If it wasn't for the trending topic, I would never have heard the name "Hegang" in my entire life.
However, such a remote town, with its incredibly low housing prices, ranked at the top of the trending topic list and took people’s breath away repeatedly, attracting the attention of people (especially the young).
On social media and in short videos, Hegang is a nice place: the vast blue sky, clean air, inexpensive and delicious meals, hospitable and humorous locals, and strikingly low housing prices. For young people struggling in Beijing, Shanghai, Guangzhou and Shenzhen, the appeal of such life is self-evident.
In those metropolitan cities mentioned above, even if someone struggles for half of his/her life, he/she may not get the chance to live there forever. In contrast, Hegang shows generosity. Search for "Hegang" on the real estate platform and you will find that the lowest local housing price is 894 yuan/㎡, and the highest is 6,272 yuan/㎡. Houses with an average price of less than 5,000 yuan/㎡ constitute the vast majority of housing resources in the city.
So, the young people, tired of the hustle and bustle of big cities, are going north. Because Heilongjiang province is in Northeast China, and Hegang is in the northeast of Heilongjiang Province, we can say Hegang is located in the most northeast part of our country. All of a sudden, it seems to have become the modern version of “Arcadia”.
In the video recording the life in Hegang, people express their happiness heartily. But is this happiness related to Hegang or "exodus"?
"Happiness is especially present in the comparison of hopes," said Mr. Hu Jiaqi, who is devoted to research on anthropology.
Compared with Beijing, Shanghai, Guangzhou and Shenzhen, in Hegang, there are no restaurants open until late hours of the night, no crowded hospitals, no busy commercial streets, and no crowds being in a hurry. In Hegang, the sunset seems to stay still on the horizon; the restless dogs and chickens make annoying noise in the morning time; the four seasons have distinct colors. This place is filled with bleakness and desolation, far away from the hurly-burly of city life. By comparison, people who are dying to leave cities are heartily happy. But such happiness doesn’t belong to Hegang, but to “an escape from cities”.
Concerning this feeling of unhappiness and desire to escape from cities, Mr. Hu Jiaqi says: “Over the past decade, if the standard of living has been growing rapidly each year, people’s inner peace would be broken when the living standards suddenly slows down at some point. Although today is still better than yesterday, the pace of improvement becomes slower, making it hard for people to be happy.”
The young people who settle in Hegang should also admit that the life there is not all roses. They mainly fall into two groups. Freelancers constitute the first group, whose work doesn’t rely on the city itself. But being far away from first-tier cities also means that they cannot get easy access to convenient public transportation networks or a rich recreational life. The second group is composed by those who are bored with the "rat race" in big cities. They want to live a different life at minimum cost. Low prices generally mean low wages, and it is unclear how long such a state of life can last.
Meanwhile, the local young people set off from Hegang, going all the way to the south, to find the real city in their hearts.
As I see it, Hegang is the place far away enough from prosperity, while close enough to cities. It’s not a migration because people are not moving from one place to another for survival. It’s more of "an inspection tour" and a long-lasting orgy of extravagance.
Thereupon, Hegang is no longer just a remote small town in Heilongjiang province. It could represent any city with low housing prices, or someone’s hometown, or even an insubstantial symbol. After experiencing the boom and depression of the old time, these remote resource-depleted cities are ready to embrace a new spring amongst the comparing and balancing of young people.
