This article is from the WeChat public account GQ Report (GQREPORT). Reply to "Eastern Egg" in the background of GQ report and give you an Easter Egg.
Ordos is famous for cashmere sweaters and coal mines, and has also experienced ups and downs of the economic situation, but few people know that it has a racing stadium with the second largest hardware conditions in the country, second only to the Shanghai F1 racing stadium. Ten years ago, this city surrounded by grasslands and deserts hoped to move from the "horseback era" to the "racing era". Ten years have passed, and the racing stadium has been running hard and started raising chickens.
Among the more than ten drivers in Ordos now, Li Tianqi claims to be the first. After the Ordos racing industry fell, enthusiasts like Li Tianqi had to enter this track, and his speeding life was also associated with the city of Ordos.
❶Best driver
Li Tianqi considers himself the best driver in Ordos. In this city deep inland, there are no more than ten people who have participated in regular racing competitions and can be called drivers. He knows and despises them all. He commented one by one, this one is "I can't stand me and can't kill me", that one is "the kind of bragging player", and there is also "I don't know any data about the car, can he get a racing car?"
He is 175 tall and weighs 160 kilograms. He is wearing a tight racing suit, and his belly pops up. After crossing the roll cage under the cab, he lowered his head to avoid the roll cage above, stuffed himself into his seat, and put on his helmet.
Li Tianqi's racing car is not beautiful. The co-pilot and the rear seats were removed. Looking inside from the outside, the roll cage penetrated the front and rear, the chassis was exposed, and it was full of a stiff metal structure. There is no comfort at all. The racing seats are thin and hard, and the sides are raised to wrap the driver's body. The seat belt is buckled and tightened, and the whole person is fixed to the driver's seat. The air conditioner and audio are of no use for speed. If you remove the windows and replace them with plastic, you must close them at all times in order to reduce wind resistance.
is behind him, Ordos International Racing 5, and its hardware conditions rank second in the country, second only to Shanghai. It only needs to increase the length by one kilometer to meet the standards for hosting F1 events. He drove onto the track and alternately passed 11 right turns and 7 left turns. These turns formed the shape of a horse and finally accelerated in the straight, reaching a speed of 200 km/h.
Ordos International Racing Stadium
Li Tianqi came to the racing track for the first time in 2012, Han Han is racing. The prototype of the story of "Flying Life" takes place here. That year was the CTCC (China RV Championship), the only national RV event supported by the FIA. Han Han's car was damaged on the way in the transport, and the technician team worked overnight. The next day, he won the sub-station championship in a renovated Racing Rain Battle and won the annual championship at the end of the year.
Racing Park is built on a hill outside the suburbs of the new district, surrounded by sandy land, covered with artemisia and cypress trees. This huge building can be seen two or three kilometers away. The wavy ceiling looks like an eagle spreading its wings. The two lighthouses stretch upwards, representing the symbol of Mongolia - the three-pointed iron spear Suled . Looking down from a high place, the track plate in the shape of a horse is lingering among the yellow sand, which contains a kind of hope: Ordos will soon complete the historical leap from the "horseback era" to the "racing era" and become the "Northern Racing Capital".
Standing in the square in front of the entrance of the Ordos Racing Stadium, the roar of racing cars came from the front. There were tall buildings in the Kangbashi New District, which was built in 2004, but it was silent. The location of Kangbashi District was once a desert. When it was newly built, it was designed to live in 1 million people, which is equivalent to the current population of the seven banners and two districts of Ordos. There are less than 100,000 people actually staying in now.
Li Tianqi got out of the car and took off his helmet. The air in the car was difficult to circulate, and after a few laps, the racing suit and helmet lining made of flame retardant material were already soaked. The equipment he had obtained the FIA certification, and according to his understanding, he only owned it in Ordos. His total wearable equipment is worth 80,000. Not long ago, the racing stadium held a local event called Genghis Khan Racing, and it is expected to recruit 12 drivers, and only 4 people were recruited four or five days before the race. The organizer invited Li Tianqi to participate in the competition, but he refused because "that was a relatively low-end competition."
Before playing with the car, Li Tianqi weighed 200 kilograms. His family is one of the largest liquor dealers in Ordos. He went to Beijing and Hong Kong to attend the ordering parties of Moutai or Wuliangye in an inappropriate suit, and stood on the red carpet and took a photo with the red banner behind him. Like most people who become rich in Ordos, his hobbies are drinking, playing mahjong, and buying Land Rover.
Although he claims to be extraordinary, Li Tianqi is not a professional racer. He used to work as a driver in an institution, and later was responsible for logistics and reception. At that time, the best way out he could imagine was to be promoted and be a leader when he was in his thirties. There are many government agencies in Kangbashi New District, and the roads even have four peak hours every day. According to the observation of taxi drivers, they are 9 am, 12 noon, 2 pm, and 5 pm. Parents go to school to pick up their children after get off work at noon, take a nap before going back to work and school.
Li Tianqi
According to the original plan, Li Tianqi will soon live such a regular and repetitive life. But later he became a racer and no longer thought about living his original life. He thought that it was "only one day in a year, repeated 364 times."
In order to make the racing faster, he taught himself the computer program to control the racing power system. BMW's programs and software are both in English. He went to join the army before he graduated from high school and almost forgot about English. Many technical questions were answered by foreign websites. He spent more than 300 yuan to buy software, found the email address of a foreign engineer, first translated the question into English and sent it to him using Baidu , and then translated it into Chinese using Baidu.
He used this to show that he was much better than other locals. "Sports competition must be someone who won you. No one in the local area won me, so it was boring to play." He won the runner-up and third place in the competition. After the game, he asked the foreign driver who won the championship and asked the other party to sit in his co-pilot to give guidance on driving skills. There are not many opportunities like
. The "Genghis Khan Racing" holds four stops every year, each lasting three days; there are four track open days, each one at a time. For most of the year, the racing area at Ordos Racing is empty.
7 years ago, in order to cultivate local drivers, the first "Genghis Khan Racing" recruited more than a dozen local drivers, and many of them participated in the competition for the first time. Until now, these people are probably competing with Li Tianqi.
❷ "There are money everywhere"
riders do not enter the field from the front of the huge main building of the racing yard. They will turn uphill at the intersection and go around to the back of the main building, which is the rear of the racing yard. The 20 P rooms (repair area) are lined up. The racing car passes through the roller shutter door and enters the P room for debugging and repairing, and then goes forward through another roller shutter door opposite. In front of you is the big straight road of the track and the auditorium.
In the movie, the P room area is often the warmest and noisies. The technicians quickly change tires around the Formula 1 car, while the drivers kept shouting "Quick! Quick! Quick!", and the cheers in the audience symphony with the roar of the engines on the track. Such scenarios mainly occur in France, Germany, and the United States, and racing competitions are also competitions of the most advanced technology in the automobile industry. The annual salary of drivers participating in the top races can reach tens of millions of dollars.
Walk into the P room that Li Tianqi rented in Ordos Racing Stadium, but often smelled a barbecue smell. His freezer has 2,000 mutton skewers all year round. After competitions, track events, and even reception friends, he will set up a grill, skillfully pinch salt, pepper, and cumin, sprinkle it on the skewers, and then hold more than a dozen skewers in each hand to spread it into a fan shape, and pat the seasoning evenly on the front and back. The grill is usually placed next to the door of the P room, which is convenient for use at any time. Sometimes he also uses a small stove and an iron pot to make stewed lamb.
July track opening day, Li Tianqi served as the skewers. Forty or fifty racing enthusiasts ate 600 mutton skewers, 200 skewers of chicken crisp bones, and 100 skewers of fish balls in the P room of the racing stadium.
Li Tianqi is the main roasting, and his racing technician Wu Yifei is on the side and is responsible for separating the frozen skewers. Wu Yifei had arrived at the P room early in the morning and sat in the corner to break meat skewers. Unlike Li Tianqi's talkative, he didn't say a word. He likes to wear white clothes, and there are always many cotton gloves in the trunk of the car, and he never repairs the car with his bare hands.He also likes to repair cars at night, and the surroundings are very quiet, with only the regular sound of tools and metal parts colliding. The machine could not find the problem, so he disassembled, installed, and then took it aside. His move to breaking the meat skewers was like fiddling with tools and parts.
