Let’s start over.
一
In 2004, Feng Xiaogang chartered the T97 train, named “No Thieves in the World”, from Beijing to Hong Kong.
The train passed through Zhengzhou, Wuhan, and Changsha. Inside the carriages, Andy Lau sang, Ge You drank, and there was laughter all the way.
A year later, a slightly tipsy Ge You moved to the crew of “Night Banquet”. This time, Feng Xiaogang used 120 million yuan to rebuild an imperial city.
There were two hundred bronze chandeliers that were several meters high, the queen’s phoenix carriage cost 500,000 yuan, the 12,000-square-meter hall was mysterious and solemn, and dozens of horses galloped in front of the hall, with every hair dyed with black oil.
In those years, Chinese films were all about big investments and grand scenes.
Chen Kaige’s “The Promise” was set in Shangri-La, roads were built in uninhabited areas, and more than 100 plateau yaks were bought for a few seconds of footage.
Tsui Hark’s “Seven Swords” traveled to the Tianshan Mountains for three years, made thousands of weapons, and planned to shoot six films in a row, aiming for Star Wars.
Earlier, Zhang Yimou shot the first shot of “Hero” deep in the poplar forest in Inner Mongolia. The leaves in the film were all 60 yuan per bag, purchased from the villagers.
Swords and shadows wrapped in the ambition of a king, roaring forward. At the premiere at the Great Hall of the People, 200 university students wore Qin armor and shouted: Wind! Wind! Great wind!
In 2006, Zhang Yimou began filming “Curse of the Golden Flower”, and the wind was already boundless.
The film invested 360 million yuan, and a 1:1 replica of the Forbidden City was built in Hengdian, with four million chrysanthemums spread over a 10,000-square-meter square.
51-year-old Chow Yun-fat wore an eighty-pound pure gold dragon robe, walked with a dragon’s pace, passed through the golden pillars, and ascended the crimson high platform, looking out, a sea of gold.
Two years later, the higher-invested “Red Cliff” arrived. John Woo wanted to invest 600 million yuan to “make a great movie”.
Six thousand extras ran in the Eight Trigrams formation, and two thousand warships floated on the waves. The longest warship was 38 meters long at the bow, known as the Asian version of Troy.
Those sounds of wind and water have become a unique sound. Years later, the extras who participated in the filming recalled the ashes that fell like snow, “like a dream”.
That was a surging era, and the more surging the era, the smaller the protagonists. Only by going up can there be a counterattack.
21-year-old Li Yuchun was chosen as a national idol by 3.52 million text messages, and she appeared on the cover of the era. She originally planned to graduate and become a “Beijing drifter” and sing in the subway passage.
33-year-old Guo Degang returned to Tianjin to hold a special show through the fog, and accepted 140 interviews in a month. Not long ago, his dream was to fill the small theater and say, “I am very pleased”.
In those years, we watched Rising Sun Masculine sing on the Spring Festival Gala, watched Wang Baoqiang cross the wilderness, and watched Huang Bo run at the end of “Crazy Stone”, with the mirage emerging on both sides of the overpass.
People who have gone through the upward cycle all believe in miracles.
In those ten years, the most popular song on Youku was “I Believe Youth Has No Horizon”, the most popular song during the graduation season was “The Original Dream Is Held in Hand”, and the song written into the college entrance examination composition was:
I always have a pair of invisible wings, take me to fly, give me hope.
People flying through the golden age.
In 2001, the Chinese men’s football team advanced to the FIFA World Cup Korea/Japan, in 2002, Yao Ming appeared in the Houston Rockets, and in 2004, Liu Xiang won the gold medal in the 110-meter hurdles final, setting a world record.
That day, he said, running as fast as the wind: I feel like I am the protagonist of a miracle today.
In 2008, a bigger miracle was staged, with 29 huge firework footprints stepping across the Beijing central axis.
Inside the Bird’s Nest, thousands of people beat drums, tens of thousands sang, Li Ning flew through the sky and stepped on the painting, and the Olympic flame burned brightly, becoming the ignition point of an era.
Under the firelight, everyone is the protagonist of a miracle.
二
Behind the miracle is the confidence brought by the economic boom.
In 2001, China’s GDP growth rate was 8.3%, and this was only the lowest value in those ten years.
From 2003 to 2007, China’s GDP grew at a double-digit rate for five consecutive years, and the growth rate reached 14.2% in 2007.
In the West, the theory of China’s collapse quietly withdrew, and British journalist Jin Qi wrote “China Shakes the World” and became the best book of the year in the UK.
Domestically, CCTV’s documentary “The Rise of Great Powers” was rebroadcast many times, and pirated discs were sold hot, placed in the most prominent position on the stalls.
The booming economy has led to a surge in demand for raw materials, and coal bosses have become the first batch of darlings in the upward cycle.
They became rich overnight and then spent a lot of money. They loved to buy houses in Beijing for investment. The coal bosses turned a blind eye to Wangjing and wanted to buy “one ring”:
With Tiananmen Square as the center, draw a circle with a compass, within a radius of 3 kilometers, otherwise, don’t buy it!
They bought Mercedes SUVs, opened credit companies, and invested in film and television dramas. Years later, director Pang Ho-cheung still remembered the coal bosses, “You make me an art film, I don’t care what the content is, but you must let my girlfriend walk the red carpet”.
In 2010, more than 30 coal bosses raised more than 5 billion yuan to establish Fenjiu Investment Company, and they vowed to increase Fenjiu’s production capacity by 3 times and compete with Moutai.
Along with the coal bosses, there were also real estate developers.
From 1998 to 2007, the annual growth rate of China’s commercial housing sales area was 20%. In 2007, 26-year-old Yang Huiyan became China’s new richest woman. Among the top 100 in the rich list, 39 people were engaged in the real estate industry.
