleaners snapping buckets onto garbage trucks.
There is also less garbage. The garbage trucks that patrol the plaza sometimes take a few hours to fill one. The cleaners still have to sweep inch by inch across the door with a broom, but there are far fewer cigarette butts to pick up into the dustpan.
The luggage storage area on the north square is no more than four square meters. Inside, there is also a staff workstation, a security machine, the rest of the space to put on the luggage rack for storage. In previous years, passengers were always informed that the storage was full, but now half of the shelves are empty. The situation where items were piled up on the floor and could not be taken out was not seen this year
People who decided to go home
At 2:00 p.m., Zhang Jinping sat alone in the South Square underground passage drinking two-pot head, the ticket departure time is 9:00 p.m., he departed from Changping early in the morning, as in previous years. Arrived too early, temporarily can not enter the station, he will be self discretion to pass the time.
Behind him were homeless people who slept in the passageway for a long time, some wrapped in thick quilts sleeping soundly, and pots and pans were placed next to them. Zhang Jinping did not have a chair to sit, a newspaper on the floor. In the past few years, he occasionally took the night train, sometimes in the early morning, but never thought to go to the hotel next to the station to sleep overnight, “should be quite expensive”.
In fact, many of the small underground hotels next to the West Station are signs still hanging, but the front desk is closed. A chain of fast hotels, large bed rooms only cost 150 yuan a night, less than half of the price in previous years. Although it is labeled “Spring Festival Tension” in the upper right corner of the public review, when you walk into the hotel, the front desk staff will sincerely say that it will not be full, there is nothing recently.
From Beijing West Station, seven or eight hours later to the county of Heze, Shandong, and then spend 3 yuan to take a bus, Zhang Jinping will be able to arrive home. Two days ago, he just went to a nearby hospital to do a nucleic acid test, calculating that the county has not been a case for a long time, back should not be quarantined. But Zhang Jinping is also worried, not knowing what time he can return after the New Year.
In Beijing, he was willing to suffer and took short jobs everywhere. On many websites, there are daily-paid small jobs, sometimes to construction sites, sometimes to packing express assembly lines. After a month of hard work, he could get 5,000 to 6,000 yuan. When he first came to Beijing, Zhang Jinping was shocked and felt that he had come too late and wasted much time earning money. He couldn’t help but count on his fingers, earning 3,000 more a month than in his hometown, and that’s more than …… a year.
This time home, the less earned is likely to be more than a month, not heartbroken? Zhang Jinping also counted, but the idea of going home did not waver, that is what he has been looking forward to. In the past year, although the money earned, but he did have a hard time. This winter is particularly cold, when doing masonry on the site, feel the body is about to freeze. “It does feel a little older, can not stay up”, when the night shift, a few times he had difficulty controlling the sudden sleepiness, not less scolded.
Zhang Jinping, 63, is considered very old among the workers, he is thin, wrapped in a thick black cotton jacket, wearing a Thunderbolt hat, white hair from the brim leaked out. When he first came to Beijing, he was quite confident in his physical fitness, but in the past two years, his leg joints also began to hurt.
Zhang Jinping feels that he is different from the young people in the north, and his days in Beijing have very little “living” part. Every day after work, when he returns to his small rental house, he plays with his cell phone to pass the time. From time to time, he forwards links to the “Family” WeChat group, sometimes being criticized by his children for not forwarding more “rumors. But he can’t help it, it’s his favorite thing to do when he’s homesick.
Earned money, bring some toys back to the grandchildren, Zhang Jinping only feel that there is something to look forward to in this city. In the snakeskin bag at his feet, in addition to clothes, there are some specialties, and I do not know when to buy the piggyback Peiqi dolls.
Unlike Zhang Jinping, Wu Min experienced repeated hesitations before coming to the station. She works as a cleaning lady in a company, her husband also works in Beijing, and her 7-year-old daughter stays with her grandparents in her hometown in Henan. Wu Min has regular clients, and twice a month she goes to do cleaning for these young people who live in long term rental apartments.