Once he drove me to interview Li Tianqi. On the way, he talked about the story of his first visit to Ordos. I realized that he could talk endlessly. He said that money was very profitable at that time - he did after-sales repairs in the 4S store during the day, and the after-sales department repaired more than 80 cars a day, and when he was busy, he was 300 cars. The customer was generous and bought parts worth 300 yuan and gave them five hundred directly. At night, he earned extra money by working as a designated driver. He drove three or four bosses. When he got off the bus, everyone stuffed money into his hands drunk. He could earn three or four trips. Even the store makes a lot of money to collect waste engine oil. The old man was covered in oil stains. He collected more than 100 yuan per barrel of engine oil, and he sold it twice. The old man only works in the morning every day, earns a few thousand yuan by pulling dozens of barrels of oil, and goes out to play cards in the afternoon.
Wu Yifei
Natives say that in those years, there was money everywhere in Ordos. They used "those years" to refer to the period when Ordos had the highest per capita GDP in the country around 2010. In order to repair fountains and nearby properties, workers from all over the country have as many as 200,000 yuan in wages for moving bricks a day. A taxi driver drove past Kangbashi New District and saw a roadside full of people waving to take a taxi. No matter where someone came, they would charge 10 yuan. If you go to the airport, you can get a meter of more than 20 yuan, and the average price is 200 yuan. From 2008 to 2010, he bought one house with a rental income of more than 500,000 yuan every year, and he bought one house with a rental income of more than 300,000 yuan every year.
In 2010, at the first Ordos International Automobile Exhibition, 1 Bugatti with a total of 38 million yuan, 1 15 million yuan, 2 Lamborghini, 5 Bentley , and 40 Land Rover were sold. People with a salary of two or three thousand can afford luxury cars, so car manufacturers invest in advertising fees in racing stadiums and rent venues to hold events. This is the main source of income from racing stadiums.
Wu Yifei drove past the main road of Kangbashi New District, and the eight-lane road in both directions was surrounded by lawns and flowers. What is more attractive is the street lights on both sides of the road. Each lamp is surrounded by 18 water drop-shaped bulbs, with a golden tributary iron spear standing on the top, which is a symbol of Mongolian power. I later learned that such a street light is worth nearly 200,000 yuan. A taxi driver asked me to imagine a scene - 100 yuan banknotes are spread all over the road, and the longer the road is built, the longer it can be spent.
❸“Survey the Toughs Together”
2018 Genghis Khan Grand Race Awards Ceremony, the champion driver received the trophy and wreathed it. There were less than fifty people sitting in the audience opposite, and no one applauded. He imagined that if the audience was full of cheering crowds, "Even if we didn't have the chance to play, we were strolling in the P room, we would feel like a driver, beef, right? But there was no audience." He shook the champagne bottle, but maybe because it was too cold, the champagne never sprayed out.
When Li Tianqi first came to the race, the racing stadium was not as deserted as it is now. Han Han's fans alone blocked the door of the P room. Before, the racing stadium held the World Supercar Championship and the Formula China Grand Prix. At the most lively time, more than 10,000 spectators sat in the stands. Even the car models are unusual. The organizer invited the model team under the Ordos cashmere sweater for a high price. The driver was called by the model in the P room and asked if you are the champion, and the excitement was even greater than that of spraying champagne.
A local taxi driver came to watch the game. He described the speed, "A black dot buzzed and passed, and you can't even see what kind of car it was." When he got home at night, he couldn't sleep, and he was lying on the bed, and there was still a buzzing sound in his ears.
Aunt Huo, who runs a small supermarket in the racing stadium, has been working here since 2008, and she also watched that game. The racing stadium was released in unified red clothing, allowing all employees to be viewers. Many people were wearing red clothes in the audience, both old and young. Later she found out that the organizer hired the audience for 70 yuan a day. Regarding this amount, there is another saying that there is a range of 50-100, and someone will go to see young students on the way to watch the competition.
Ordos Racing Park was 1.05 billion yuan, and the investment scales of Chengdu and Guangzhou Racing Parks built during the same period were only 180 million and 280 million yuan respectively. It is also very expensive to hold events, with the operating cost of the 2010 World Supercar Championship nearly 10 million. At that time, Ordos' annual fiscal revenue exceeded 50 billion, 1.5 times that of the entire Gansu Province. This city is famous nationwide for its "5,000 Land Rover" and "per capita GDP exceeds Hong Kong", and "Dubai, China".
To attract investment, Ordos sold 6,000 mu of land to Huatai Automobile Group at a low land price of 10,000 yuan per mu and gave it to two coal mines. The racing yard is also planned to develop into a car city, building a 4S store, repair and renovating, testing base, and scientific research base. 18 car brands have signed intention agreements with the racing yard.
Li Tianqi had just made his first pot of gold by lending at that time. He lent six or seven million from the bank, with a monthly profit of one and four cents, and then released it with two or eight cents or three cents of interest, earning 80,000 or 90,000 out of thin air every month. At that time, there was a saying circulating in Ordos: "Every family has real estate, everyone pawns the business." "Pawn" refers to lending. Kangbashi A taxi driver was a farmer and farmed for a living. The land acquisition allowed him to get 700,000 yuan in cash overnight. His relatives said that if he lends the money, he can get two cents of the profit a month, which is 14,000 yuan. "Everyone is giving it away, and it is also for relatives." He received interest every month for a year, so he lent the interest to relatives.
In 2013, Li Tianqi bought a Land Rover. He also had a modified Suzuki Swift, who pursued the appearance and sound at that time, including car stickers, exhaust and headlights. He made an appointment with his car friends to drive in a place called Jiucheng Palace in the suburbs of Ordos, and sometimes he also kicked the accelerator on the streets of the city.
When he first came to Han Han, he thought about when he could go to the track, but the racing stadium was not open to enthusiasts at that time. From 2010 to 2013, national and international events such as CTCC brought reputation and popularity to Ordos. Each game attracted dozens of media reports that Ordos' hotels were filled with drivers, staff, and foreign spectators. There were always police patrols at the entrance of the hotel where foreign drivers gathered.
Although the investment in hosting competitions is huge, people believe that money can always be earned. Just like every person who takes all his savings and lends, he believes that he will definitely receive a call to receive interest at the end of the month.
On July 6, 2013, in the CTCC qualifying competition, a manhole cover in the track was found to have safety hazards. The expert group discussed for 4 hours, and the competition was postponed. The first group competition started at 7:30 in the morning the next day. When the time came, the sweeper was still wandering on the track, and the referees, rescue and other supporting facilities were not in place. At 8 o'clock, the second group of cars also came. The two groups of cars competed for the race time, and the entrance to the track was blocked.
That was the last time CTCC was held in Ordos. In the Ordos news on the day of the competition, the word about this city was "overcoming difficulties together." In the past decade, coal prices rose and funds flowed to real estate, which in turn triggered the expansion of private lending. This chain suddenly broke when coal prices fell. In 2013, Ordos' economic growth rate had fallen from the top of the Inner Mongolia Autonomous Region to the bottom.
In 2012, Bentley was doing activities in the racing stadium and sold six or seven cars in three days. In early 2013, luxury cars suddenly couldn't be sold, and Mercedes-Benz canceled the full series of display activities originally scheduled to be held at the Ordos Racing Stadium. Ordos is located in the inland area and cannot be transported by sea. The logistics cost is extremely high. The manufacturer would rather pay the penalty than come.
Li Tianqi purchases racing accessories from cities with developed racing industries such as Shanghai and Zhuhai every year, and the shipping fee is 20,000 to 30,000 yuan. It costs more than one yuan per kilometer to be transported from other cities to use trailer pallets to transport a race car - more than 700 kilometers in Beijing and 2,500 kilometers in Zhuhai, while the prize money for local events is often only one or two thousand. Many drivers measure costs and bonuses, but they don’t come.
A year later, "Genghis Khan Racing" canceled its official team formation and began to accept registrations for private teams and drivers. At this time, it had been more than two years since the Ordos private lending chain broke. The Kangbashi taxi driver who lent money to his relatives only received 1,000 yuan and a soju from his relatives every year during the Spring Festival. There are also many of his colleagues who even get the debts paid off.
Li Tianqi drove onto the track for the first time that year. He and his riders spent money to buy the track practice time, which cost 300 yuan every half hour. Until now, Li Tianqi has driven a car to run 2,000 laps in the Ordos track. He thought that even if Han Han came again, he would dare to compete.
In addition to Han Han, who is well-known to people, most of the domestic professional racers are more like Lin Zhendong in "Flying Life". The family has a strong financial resources, enough to bear the annual event costs of millions and the bottomless modified racing costs.
Another possible path is to be discovered and selected in the circle. Wang Yi was a enthusiast before becoming a professional racer, mainly practicing driving and racing in Beijing, Shanghai and Zhuhai. The developed and mature racing yard is always surrounded by teams, modified clubs, and car manufacturers and shops. During a game, he was spotted by a modified club and the boss proposed to sponsor him to run the game.
