Dong Qiangqiang's Story of Leaving Germany

Perhaps because he had dealt with too many things on his list in one day, Dong Qiangqiang's pressure dropped sharply and his spirit relaxed a lot unconsciously. He rarely slept until 8 o'clock without even hearing the alarm clock that was turned up loudly.

When he got up, he found that the room was quiet. Dong's mother should have gone to the hospital. On the dining table was a sumptuous breakfast, money and a note left for him by Dong's mother.

Dong's mother told Dong Qiangqiang to have a good rest on the note, and be sure to call her to report that she was safe after arriving in Shanghai. She would keep Dong Qiangqiang's secret secret, not telling Dong's father that Dong Qiangqiang had not returned to Germany, and at the same time increase her firepower in doing Dong's father's ideological work.

After breakfast, Dong Qiangqiang cleaned the kitchen again. Looking at the empty refrigerator at home, he ran to the community supermarket, regardless of whether it was junk food, eggs, milk, bread, sausages, fermented bean curd, dried tofu, eight-treasure porridge, and instant noodles. I hugged some of everything and looked at the overcrowded refrigerator and cupboards. Then I took a taxi and headed straight to the airport with my newly bought camera, a notebook and a few books I wanted to read on the way.

Although both SAIC and FAW are joint ventures established with Volkswagen of Germany, the positioning of the two companies is not exactly the same.

The best-selling Santana and its upgraded version in the domestic market are both made by SAIC. In addition, high-end models such as the Passat, which was given the position of the Santana commercial vehicle by Volkswagen in Germany, also come from SAIC. Although FAW also produced popular cars such as Jetta, Golf and Bora at that time, , but there is a more important point in its corporate positioning, which is to actively build a local production line for Volkswagen parts and cultivate local auto parts suppliers. A very important reason for this goal is that a car has more than 2 parts, and many of Volkswagen's parts must be imported from the Eurozone. The euro continues to appreciate against the RMB, which leads to a decline in automobile production. The cost remains high. In order to solve this problem as soon as possible, FAW has formulated its own corporate strategy.

Originally, I could have looked at any company first, but because Dong Qiangqiang had never been to Shanghai and was more curious about Shanghai, he finally decided to look at SAIC first and then FAW.

He saw many construction sites on the way from the city to the Capital International Airport. The wind and sand were strong in spring, so the construction sites covered with dust-proof felts were fine. For the uncovered construction sites, one could see a pale ink painting above the construction sites from a long distance away. Black is flying in the air, and when you get closer, you can see the busy scene on the construction site. He remembered what Dong's mother said, BJ was building buildings everywhere, and it seemed to be true.

What surprised Dong Qiangqiang was that there were not many people flying to Shanghai, and all the passengers took the initiative to wear masks without anyone reminding them. The cabin was very quiet. Apart from the regular sound of aircraft equipment, no loud noises could be heard. Almost all passengers had a newspaper in hand, and the pages they read were all columns related to (military) love. Dong Qiangqiang could occasionally hear whispers and look around. People who didn't read the newspaper either closed their eyes and rested, or looked out the window with a serious expression and thought deeply.

There is a constant flow of people at Hongqiao Airport. There are more people and people wearing masks in the airport than in BJ Airport.

Although it was his first time to fly to Shanghai, Dong Qiangqiang felt that he was not unfamiliar at all.

In Dong Qiangqiang's opinion, Hongqiao Airport is no less than Frankfurt Airport in terms of airport design, commuter shuttles, standardization of service personnel, service facilities, and living support facilities. If he had to find fault, the only flaw he felt was that Hongqiao Airport, like the Capital International Airport, was not seamlessly connected to local high-speed rail, subway, bus, long-distance passenger transport and other transportation facilities. He recalled that when he first landed in Frankfurt in 2001, all available local transportation facilities had been opened. It is now 2003. As the two most modern cities in the country, they still maintain a certain distance from Germany in terms of the convenience of transportation infrastructure, not to mention other cities. But looking at it from a different perspective, this shows that both cities will have a better future. There is still enough room for progress. We should approach the problem from more angles. It is naive and pessimistic to look at the problem with dualism.

Dong Qiangqiang pushed his luggage out of the gate and saw a long table lying next to the gate, with a "Health Declaration Form Filling Place" standing on the table. Airport staff wearing masks and red armbands reminded people walking out to register the form, while checking the information filled in by the person who submitted the form. It seemed that every passenger leaving the airport must fill it out. He took the "Health Declaration Form", filled in his personal information and contact information with a few strokes, and solemnly signed the statement "My body temperature has been normal in the past two weeks and I have no respiratory diseases."

He handed the form to the person who returned it, then queued up to have his temperature checked with a thermometer gun. He was only released after the other party confirmed that his temperature was normal. Dong Qiangqiang couldn't help but lament that when he set off from the Capital International Airport, there were no similar measures in place there. It seemed that Shanghai was more cautious.

He only had a backpack and no checked luggage, so he strolled to the taxi area.

He made a special observation and found that although many taxis belonged to different taxi companies, they were all the same Santana, and there was no second brand at all. He immediately remembered that when he first landed in Hannover, he was surprised that most of the buses running on the streets were Mercedes-Benz, most of the police cars were BMWs, and most of the fire trucks, ambulances and various cleaning vehicles were Volkswagens. After waiting for a long time, I found out that these three major car companies have a very high share of vehicles in the German public sector. There are almost no Japanese or American cars on the streets of Germany. You can occasionally see Nordic cars and French cars. Dong Qiangqiang’s second-hand cars Toyota is considered a minority car.

He took the photo without saying a word.

It took Dong Qiangqiang less than 10 minutes to get a taxi. The car was filled with the faint smell of disinfectant. The driver also wore a mask, and his Mandarin with a local accent sounded very comfortable.

Dong Qiangqiang did some homework before coming. He knew that he had a lot of knowledge about the location of automobile production bases. First, he needed a flat and wide land area to install the production line. Secondly, he needed to consider whether it was convenient to recruit a sufficient number of high-skilled workers. Thirdly, he needed to consider Whether the automobile supporting infrastructure in the area where the production base is located is complete. In addition, various factors such as whether transportation is convenient, whether logistics is developed, whether the local product market size is considerable, whether local tax policies are favorable, and whether there are water and electricity subsidies for local production, etc. .

After considering all factors, SAIC Volkswagen's three factories in Shanghai are all located in Anting Town, JD District.

On the way from the airport to the factory, Dong Qiangqiang noticed two things in particular: First, there are many real estate projects being built in Shanghai, no less than those in BJ. Although the scale of construction sites and the degree of application of mechanized equipment in the two places appear to be similar, Shanghai has obviously better dust prevention measures, with not even an open-air construction site to be seen. Secondly, most of the cars running on the highway are cars of various brands under Volkswagen. Dong Qiangqiang took photos of everything he saw and recorded all the data in his notebook.