Jiupai News Special Commentator Deng Haijian
Aqiang has been a backpacker in Huaqiangbei for six years. Two months ago, his face was worth 700,000 in Huaqiangbei, but now it is "worthless." He withdrew from the city house, fired several younger brothers, and took the train back to his hometown. 700,000 is his "credit limit" in Huaqiangbei. He can take away goods worth nearly one million at each stall, without leaving an IOU or placing an ID card, and then collect the money when the goods are turned over.
Shenzhen Huaqiangbei Museum
"Huaqiangbei" is an ambiguous name with bright lights and wine in the iteration history of Chinese consumer electronic products . There is a data circulating in Huaqiangbei, where there are 100,000 backpackers here. Hundreds of thousands of young people once dreamed of getting rich overnight here, and experienced the success of their success until the day when they woke up. Over the long timeline, various counterfeit or second-hand electronic products, and even various smuggled trendy goods have spawned a tacit and charming business.
Aqiang and 100,000 backpackers' dreams woke up from the "temporary trend" in 2022.
At this moment, there are at least two meanings: one is the contraction of the rule of law environment. According to the Shenzhen Port Office, Shenzhen has recently launched a comprehensive and full-chain crackdown on smuggling illegal and criminal activities. This action has increased the crackdown on imported goods without legal sources, strictly investigated the source of purchase channels or express delivery items, and severely investigated and punished the sale of imported goods without legal sources. Infringement and pirated copies or illegal smuggling cannot always wander around the edge of law. The second is the reverse pressure on epidemic prevention and control. The "super block" with a daily passenger flow of one million is intimate contact with each other, so you can imagine how to prevent and control pressure and spread risks. The two are superimposed and the force is heavy, thus reshaping the traditional consumption ecology of the entire Huaqiangbei.
Of course, this is just an "external cause". The evolution of new economic formats is the "internal cause" that Huaqiangbei will move forward sooner or later. Just as the backpackers sighed, "We are a little person who can never play with capital." In the future, the second-hand mobile phone industry will definitely move towards regularization and corporateization. Besides, even at backpackers’ dinners, the words with higher chat frequency are Douyin, Kuaishou, live broadcast, pit fee, and GMV. This is a change of an era, not a turn of a neighborhood.
The illusion of "picking money everywhere" in the era of information asymmetry is difficult to copy in today's Huaqiangbei.
This itself is the progress of the times, or it is a blessing for the people. Although the past is imprinted with the collective memory of a group of people, not the past is necessarily the most beautiful. Huaqiangbei's "face" is a legend of young people struggling in a specific era - it has created a city's prosperity, weaving the dream of a family, and creating a harmonious and self-consistent trading paradigm based on folk credit. Of course, it may also "shake" many excellent entrepreneurs and even powerful startups like a cradle. However, just as Huaqiangbei is not born to be today's Huaqiangbei, the future of Huaqiangbei will not always be today's Huaqiangbei. Run, move forward, innovate, change... only change remains the same, just like the disappearance of millions of backpackers in the hospital, their light and night will eventually pass, and a better and better relationship is being reconstructed, and they will eventually find their own new coordinate points.
More than ten years ago, when I stood in the center of Huaqiangbei again and again, I suddenly looked at the surging crowds around me like a dream, and I would sincerely feel the vitality and enthusiasm of individuals in my life. Although there must be new "faces" in Huaqiangbei today and tomorrow, we still hope that this is a place where dreams rise, and another wave of young people who pursue dreams will gather, and they will still tolerate their roughness and passion, so that they can still change their solid fate with their hands and blood and sweat.
More "Huaqiangbei", more young people, warmer entrepreneurial dreams - can all bloom freely in this better new era.
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