Li Tianqi received local sponsorship at most was motor oil and accessories, and no club invited him to become a professional driver. He always had minor mistakes in the competition. Sometimes he had a tire blowout as soon as he set off. Sometimes the car broke down inexplicably. Sometimes he had to fight over the high-speed corner, but he had already stepped on the brakes. Sometimes he thought that luck accounts for 50%, logistics accounts for 30%, and technology accounts for only 20%. Sometimes he thought that he was old and after he was over 30, he began to be afraid of death. He decided to focus on off-road competitions before he was forty, and most of the boss drivers participated in off-road competitions were too rich and even more afraid of death.
"The only most unstable part on the entire car is the person," Wang Yi said that he is also a racing coach now, and often emphasizes the importance of repetition when training students. "In racing, we may hope that people and machinery will integrate into one, rather than machinery and humans will integrate into one. We want to be a relatively less-than-high failure rate component in a racing car."
Wang Yi's life is divided into competition periods and training periods. He strictly controls his diet, rarely eats meat, and almost only eats vegetables and nutritional supplements during the competition. To maintain his physical condition, he will rest at 9 pm.
Li Tianqi doesn't want to be a part, nor does he need to make a living by racing. His life is based on the weather in Ordos. The warm March to October is the season for playing cars and washing sand. In winter, the ground temperature is too low to drive a racing car, so he goes to Chongli to ski, and often stays for half a month. No matter when, he fell asleep in the middle of the night and got up after 10 a.m. He never appeared at the agreed interview location on time, and most other locals were like this. Sometimes he said "see you at noon" and sometimes he said "see you in the afternoon", as if this was an accurate time node for them.
Li Tianqi saw a weight loss method called "ketogenic diet" on his WeChat official account - eating high-fat foods, eating more meat, and not eating carbohydrates. He followed three ketogenic diet official accounts to buy food and drinks from them. Recently, he and his friends taught people weight loss classes on WeChat, and he charged 1,680 yuan in tuition fees in 45 days.
Wang Yi said when talking about the driver's diet that eating meat will affect the body's ability to resist fatigue, and what racing requires most is durability and mental concentration. I passed this statement to Li Tianqi. He didn't care. He believed that his body structure was different from that of ordinary people. In the past three years, he has won seven or eight trophys in local competitions. Among the dozen drivers, he is either the runner-up or the third place, and he is always a little different every time.
Local riders are all kinds of. Someone came to Li Tianqi to change his tires. The four tires cost more than 5,000 yuan in total, and the car owner asked for installments. When Li Tianqi saw him, he was giving the anchor a gift of more than 1,000 yuan on the live broadcast APP. Some car friends think that the goods are expensive and think that the store wants to make a difference. Li Tianqi is merciless and said, "One wheel is enough to buy your car." There are also car friends who borrowed money from online platforms to buy second-hand sports cars. Li Tianqi was even more disdainful, "How can you play? How can you play when you are in debt? You buy a car worth 100,000 to 200,000 in your pocket. If you can change this car, it is called playing. If you buy a car worth 100,000, it is called driving."
I asked him, how can those who have no money play with cars? He said, "It is impossible to play racing without money.
This article is from the WeChat public account GQ Report (GQREPORT). Reply to "Eastern Egg" in the background of GQ report and give you an Easter Egg.
Ordos is famous for cashmere sweaters and coal mines, and has also experienced ups and downs of the economic situation, but few people know that it has a racing stadium with the second largest hardware conditions in the country, second only to the Shanghai F1 racing stadium. Ten years ago, this city surrounded by grasslands and deserts hoped to move from the "horseback era" to the "racing era". Ten years have passed, and the racing stadium has been running hard and started raising chickens.
Among the more than ten drivers in Ordos now, Li Tianqi claims to be the first. After the Ordos racing industry fell, enthusiasts like Li Tianqi had to enter this track, and his speeding life was also associated with the city of Ordos.
❶Best driver
Li Tianqi considers himself the best driver in Ordos. In this city deep inland, there are no more than ten people who have participated in regular racing competitions and can be called drivers. He knows and despises them all. He commented one by one, this one is "I can't stand me and can't kill me", that one is "the kind of bragging player", and there is also "I don't know any data about the car, can he get a racing car?"
He is 175 tall and weighs 160 kilograms. He is wearing a tight racing suit, and his belly pops up. After crossing the roll cage under the cab, he lowered his head to avoid the roll cage above, stuffed himself into his seat, and put on his helmet.
Li Tianqi's racing car is not beautiful. The co-pilot and the rear seats were removed. Looking inside from the outside, the roll cage penetrated the front and rear, the chassis was exposed, and it was full of a stiff metal structure. There is no comfort at all. The racing seats are thin and hard, and the sides are raised to wrap the driver's body. The seat belt is buckled and tightened, and the whole person is fixed to the driver's seat. The air conditioner and audio are of no use for speed. If you remove the windows and replace them with plastic, you must close them at all times in order to reduce wind resistance.
is behind him, Ordos International Racing 5, and its hardware conditions rank second in the country, second only to Shanghai. It only needs to increase the length by one kilometer to meet the standards for hosting F1 events. He drove onto the track and alternately passed 11 right turns and 7 left turns. These turns formed the shape of a horse and finally accelerated in the straight, reaching a speed of 200 km/h.
Ordos International Racing Stadium
Li Tianqi came to the racing track for the first time in 2012, Han Han is racing. The prototype of the story of "Flying Life" takes place here. That year was the CTCC (China RV Championship), the only national RV event supported by the FIA. Han Han's car was damaged on the way in the transport, and the technician team worked overnight. The next day, he won the sub-station championship in a renovated Racing Rain Battle and won the annual championship at the end of the year.
Racing Park is built on a hill outside the suburbs of the new district, surrounded by sandy land, covered with artemisia and cypress trees. This huge building can be seen two or three kilometers away. The wavy ceiling looks like an eagle spreading its wings. The two lighthouses stretch upwards, representing the symbol of Mongolia - the three-pointed iron spear Suled . Looking down from a high place, the track plate in the shape of a horse is lingering among the yellow sand, which contains a kind of hope: Ordos will soon complete the historical leap from the "horseback era" to the "racing era" and become the "Northern Racing Capital".
Standing in the square in front of the entrance of the Ordos Racing Stadium, the roar of racing cars came from the front. There were tall buildings in the Kangbashi New District, which was built in 2004, but it was silent. The location of Kangbashi District was once a desert. When it was newly built, it was designed to live in 1 million people, which is equivalent to the current population of the seven banners and two districts of Ordos. There are less than 100,000 people actually staying in now.
Li Tianqi got out of the car and took off his helmet. The air in the car was difficult to circulate, and after a few laps, the racing suit and helmet lining made of flame retardant material were already soaked. The equipment he had obtained the FIA certification, and according to his understanding, he only owned it in Ordos. His total wearable equipment is worth 80,000. Not long ago, the racing stadium held a local event called Genghis Khan Racing, and it is expected to recruit 12 drivers, and only 4 people were recruited four or five days before the race. The organizer invited Li Tianqi to participate in the competition, but he refused because "that was a relatively low-end competition."
Before playing with the car, Li Tianqi weighed 200 kilograms. His family is one of the largest liquor dealers in Ordos. He went to Beijing and Hong Kong to attend the ordering parties of Moutai or Wuliangye in an inappropriate suit, and stood on the red carpet and took a photo with the red banner behind him. Like most people who become rich in Ordos, his hobbies are drinking, playing mahjong, and buying Land Rover.
Although he claims to be extraordinary, Li Tianqi is not a professional racer. He used to work as a driver in an institution, and later was responsible for logistics and reception. At that time, the best way out he could imagine was to be promoted and be a leader when he was in his thirties. There are many government agencies in Kangbashi New District, and the roads even have four peak hours every day. According to the observation of taxi drivers, they are 9 am, 12 noon, 2 pm, and 5 pm. Parents go to school to pick up their children after get off work at noon, take a nap before going back to work and school.
Li Tianqi
According to the original plan, Li Tianqi will soon live such a regular and repetitive life. But later he became a racer and no longer thought about living his original life. He thought that it was "only one day in a year, repeated 364 times."
In order to make the racing faster, he taught himself the computer program to control the racing power system. BMW's programs and software are both in English. He went to join the army before he graduated from high school and almost forgot about English. Many technical questions were answered by foreign websites. He spent more than 300 yuan to buy software, found the email address of a foreign engineer, first translated the question into English and sent it to him using Baidu , and then translated it into Chinese using Baidu.