She bought her ticket home early, and her daughter always asks when her mom will be back when she videos with her at night. The policy changed little by little. At first, it only required civil servants to spend New Year’s Eve in place, so Wu Min’s heart dropped a little. Later, the National health Commission issued a policy on the prevention and control of epidemics in the hometown, and many regions also began to require quarantine for returning home, so she became frightened again.
The final decision to go home was made when she saw a news item on her cell phone about “New Year’s Eve in place, what about the children left behind”. A year did not see his daughter, Wu Min do not want her Spring Festival can only see her mother in the phone. She thought, home isolation for 14 days is okay, anyway, the purpose of going back is also to stay at home.
On the first day of February, Wu Min knocked on the client’s door again, and she was a little embarrassed. The two cleaning sessions were too close together, only a week apart. But she wanted to finish early and go home early. If all goes well, with two nucleic acid tests in her hometown, Wu Min will still be able to finish the other half of the month’s work when she returns to Beijing at the end of the month.
Continue to spend New Year at the station
As night falls, the flow of people at West Station becomes even less than during the day. But as long as there are still passengers and trains, this huge system has to continue to run 24 hours a day.
It’s been nine years since Nie Jiaming has been home for the Chinese New Year, and this is the 10th year. He has been working at West Station since he was 18 years old and is now the captain of the security inspection team. Every year, he spends New Year’s Eve with his teammates.
If we are lucky and not on duty at night, we can all eat dumplings and chat together in the canteen. And those who are scheduled for the shift and family video will have to wait until after the next day’s shift. In the 12306 service desk on the second floor of the station, Li Shuowen put on his goggles and mask and started his work in the evening shift. Passengers who need to complain or consult, including those who accidentally sat through the station or took a wrong ride, will come here. Every day she is asked the most questions: “In which waiting room do I take the train? “
Even this year, such questions, Li Shuowen a day to answer thousands of times. In previous years, of course, more, looking at the endless queue, she said until her mouth was dry.
In recent days, after 11 p.m., there are basically no more passengers at the service desk. But Li Shuowen has to wear a closed protective equipment, on duty until 8:30 the next morning, cell phones can not be brought in, and books not related to work can not read, not to mention can not fall asleep, you can only sit. Sometimes Li Shuowen also misses the busier times in the past, at least time passes more quickly.
Next to the external consultation phone is much hotter than in previous years. Even though many people didn’t choose to go home in the end, they still had to ask. “Do I need to do nucleic acid? Will I be quarantined”, the callers basically asked these.
There are so many people asking for advice that if they are not lucky, they may not call in all day. Sometimes Li Shuowen picks up the phone and the other party is angry, “Are you not answering on purpose? “
The last time Li Shuowen had a New Year’s Eve dinner at home was five years ago. Coincidentally, her twin sister also works in the railroad system, before the two are in the West Station, because of the difference in scheduling, several days to get together. This year, her sister went to support the newly opened Beijing-Zhangang high speed railway, and they have not seen each other for several months. Parents originally thought it might be possible to spend New Year’s Eve together this year, and when they heard the same answer as in previous years, they were a little down.
When it comes to New Year’s Eve dinner, what Li Shuowen misses most is the fish made by his grandmother. Eat is not eaten, when the time is empty to video with the family, and then see if there is an opportunity to meet with his sister, the year will be over.
Outside the station on the ring road, the drop driver Li Qiang is his only two days of the West Station passengers to the entrance. He does not have a sense of spring, Li Qiang sports car for five years, to at least five or six trips to the station every day, Li Qiang knows that the spring has come.
The departure time is approaching, Zhang Jinping passed by the security checkpoint at the entrance next to Nie Jiaming, through the 12306 service desk where Li Shuowen, into the waiting room. When the whistle sounded, his train slowly left Beijing and headed for Shandong.
On the tracks near the platform, a train was slowly entering the station, another group of people who had already arrived home.
(Zhang Jinping, Wu Min and Li Qiang are pseudonyms)
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