Under the giant wave, hot money began to gather in China.
In 2006, Michael, a partner at Sequoia Capital in the United States, visited China, saying that a great company in China may not have been born yet.
A year ago, Sequoia Capital, which claimed that its investment radius “does not exceed 40 miles from Silicon Valley”, came to China and established Sequoia China Fund.
Neil Shen, a partner at Sequoia, sat in his office on the 28th floor of Shanghai’s Plaza 66 with high spirits, with three mobile phones on his desk, and the monthly phone bill started at tens of thousands of yuan.
Outside the window, the Huangpu River was flowing forward.
That year, Zhu Xiaohu had just joined GSR Ventures and soon had the nickname “Turning Stone into Gold”; Xu Xin of Today Capital had just invested in Tudou.com and said that even if it was not profitable, “we are willing to support it for three years”.
When investing in JD.com, Xu Xin thought that Liu Qiangdong’s request for 2 million US dollars was too little, and she took the initiative to add it to 5 million US dollars:
“You haven’t tasted the power of money now, you will feel that 2 million is far from enough.”
On the Spring Festival of 2006, at an altitude of 38,000 feet on the flight back to Shanghai from Washington, Wu Xiaobo wrote a preface to his new book “Thirty Years of Turbulence”:
When this era comes, it is unstoppable.
Rivers converge into rivers, and nameless hills rise into peaks,
The world is wide open.
In August 2005, Baidu went public on Nasdaq, with a rise of over 350% on the day.
The media interviewed Robin Li, asking him if he knew that Baidu had created 8 billionaires, 50 millionaires, and 400 millionaires.
Robin Li said, share wealth and work together.
Two years later, at the Alibaba listing celebration, the employees at the dinner table were calculating their worth; in the same year, Shi Yuzhu held a listing celebration banquet in Lujiazui, raised the salaries of everyone, and gave everyone an old Phoenix custom gold coin.
The wealth wave swept from the real estate market to the stock market, from coal bosses to Internet upstarts, and finally over everyone.
In Haidian, Beijing, Starbucks was filled with entrepreneurs. When you walked in, the topics of investment, entrepreneurship, and technical ideals came to you.
Li Xiang, who dropped out of high school, had a net worth of over 100 million in 4 years, and he laughed about his fortune-making process: “We, these people, were still confused in the first two years, and we didn’t know anything…”
“New Weekly” wrote about the eagerness and ambition of those ten years, “If you are not rich at thirty, then you may have no chance in this life.”
It was ordinary at the time.
三
In 2007, Li Ke, a mysterious foreign company manager, wrote “Du Lala’s Promotion”, and sold 2.1 million copies in two years.
The capable and strong Southern woman in the book became a life model for countless white-collar workers, “Du Lala believes in being down-to-earth, working hard, and achieving success through personal struggle.”
Young people in the upward cycle are always confident and optimistic, believing that the future is destined to be theirs.
Some media investigated young people in eight cities in Beijing, Shanghai, Guangzhou, and Shenzhen, and found that more than 70% of young people did not care about unemployment and were confident that they could find a new job soon.
They believe in love. When choosing a partner, they consider character and interests more, and family background is ranked last.
They believe in dreams. The young couple in Chisha Village, Guangzhou, believe that they will be able to move to the city; the “ant tribe” in Tangjialing, Beijing, dream of “a car in three years and a house in five years”.
In the International Trade Center, white-collar workers believe that they can become supervisors before the age of 30, and supervisors believe that the second half of their lives are middle class. The magazine on the back of the plane seat says that they should “use tomorrow’s money to fulfill today’s dream“.
Looking back at those ten years, there was a boom under the prosperity, and the legacy of the boom was confidence. Confidence is the most powerful inertia.
Under the inertia, those ten years were colorful.
They are Xu Sanduo, they are Du Lala, they are the witnessing Ma Dongmei and Xia Luo, they are Jia Zhangke’s generation of romantics.
The romance turns.
19 years later, there are no golden armors in the city, and there are no dazzling bright yellows in the Hengdian Square. The shantytowns of the ant tribe have become forest parks, Country Garden is busy delivering houses, and the former richest woman is in a mess.
Last summer, Xu Zheng wore an ill-fitting delivery uniform and tried to tell the story of a counterattack, but he was reviled and became infamous.
What was broadcast on TV were “A Little Joy”, “A Little Get”, and “A Little Separation”, and 45-year-old Huang Lei cried in the corridor: Be honest and work seriously.
Someone edited a video of Jack Ma. In 2008, Jack Ma said: If the bank doesn’t change, we change the bank; in 2018, Jack Ma said: We must change ourselves.
In 2020, Jack Ma said: It’s all difficult, it’s all difficult now.
Everyone is climbing mountains and crossing the sea, climbing along the cycle, and the more difficult the journey, the more they miss the summer that has gone away.
42-year-old Liu Xiang, who is 42 years old this year, has been retired for ten years and rarely appears.
In a variety show in 2020, he and several children were resting on a bus, and the children asked him how old he was.
Liu Xiang smiled and replied: “I want to stay at 21 forever and do it again.”
More and more people are looking back at those ten years, not coveting the golden armor, but wanting to relive the power of confidence.
Every upward cycle, the booming economy, can always bring confidence, and to restart the upward cycle, it is necessary to start with confidence and gather momentum.
This summer, the Super League was booming, and the stadiums were filled with people, and the crowds were like the sea.
This is just a grassroots league, but when people believe it will succeed, and they all have the momentum to make it succeed, it can become a miracle.
The summer nights are long, the stadium lights are bright, the cheers are like thunder, and the smiles are as they were yesterday.
In a daze, the hot wind blows again.
Let’s start over.
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