He used this to show that he was much better than other locals. "Sports competition must be someone who won you. No one in the local area won me, so it was boring to play." He won the runner-up and third place in the competition. After the game, he asked the foreign driver who won the championship and asked the other party to sit in his co-pilot to give guidance on driving skills. There are not many opportunities like
. The "Genghis Khan Racing" holds four stops every year, each lasting three days; there are four track open days, each one at a time. For most of the year, the racing area at Ordos Racing is empty.
7 years ago, in order to cultivate local drivers, the first "Genghis Khan Racing" recruited more than a dozen local drivers, and many of them participated in the competition for the first time. Until now, these people are probably competing with Li Tianqi.
❷ "There are money everywhere"
riders do not enter the field from the front of the huge main building of the racing yard. They will turn uphill at the intersection and go around to the back of the main building, which is the rear of the racing yard. The 20 P rooms (repair area) are lined up. The racing car passes through the roller shutter door and enters the P room for debugging and repairing, and then goes forward through another roller shutter door opposite. In front of you is the big straight road of the track and the auditorium.
In the movie, the P room area is often the warmest and noisies. The technicians quickly change tires around the Formula 1 car, while the drivers kept shouting "Quick! Quick! Quick!", and the cheers in the audience symphony with the roar of the engines on the track. Such scenarios mainly occur in France, Germany, and the United States, and racing competitions are also competitions of the most advanced technology in the automobile industry. The annual salary of drivers participating in the top races can reach tens of millions of dollars.
Walk into the P room that Li Tianqi rented in Ordos Racing Stadium, but often smelled a barbecue smell. His freezer has 2,000 mutton skewers all year round. After competitions, track events, and even reception friends, he will set up a grill, skillfully pinch salt, pepper, and cumin, sprinkle it on the skewers, and then hold more than a dozen skewers in each hand to spread it into a fan shape, and pat the seasoning evenly on the front and back. The grill is usually placed next to the door of the P room, which is convenient for use at any time. Sometimes he also uses a small stove and an iron pot to make stewed lamb.
July track opening day, Li Tianqi served as the skewers. Forty or fifty racing enthusiasts ate 600 mutton skewers, 200 skewers of chicken crisp bones, and 100 skewers of fish balls in the P room of the racing stadium.
Li Tianqi is the main roasting, and his racing technician Wu Yifei is on the side and is responsible for separating the frozen skewers. Wu Yifei had arrived at the P room early in the morning and sat in the corner to break meat skewers. Unlike Li Tianqi's talkative, he didn't say a word. He likes to wear white clothes, and there are always many cotton gloves in the trunk of the car, and he never repairs the car with his bare hands.He also likes to repair cars at night, and the surroundings are very quiet, with only the regular sound of tools and metal parts colliding. The machine could not find the problem, so he disassembled, installed, and then took it aside. His move to breaking the meat skewers was like fiddling with tools and parts.
Once he drove me to interview Li Tianqi. On the way, he talked about the story of his first visit to Ordos. I realized that he could talk endlessly. He said that money was very profitable at that time - he did after-sales repairs in the 4S store during the day, and the after-sales department repaired more than 80 cars a day, and when he was busy, he was 300 cars. The customer was generous and bought parts worth 300 yuan and gave them five hundred directly. At night, he earned extra money by working as a designated driver. He drove three or four bosses. When he got off the bus, everyone stuffed money into his hands drunk. He could earn three or four trips. Even the store makes a lot of money to collect waste engine oil. The old man was covered in oil stains. He collected more than 100 yuan per barrel of engine oil, and he sold it twice. The old man only works in the morning every day, earns a few thousand yuan by pulling dozens of barrels of oil, and goes out to play cards in the afternoon.
Wu Yifei
Natives say that in those years, there was money everywhere in Ordos. They used "those years" to refer to the period when Ordos had the highest per capita GDP in the country around 2010. In order to repair fountains and nearby properties, workers from all over the country have as many as 200,000 yuan in wages for moving bricks a day. A taxi driver drove past Kangbashi New District and saw a roadside full of people waving to take a taxi. No matter where someone came, they would charge 10 yuan. If you go to the airport, you can get a meter of more than 20 yuan, and the average price is 200 yuan. From 2008 to 2010, he bought one house with a rental income of more than 500,000 yuan every year, and he bought one house with a rental income of more than 300,000 yuan every year.
In 2010, at the first Ordos International Automobile Exhibition, 1 Bugatti with a total of 38 million yuan, 1 15 million yuan, 2 Lamborghini, 5 Bentley , and 40 Land Rover were sold. People with a salary of two or three thousand can afford luxury cars, so car manufacturers invest in advertising fees in racing stadiums and rent venues to hold events. This is the main source of income from racing stadiums.
Wu Yifei drove past the main road of Kangbashi New District, and the eight-lane road in both directions was surrounded by lawns and flowers. What is more attractive is the street lights on both sides of the road. Each lamp is surrounded by 18 water drop-shaped bulbs, with a golden tributary iron spear standing on the top, which is a symbol of Mongolian power. I later learned that such a street light is worth nearly 200,000 yuan. A taxi driver asked me to imagine a scene - 100 yuan banknotes are spread all over the road, and the longer the road is built, the longer it can be spent.
❸“Survey the Toughs Together”
2018 Genghis Khan Grand Race Awards Ceremony, the champion driver received the trophy and wreathed it. There were less than fifty people sitting in the audience opposite, and no one applauded. He imagined that if the audience was full of cheering crowds, "Even if we didn't have the chance to play, we were strolling in the P room, we would feel like a driver, beef, right? But there was no audience." He shook the champagne bottle, but maybe because it was too cold, the champagne never sprayed out.
When Li Tianqi first came to the race, the racing stadium was not as deserted as it is now. Han Han's fans alone blocked the door of the P room. Before, the racing stadium held the World Supercar Championship and the Formula China Grand Prix. At the most lively time, more than 10,000 spectators sat in the stands. Even the car models are unusual. The organizer invited the model team under the Ordos cashmere sweater for a high price. The driver was called by the model in the P room and asked if you are the champion, and the excitement was even greater than that of spraying champagne.
A local taxi driver came to watch the game. He described the speed, "A black dot buzzed and passed, and you can't even see what kind of car it was." When he got home at night, he couldn't sleep, and he was lying on the bed, and there was still a buzzing sound in his ears.
Aunt Huo, who runs a small supermarket in the racing stadium, has been working here since 2008, and she also watched that game. The racing stadium was released in unified red clothing, allowing all employees to be viewers. Many people were wearing red clothes in the audience, both old and young. Later she found out that the organizer hired the audience for 70 yuan a day. Regarding this amount, there is another saying that there is a range of 50-100, and someone will go to see young students on the way to watch the competition.
Ordos Racing Park was 1.05 billion yuan, and the investment scales of Chengdu and Guangzhou Racing Parks built during the same period were only 180 million and 280 million yuan respectively. It is also very expensive to hold events, with the operating cost of the 2010 World Supercar Championship nearly 10 million. At that time, Ordos' annual fiscal revenue exceeded 50 billion, 1.5 times that of the entire Gansu Province. This city is famous nationwide for its "5,000 Land Rover" and "per capita GDP exceeds Hong Kong", and "Dubai, China".
To attract investment, Ordos sold 6,000 mu of land to Huatai Automobile Group at a low land price of 10,000 yuan per mu and gave it to two coal mines. The racing yard is also planned to develop into a car city, building a 4S store, repair and renovating, testing base, and scientific research base. 18 car brands have signed intention agreements with the racing yard.
Li Tianqi had just made his first pot of gold by lending at that time. He lent six or seven million from the bank, with a monthly profit of one and four cents, and then released it with two or eight cents or three cents of interest, earning 80,000 or 90,000 out of thin air every month. At that time, there was a saying circulating in Ordos: "Every family has real estate, everyone pawns the business." "Pawn" refers to lending. Kangbashi A taxi driver was a farmer and farmed for a living. The land acquisition allowed him to get 700,000 yuan in cash overnight. His relatives said that if he lends the money, he can get two cents of the profit a month, which is 14,000 yuan. "Everyone is giving it away, and it is also for relatives." He received interest every month for a year, so he lent the interest to relatives.
In 2013, Li Tianqi bought a Land Rover. He also had a modified Suzuki Swift, who pursued the appearance and sound at that time, including car stickers, exhaust and headlights. He made an appointment with his car friends to drive in a place called Jiucheng Palace in the suburbs of Ordos, and sometimes he also kicked the accelerator on the streets of the city.
When he first came to Han Han, he thought about when he could go to the track, but the racing stadium was not open to enthusiasts at that time. From 2010 to 2013, national and international events such as CTCC brought reputation and popularity to Ordos. Each game attracted dozens of media reports that Ordos' hotels were filled with drivers, staff, and foreign spectators. There were always police patrols at the entrance of the hotel where foreign drivers gathered.
Although the investment in hosting competitions is huge, people believe that money can always be earned. Just like every person who takes all his savings and lends, he believes that he will definitely receive a call to receive interest at the end of the month.
On July 6, 2013, in the CTCC qualifying competition, a manhole cover in the track was found to have safety hazards. The expert group discussed for 4 hours, and the competition was postponed. The first group competition started at 7:30 in the morning the next day. When the time came, the sweeper was still wandering on the track, and the referees, rescue and other supporting facilities were not in place. At 8 o'clock, the second group of cars also came. The two groups of cars competed for the race time, and the entrance to the track was blocked.
That was the last time CTCC was held in Ordos. In the Ordos news on the day of the competition, the word about this city was "overcoming difficulties together." In the past decade, coal prices rose and funds flowed to real estate, which in turn triggered the expansion of private lending. This chain suddenly broke when coal prices fell. In 2013, Ordos' economic growth rate had fallen from the top of the Inner Mongolia Autonomous Region to the bottom.
In 2012, Bentley was doing activities in the racing stadium and sold six or seven cars in three days. In early 2013, luxury cars suddenly couldn't be sold, and Mercedes-Benz canceled the full series of display activities originally scheduled to be held at the Ordos Racing Stadium. Ordos is located in the inland area and cannot be transported by sea. The logistics cost is extremely high. The manufacturer would rather pay the penalty than come.
Li Tianqi purchases racing accessories from cities with developed racing industries such as Shanghai and Zhuhai every year, and the shipping fee is 20,000 to 30,000 yuan. It costs more than one yuan per kilometer to be transported from other cities to use trailer pallets to transport a race car - more than 700 kilometers in Beijing and 2,500 kilometers in Zhuhai, while the prize money for local events is often only one or two thousand. Many drivers measure costs and bonuses, but they don’t come.
A year later, "Genghis Khan Racing" canceled its official team formation and began to accept registrations for private teams and drivers. At this time, it had been more than two years since the Ordos private lending chain broke. The Kangbashi taxi driver who lent money to his relatives only received 1,000 yuan and a soju from his relatives every year during the Spring Festival. There are also many of his colleagues who even get the debts paid off.
Li Tianqi drove onto the track for the first time that year. He and his riders spent money to buy the track practice time, which cost 300 yuan every half hour. Until now, Li Tianqi has driven a car to run 2,000 laps in the Ordos track. He thought that even if Han Han came again, he would dare to compete.
In addition to Han Han, who is well-known to people, most of the domestic professional racers are more like Lin Zhendong in "Flying Life". The family has a strong financial resources, enough to bear the annual event costs of millions and the bottomless modified racing costs.
Another possible path is to be discovered and selected in the circle. Wang Yi was a enthusiast before becoming a professional racer, mainly practicing driving and racing in Beijing, Shanghai and Zhuhai. The developed and mature racing yard is always surrounded by teams, modified clubs, and car manufacturers and shops. During a game, he was spotted by a modified club and the boss proposed to sponsor him to run the game.
Li Tianqi received local sponsorship at most was motor oil and accessories, and no club invited him to become a professional driver. He always had minor mistakes in the competition. Sometimes he had a tire blowout as soon as he set off. Sometimes the car broke down inexplicably. Sometimes he had to fight over the high-speed corner, but he had already stepped on the brakes. Sometimes he thought that luck accounts for 50%, logistics accounts for 30%, and technology accounts for only 20%. Sometimes he thought that he was old and after he was over 30, he began to be afraid of death. He decided to focus on off-road competitions before he was forty, and most of the boss drivers participated in off-road competitions were too rich and even more afraid of death.
"The only most unstable part on the entire car is the person," Wang Yi said that he is also a racing coach now, and often emphasizes the importance of repetition when training students. "In racing, we may hope that people and machinery will integrate into one, rather than machinery and humans will integrate into one. We want to be a relatively less-than-high failure rate component in a racing car."
Wang Yi's life is divided into competition periods and training periods. He strictly controls his diet, rarely eats meat, and almost only eats vegetables and nutritional supplements during the competition. To maintain his physical condition, he will rest at 9 pm.
Li Tianqi doesn't want to be a part, nor does he need to make a living by racing. His life is based on the weather in Ordos. The warm March to October is the season for playing cars and washing sand. In winter, the ground temperature is too low to drive a racing car, so he goes to Chongli to ski, and often stays for half a month. No matter when, he fell asleep in the middle of the night and got up after 10 a.m. He never appeared at the agreed interview location on time, and most other locals were like this. Sometimes he said "see you at noon" and sometimes he said "see you in the afternoon", as if this was an accurate time node for them.
Li Tianqi saw a weight loss method called "ketogenic diet" on his WeChat official account - eating high-fat foods, eating more meat, and not eating carbohydrates. He followed three ketogenic diet official accounts to buy food and drinks from them. Recently, he and his friends taught people weight loss classes on WeChat, and he charged 1,680 yuan in tuition fees in 45 days.
Wang Yi said when talking about the driver's diet that eating meat will affect the body's ability to resist fatigue, and what racing requires most is durability and mental concentration. I passed this statement to Li Tianqi. He didn't care. He believed that his body structure was different from that of ordinary people. In the past three years, he has won seven or eight trophys in local competitions. Among the dozen drivers, he is either the runner-up or the third place, and he is always a little different every time.
Local riders are all kinds of. Someone came to Li Tianqi to change his tires. The four tires cost more than 5,000 yuan in total, and the car owner asked for installments. When Li Tianqi saw him, he was giving the anchor a gift of more than 1,000 yuan on the live broadcast APP. Some car friends think that the goods are expensive and think that the store wants to make a difference. Li Tianqi is merciless and said, "One wheel is enough to buy your car." There are also car friends who borrowed money from online platforms to buy second-hand sports cars. Li Tianqi was even more disdainful, "How can you play? How can you play when you are in debt? You buy a car worth 100,000 to 200,000 in your pocket. If you can change this car, it is called playing. If you buy a car worth 100,000, it is called driving."
I asked him, how can those who have no money play with cars? He said, "It is impossible to play racing without money."
Later, whenever such people came to ask him how to change his car, he would go back. It would be better not to change his car first, change his people first.
He also joined the national modified car group and local car friend group. The former always talked about how to learn foreign modification technology, while the latter only focused on what luxury cars appeared on the streets of Ordos. He saw a car friend wearing a big vest flip-flop in Zhuhai. He pumped six yuan a box of Hongshuangxi, but gave his racing car a supercar-level engine oil. He thought, this is called playing cars.
❹20 million and a sickness
Almost all the money Li Tianqi earned He purchased goods from his father's alcohol distribution company channel and sold liquor to coal bosses and real estate developers he knew, and earned more than 100,000 yuan a month. He showed me this year's WeChat bill, and the monthly consumption was around 100,000 yuan, and the maximum was 170,000 yuan. Racing tires would be worn out if they ran about 60 laps on the track, and it would cost 10,000 yuan to replace all four tires. In addition to the cold winter, it was impossible to go to the track, Li Tianqi changed a set of tires per month on average. In addition, there were wheels, engines, differentials, engine oils, etc., which cost more if they hit the car.
In April this year, he crashed the BMW racing startup in a game in Tianjin The engine was still not repaired until the end of July. He wanted to use the engines of his other cars and the old engine parts sent by his friends to integrate and repair them, but he couldn't do it. The repair station was piled up, and he and technician Wu Yifei stood by each other, staring at the gray-black machine covered with oil, and no one spoke. This engine is worth more than 100,000 yuan, and it would cost tens of thousands to repair it if you buy new parts, which is not worth it. Now you can only take a step back and spend 30,000 to 40,000 yuan to buy a second-hand engine.
Usually, Li Tianqi always needs to confirm, "You see, I don't look like a rich second-generation," he doesn't want people to feel that he is relying on his home. After the interview and shooting, Li Tianqi drank some wine. Photographer Ask him, why don’t you go to other cities and foreign tracks to play?
Li Tianqi replied reflexively, I told you that if we play the track in Ordos, everything else is nothing. Then he paused and said, I played racing just to get the recognition of relatives and friends around him.
He used to work in the alcohol distribution company run by his father, and he was denied whatever he did. The external employee received 8,000 salary, but he only received 3,000. The father pointed to any other employee and said to Li Tianqi, "If he had your family, he would do much better than you." "
Father always said, when can you stop playing? My father always felt that he was not doing his job properly. Once, Li Tianqi's cousin won the Barista Award and appeared on CCTV for 40 seconds. In order to reward her, his family sent a red envelope of 100,000 yuan during the Chinese New Year. Later, at a family dinner, my mother said that Tianqi had won so many racing trophys, so we would also send him more red envelopes during the Spring Festival. No one responded, and everyone immediately changed the topic. He posted the video of his competition to the family group. No one replied.
Li Tianqi's father only hopes that Li Tianqi will manage the store at home, or go to work steadily. Wu Yifei's family also wants him to find a stable job. He is studying car repair at school, and his father advises him to work at a production line in a car factory, so that he can have no worries about food and clothing for the rest of his life. His father is a contractor, and he is afraid that his son will be like himself. "I ate for the first meal today, but I don't know where the next meal is."
Wu Yifei comes to Ordo Si worked, worked in the 4S store and earned more than 10,000 yuan a month at most. He also bought clothes worth thousands of yuan. Not long after he worked, he bought a Samsung 9388, 12,800 yuan.
His wife was still a girlfriend at the time. According to his father-in-law, she "spent a Land Rover every year." She didn't like half of the cosmetics bought for thousands of yuan and poured them directly into the sewer. My girlfriend's girlfriend's home opened a building materials store, and the real estate industry is good. He made tens of thousands of yuan a day. Until they met in 2014, his girlfriend didn't know how to use Taobao, but only shop in shopping malls and supermarkets. Wu Yifei taught her step by step.
Even at the peak of Ordos' economy, Li Tianqi's father never borrowed a bank loan, let alone loans. He bought a coal mine in the 1990s, but the coal price was always low. A few years later, he sold it for 800,000. Since 2003, the price of coal mines has been hyped up to ten times or hundreds of times.He also opened a cashmere sweater factory and did not make any money. He missed the popularity of Ordos, and the business gradually improved until he started selling wine. During the Ordos financial crisis, he voluntarily closed most of the stores, from more than 20 at its peak to only seven or eight left. Profits dropped sharply from 30 million to 10 million.
Li Tianqi's losses seem huge, but the financial crisis has a more significant impact on ordinary people Wu Yifei. Wu and his wife got married and had children in 2015. At that time, the business of his wife's family began to be difficult, and she could only receive a salary of 5,000 yuan a month. Not long after, the child fell seriously ill, and he took the child to Beijing for treatment and spent all his savings. Wu Yifei borrowed 10,000 yuan from Li Tianqi, but has not paid it back so far.
4 years ago, Li Tianqi and Wu Yifei jointly opened a modification store and have been making losses. Now Li Tianqi uses the income from his own distribution of liquor to maintain the operation of the modified store and pays Wu Yifei a salary. In the early stage of the interview, I asked to interview Wu Yifei, but Li Tianqi was not very happy, "He is just a car repairman, why should he interview him?"
Wu Yifei's understanding of the relationship between the two is different from that of Li Tianqi. He has a stronger tone and a stronger self-esteem, especially for salary. "It's not that you don't have any salary. The money you earn in the store is basically in my hands." "I spend all kinds of money, but I don't have money in the flower shop."
Wu Yifei's golf sedan used for daily transportation was bought by Li Tianqi, who recently wanted to sell this car. Wu Yifei also wanted to change careers, but if he didn't repair the car here, he wouldn't know what else he could do. According to Li Tianqi, if Wu doesn't follow him, he will become a repairman full of black oil in the repair shop next door. The title of "technician" was given to Wu Yifei by racing.
Li Tianqi never worried that he would be affected by playing racing. "There is money and money, and the gameplay is money and no money. I have so many cars. If it really doesn't work, I can sell a few cars. Just play a few less."
One day, I met a boss Sun in the racing stadium. He pointed to the three-story racing stadium platform on the top of Li Tianqi's store and said that he flew down from there a few days ago. A bottle of Wahaha stuck under the accelerator and brake pedal of his car. He only found out after stepping on it. It was too late, so he could only hold the steering wheel tightly and follow the BMW 7 Series worth 1.8 million worth of , and slapped it on the ground. The airbags all popped out, the accelerator couldn't be opened, and the car was still rushing forward, holding up a sanitation truck, breaking a poplar tree and a telephone pole, and finally stopped.
He recalled that in 2007, he drove an Audi top-end A8L and had a tire blown by the Yellow River. The car rushed out of the national highway and rolled forward four times, then rolled to the right four times, and stopped in the Yellow River beach. This time he was as lucky as last time, and no one was injured. After these two accidents, he came to the conclusion that "the car is better". If it were a car worth 100,000 or 200,000 yuan, the person would have been finished long ago.
❺Lonely man, beautiful fountain
Ordos Racecourse has not yet made a profit. Last year, Li Tianqi moved his modified store from the old city. The shops here are free of rent and only have to pay water and electricity bills and property fees. In order to improve the utilization rate of the venue, the racing stadium minimizes the rent of all venues. The daily rent for commercial activities of automobile manufacturers is only 50,000 or 60,000 yuan, and the prices of other domestic racing stadiums of the same level are above 200,000 yuan.
This year, a new motorcycle club was opened next to Li Tianqi’s P room. They were also attracted by the extremely low rent, and the racing stadium promised to help them host this year's Asian Motorcycle Championship. After the club settled in, the Asian Motorcycle Federation came to inspect and found that the track had not passed the International Motorcycle Federation certification and could not host international competitions.
The club owner felt fooled and pulled Li Tianqi in the backcourt to scold the operator of the racing tract as a "bastard". He said that the people in this place were not good. Li Tianqi said that the owner of the racing yard was from Shaanxi. The boss said that he was just a "melon peel".
The most direct reason for the sluggish racing market is the sluggish local automobile market. In 2005, Kangbashi just started construction, and Ordos introduced Huatai Automobile and Chery Automobile for transformation. In the past three or four years, the output of the two companies has decreased year by year. Kangbashi District negotiated with Huatai Automobile and asked the latter to move from the city center where the current factory is located to another surrounding banner area.
The racing stadium has to do something to "rescue yourself". This summer, a new chicken farm was opened outside the racing stadium. Hundreds of chickens are freely raised on the wasteland covered with wormwood. The chickens use wormwood as their nests and lay an egg every day. Chicken are not afraid of people, nor are they afraid of the sound of engines coming from the racing stadium. In August, the racing stadium’s official account published a push, “Where to go on the weekend? Come to the racing town to pick up eggs, are you ready? 》.
The owner of the chicken farm was surnamed Sun, and there were 300,000 chickens in the banner area hundreds of kilometers away. He rented 300 acres of land from the racing stadium, 100 acres of hens that raise eggs, 100 acres of roosters to raise ornamental roosters, and another 100 acres of horse farms. Boss Sun cooperated with the racing yard to create a family-friendly entertainment method - men play cars in the parking yard, and women take their children to experience nature. He saw this kind of gameplay near the racing tract in Guangzhou, and wanted to imitate: "That citizen in Guangzhou, go there (racing tract)... The man is playing with a stroller. The woman takes the children to pick up eggs, feed the rabbits, and look at the little duck."
According to Boss Sun, there are many people who come to pick up eggs, but not many people who play with the car. More than half of the revenue of the racing stadium is now derived from tourism - in addition to chicken farms, there are also kart stadiums, RV camps, and small train track cruises. The owner of the racing yard loves to collect ores, fossils and root carvings. There is a museum built in the middle of the racing yard to display his private collection. During this year's National Day holiday, the racing stadium plans to hold seven-day track activities, including track bicycles, track marathons, track roller skating... Since the car racing is not good, let's try other racing.
"Genghis Khan Racing" second stop recruiting drivers is not going well. It is expected to recruit 12 people, and only 4 people will be recruited when the competition is about to happen. The organizer asked the 2018 champion driver to help him, and be sure to find a few more people. Finally, eight people were gathered together. During the finals of
, Li Tianqi watched the race at the racing stadium. Not long after he left, the two drivers with the most hope of winning collided and overturned. They are teammates, and they didn't see the opponent's car logo clearly when they were fighting, and both quit the competition. As a result, two people who were pulled to make up the numbers came to the podium.
The threshold for participating in the competition is getting lower and lower. Drivers do not need to own a racing car, nor do they need to take the racer's license to take the game by holding a driver's license and receiving training from the racing stadium. Everyone rents unified racing cars provided by the racing stadium and is not allowed to modify them. In order to avoid previous situations when recruiting at the third stop, the Circuit will reduce the registration fee and increase the bonus.
Li Tianqi never lost to local drivers in the competition. The more popular the racing car is, the more he feels, "the people here are not good." "You can't run fast without a car," "A person without a car told you how to run the race. This is like a person who has never been to Peking University. He said that Weiming Lake is so beautiful, it was learned from other places." He felt that he was the first, but in Ordos it was like watching the sky from a well.
In April this year, Li Tianqi played in Tianjin and hit the anti-collision wall after crossing the line. After seeing the car, Wu Yifei returned to the parking lot to rest. Before he opened the car door, he received a call from Li Tianqi, saying that the car had hit and the front of the car was almost gone, and he also said that he must have broken his ribs. Li Tianqi was playing outside for several months, and his family never asked whether he was safe. Wu Yifei said, "Our lives are basically the same" and "no one cares about it." When they are in a bad mood, they will come to the racing stadium. One will just drive on the track for two laps, and the other will not speak, and just focus on repairing the car.
Li Tianqi had long disagreed with Wu Yifei getting married and having children, thinking that they were too young to afford life. At that time, Wu Yifei was still very confident and said that he could afford to raise both two or three. Now he said that the last thing he regrets in his life is that he gets married too early. The son's debt for medical treatment has not been paid off, and this year his father-in-law was diagnosed with serious illness. He and his wife quarreled in the hospital where their son was treated until the fight started. Later, the father-in-law was treated and the mother-in-law and his wife ignored him.
When my father-in-law was discharged from the hospital, Wu Yifei went to Beijing to pick him up. He saw an old man ordering takeout and looking for a nurse in the hospital. During the re-examination, he could not move for 24 hours and was also alone. He drove 1,000 kilometers on the road, from about five in the morning to about eight in the evening. His wife and mother-in-law were not around, and he thought he had spent too much money on the phone to give gifts to the doctor. He repeated several times in the story, "Her dad is very pitiful." His eyes turned red at first, and then his tears slowly fell.
He has been married for more than four years and spent hundreds of thousands on his children and father-in-law's medical treatment. He felt that he could have lived a better life, "(If) I have hundreds of thousands now... I can buy a house, I can buy a car, I like cars so much, I can also buy a good car to drive myself, I buy an Audi, I am rich and rich when I buy an Audi... I still like Audi."
The money I lent to Wu Yifei, Li Tianqi has not asked him for it yet. He knew Wu would not pay it back.
Once, the two had a big fight because they used the wrong parts for repairing the car. Wu Yifei was so angry that he said, "I'll stop doing it, let's settle the score." He turned around and left. According to Wu Yifei's recollection, Li Tianqi called him and asked him to go back more than an hour later, and talked with him for three or four hours, "(Li Tianqi) is like that, with a sharp tongue and a tofu heart."
Recently, Li Tianqi was preparing to participate in a competition in Qinghai. When he told his friend the news, he specifically told him, "Don't send that announcement to other groups. There are few cars, I want to win the championship." Two days before the competition, he and Wu Yifei stayed up late to repair the car in preparation. The differential of the off-road racing car broke down. They took it off and counted the gear ratio, but they didn't count it correctly. Early the next morning, a friend sent a WeChat message, and the competition was cancelled because there were too few people who signed up.
Li Tianqi decided to take his family out to play and drove his RV to the beach at Qingdao . Wu Yifei stayed in Ordos to look at the shop. Li Tianqi raised two dogs, one Corgi and the other Akita. He drove to the racing yard every morning and evening to feed and walk the dog. The last time he traveled was when he was just getting married, he drove his wife to Qinhuangdao, and never went out to play again.
Wu Yifei sometimes takes his children to Kangbashi's artificial lake. The highest music fountain in Asia is built on the lake. Every night at 8:30, the main squirt column gradually rushes to the top as the music rises, even exceeding the 55-story CBD building behind it.
In 2009, Kangbashi artificial lake was under construction, and more than 400 excavators were digging day and night, digging a small water hole in the desert into a wide lake. Li Tianqi often goes to and from construction sites because of work. He heard from the engineer of Xiaolangdi Reservoir in Henan that I have seen this kind of scene twice in my life, once in Xiaolangdi, and once in Ordos.
Kangbashi lacks water, and the water diversion pipeline of the artificial lake is paved from the reservoir 78 kilometers away to Kangbashi. The daily water used by citizens comes from Wushen Banner 100 kilometers away. From 2011 to 2015, the groundwater level of Wushen Banner dropped rapidly, and the grass died, causing protests from herdsmen. Later, I could only use surface water. The water from the taps on the racing yard was salty and sand was always floating in the toilet.
Ten years later, Li Tianqi drove past here. He parked his car on the side of the road and pointed to the small vendors who opened the trunk of the car selling toys, clothing, and balloons in the square opposite, saying that they were all the original local rich people. They borrowed their money and could not come back, but they were still unwilling to work and make money. All that was left to them in that era was cars. The fountain water column rushed to the top again, and the crowd in the square all raised their faces and exclaimed. █
At the request of the interviewee, the person’s name is a pseudonym.
This article was published in the September issue of "Smart GQ" 2019
Interview and article: Yu Meng
Editor: Jin Jin
Vision: Zhang Nan
Photography: Suli
Operational Editor: Ershui
He also opened a cashmere sweater factory and did not make any money. He missed the popularity of Ordos, and the business gradually improved until he started selling wine. During the Ordos financial crisis, he voluntarily closed most of the stores, from more than 20 at its peak to only seven or eight left. Profits dropped sharply from 30 million to 10 million.Li Tianqi's losses seem huge, but the financial crisis has a more significant impact on ordinary people Wu Yifei. Wu and his wife got married and had children in 2015. At that time, the business of his wife's family began to be difficult, and she could only receive a salary of 5,000 yuan a month. Not long after, the child fell seriously ill, and he took the child to Beijing for treatment and spent all his savings. Wu Yifei borrowed 10,000 yuan from Li Tianqi, but has not paid it back so far.
4 years ago, Li Tianqi and Wu Yifei jointly opened a modification store and have been making losses. Now Li Tianqi uses the income from his own distribution of liquor to maintain the operation of the modified store and pays Wu Yifei a salary. In the early stage of the interview, I asked to interview Wu Yifei, but Li Tianqi was not very happy, "He is just a car repairman, why should he interview him?"
Wu Yifei's understanding of the relationship between the two is different from that of Li Tianqi. He has a stronger tone and a stronger self-esteem, especially for salary. "It's not that you don't have any salary. The money you earn in the store is basically in my hands." "I spend all kinds of money, but I don't have money in the flower shop."
Wu Yifei's golf sedan used for daily transportation was bought by Li Tianqi, who recently wanted to sell this car. Wu Yifei also wanted to change careers, but if he didn't repair the car here, he wouldn't know what else he could do. According to Li Tianqi, if Wu doesn't follow him, he will become a repairman full of black oil in the repair shop next door. The title of "technician" was given to Wu Yifei by racing.
Li Tianqi never worried that he would be affected by playing racing. "There is money and money, and the gameplay is money and no money. I have so many cars. If it really doesn't work, I can sell a few cars. Just play a few less."
One day, I met a boss Sun in the racing stadium. He pointed to the three-story racing stadium platform on the top of Li Tianqi's store and said that he flew down from there a few days ago. A bottle of Wahaha stuck under the accelerator and brake pedal of his car. He only found out after stepping on it. It was too late, so he could only hold the steering wheel tightly and follow the BMW 7 Series worth 1.8 million worth of , and slapped it on the ground. The airbags all popped out, the accelerator couldn't be opened, and the car was still rushing forward, holding up a sanitation truck, breaking a poplar tree and a telephone pole, and finally stopped.
He recalled that in 2007, he drove an Audi top-end A8L and had a tire blown by the Yellow River. The car rushed out of the national highway and rolled forward four times, then rolled to the right four times, and stopped in the Yellow River beach. This time he was as lucky as last time, and no one was injured. After these two accidents, he came to the conclusion that "the car is better". If it were a car worth 100,000 or 200,000 yuan, the person would have been finished long ago.
❺Lonely man, beautiful fountain
Ordos Racecourse has not yet made a profit. Last year, Li Tianqi moved his modified store from the old city. The shops here are free of rent and only have to pay water and electricity bills and property fees. In order to improve the utilization rate of the venue, the racing stadium minimizes the rent of all venues. The daily rent for commercial activities of automobile manufacturers is only 50,000 or 60,000 yuan, and the prices of other domestic racing stadiums of the same level are above 200,000 yuan.
This year, a new motorcycle club was opened next to Li Tianqi’s P room. They were also attracted by the extremely low rent, and the racing stadium promised to help them host this year's Asian Motorcycle Championship. After the club settled in, the Asian Motorcycle Federation came to inspect and found that the track had not passed the International Motorcycle Federation certification and could not host international competitions.
The club owner felt fooled and pulled Li Tianqi in the backcourt to scold the operator of the racing tract as a "bastard". He said that the people in this place were not good. Li Tianqi said that the owner of the racing yard was from Shaanxi. The boss said that he was just a "melon peel".
The most direct reason for the sluggish racing market is the sluggish local automobile market. In 2005, Kangbashi just started construction, and Ordos introduced Huatai Automobile and Chery Automobile for transformation. In the past three or four years, the output of the two companies has decreased year by year. Kangbashi District negotiated with Huatai Automobile and asked the latter to move from the city center where the current factory is located to another surrounding banner area.
The racing stadium has to do something to "rescue yourself". This summer, a new chicken farm was opened outside the racing stadium. Hundreds of chickens are freely raised on the wasteland covered with wormwood. The chickens use wormwood as their nests and lay an egg every day. Chicken are not afraid of people, nor are they afraid of the sound of engines coming from the racing stadium. In August, the racing stadium’s official account published a push, “Where to go on the weekend? Come to the racing town to pick up eggs, are you ready? 》.
The owner of the chicken farm was surnamed Sun, and there were 300,000 chickens in the banner area hundreds of kilometers away. He rented 300 acres of land from the racing stadium, 100 acres of hens that raise eggs, 100 acres of roosters to raise ornamental roosters, and another 100 acres of horse farms. Boss Sun cooperated with the racing yard to create a family-friendly entertainment method - men play cars in the parking yard, and women take their children to experience nature. He saw this kind of gameplay near the racing tract in Guangzhou, and wanted to imitate: "That citizen in Guangzhou, go there (racing tract)... The man is playing with a stroller. The woman takes the children to pick up eggs, feed the rabbits, and look at the little duck."
According to Boss Sun, there are many people who come to pick up eggs, but not many people who play with the car. More than half of the revenue of the racing stadium is now derived from tourism - in addition to chicken farms, there are also kart stadiums, RV camps, and small train track cruises. The owner of the racing yard loves to collect ores, fossils and root carvings. There is a museum built in the middle of the racing yard to display his private collection. During this year's National Day holiday, the racing stadium plans to hold seven-day track activities, including track bicycles, track marathons, track roller skating... Since the car racing is not good, let's try other racing.
"Genghis Khan Racing" second stop recruiting drivers is not going well. It is expected to recruit 12 people, and only 4 people will be recruited when the competition is about to happen. The organizer asked the 2018 champion driver to help him, and be sure to find a few more people. Finally, eight people were gathered together. During the finals of
, Li Tianqi watched the race at the racing stadium. Not long after he left, the two drivers with the most hope of winning collided and overturned. They are teammates, and they didn't see the opponent's car logo clearly when they were fighting, and both quit the competition. As a result, two people who were pulled to make up the numbers came to the podium.
The threshold for participating in the competition is getting lower and lower. Drivers do not need to own a racing car, nor do they need to take the racer's license to take the game by holding a driver's license and receiving training from the racing stadium. Everyone rents unified racing cars provided by the racing stadium and is not allowed to modify them. In order to avoid previous situations when recruiting at the third stop, the Circuit will reduce the registration fee and increase the bonus.
Li Tianqi never lost to local drivers in the competition. The more popular the racing car is, the more he feels, "the people here are not good." "You can't run fast without a car," "A person without a car told you how to run the race. This is like a person who has never been to Peking University. He said that Weiming Lake is so beautiful, it was learned from other places." He felt that he was the first, but in Ordos it was like watching the sky from a well.
In April this year, Li Tianqi played in Tianjin and hit the anti-collision wall after crossing the line. After seeing the car, Wu Yifei returned to the parking lot to rest. Before he opened the car door, he received a call from Li Tianqi, saying that the car had hit and the front of the car was almost gone, and he also said that he must have broken his ribs. Li Tianqi was playing outside for several months, and his family never asked whether he was safe. Wu Yifei said, "Our lives are basically the same" and "no one cares about it." When they are in a bad mood, they will come to the racing stadium. One will just drive on the track for two laps, and the other will not speak, and just focus on repairing the car.
Li Tianqi had long disagreed with Wu Yifei getting married and having children, thinking that they were too young to afford life. At that time, Wu Yifei was still very confident and said that he could afford to raise both two or three. Now he said that the last thing he regrets in his life is that he gets married too early. The son's debt for medical treatment has not been paid off, and this year his father-in-law was diagnosed with serious illness. He and his wife quarreled in the hospital where their son was treated until the fight started. Later, the father-in-law was treated and the mother-in-law and his wife ignored him.
When my father-in-law was discharged from the hospital, Wu Yifei went to Beijing to pick him up. He saw an old man ordering takeout and looking for a nurse in the hospital. During the re-examination, he could not move for 24 hours and was also alone. He drove 1,000 kilometers on the road, from about five in the morning to about eight in the evening. His wife and mother-in-law were not around, and he thought he had spent too much money on the phone to give gifts to the doctor. He repeated several times in the story, "Her dad is very pitiful." His eyes turned red at first, and then his tears slowly fell.
He has been married for more than four years and spent hundreds of thousands on his children and father-in-law's medical treatment. He felt that he could have lived a better life, "(If) I have hundreds of thousands now... I can buy a house, I can buy a car, I like cars so much, I can also buy a good car to drive myself, I buy an Audi, I am rich and rich when I buy an Audi... I still like Audi."
The money I lent to Wu Yifei, Li Tianqi has not asked him for it yet. He knew Wu would not pay it back.
Once, the two had a big fight because they used the wrong parts for repairing the car. Wu Yifei was so angry that he said, "I'll stop doing it, let's settle the score." He turned around and left. According to Wu Yifei's recollection, Li Tianqi called him and asked him to go back more than an hour later, and talked with him for three or four hours, "(Li Tianqi) is like that, with a sharp tongue and a tofu heart."
Recently, Li Tianqi was preparing to participate in a competition in Qinghai. When he told his friend the news, he specifically told him, "Don't send that announcement to other groups. There are few cars, I want to win the championship." Two days before the competition, he and Wu Yifei stayed up late to repair the car in preparation. The differential of the off-road racing car broke down. They took it off and counted the gear ratio, but they didn't count it correctly. Early the next morning, a friend sent a WeChat message, and the competition was cancelled because there were too few people who signed up.
Li Tianqi decided to take his family out to play and drove his RV to the beach at Qingdao . Wu Yifei stayed in Ordos to look at the shop. Li Tianqi raised two dogs, one Corgi and the other Akita. He drove to the racing yard every morning and evening to feed and walk the dog. The last time he traveled was when he was just getting married, he drove his wife to Qinhuangdao, and never went out to play again.
Wu Yifei sometimes takes his children to Kangbashi's artificial lake. The highest music fountain in Asia is built on the lake. Every night at 8:30, the main squirt column gradually rushes to the top as the music rises, even exceeding the 55-story CBD building behind it.
In 2009, Kangbashi artificial lake was under construction, and more than 400 excavators were digging day and night, digging a small water hole in the desert into a wide lake. Li Tianqi often goes to and from construction sites because of work. He heard from the engineer of Xiaolangdi Reservoir in Henan that I have seen this kind of scene twice in my life, once in Xiaolangdi, and once in Ordos.
Kangbashi lacks water, and the water diversion pipeline of the artificial lake is paved from the reservoir 78 kilometers away to Kangbashi. The daily water used by citizens comes from Wushen Banner 100 kilometers away. From 2011 to 2015, the groundwater level of Wushen Banner dropped rapidly, and the grass died, causing protests from herdsmen. Later, I could only use surface water. The water from the taps on the racing yard was salty and sand was always floating in the toilet.
Ten years later, Li Tianqi drove past here. He parked his car on the side of the road and pointed to the small vendors who opened the trunk of the car selling toys, clothing, and balloons in the square opposite, saying that they were all the original local rich people. They borrowed their money and could not come back, but they were still unwilling to work and make money. All that was left to them in that era was cars. The fountain water column rushed to the top again, and the crowd in the square all raised their faces and exclaimed. █
At the request of the interviewee, the person’s name is a pseudonym.
This article was published in the September issue of "Smart GQ" 2019
Interview and article: Yu Meng
Editor: Jin Jin
Vision: Zhang Nan
Photography: Suli
Operational Editor: Ershui
