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South China Airlines Boeing 737 whistled through the blockade of heavy clouds at Manila's Ninoy Aquino International Airport and flew all the way north to Guangzhou.
In the evening, the black sky embraced the gray and black clouds under the window, gradually merging into one, as if to weave a huge black net, swallowing the small plane. At this time, the last ray of sunlight in the distance, in the imminent fall through the clouds, leaving a touch of brownish-red, or purple-yellow, mixed with wisps of dark gray strips, woven into a beautiful and somewhat bizarre ribbon, so that people in the palpitations of the world feel a rare poignancy, but also a hint of fear and worry. This kind of beauty, is really too exciting, not real some like the dome of the song.
The last bright light is gradually sinking into the deep darkness, 10,000 meters below the South China Sea, which has been swept by countless typhoons, in addition to the more than a hundred people on board the plane, how far away from the surrounding can not be found in the trail of people?
About three years ago, Malaysia Airlines mh370 also took off from the South China Sea and flew towards the Chinese land. When their loved ones at the Beijing airport eagerly waiting, when they boarded the plane a moment to celebrate finally going home to be reunited with family and friends, but time is forever stuck in that night.
The people on board the plane disappeared forever, not knowing where their souls had gone.
The people at home, forever lost soul, can not find the way forward.
The door, closed, and forever open, expecting, waiting.
Countless nights, hear the knock on the door, see that familiar face, appeared in the door strike?
Perhaps, one day, even the figure is blurred, but the heart, but ultimately nowhere to rest.
That kind of accident will happen today? If it happens, I have run dozens of marathons, 100 kilometers of cross-country races, and will soon compete in the 24-hour ultramarathon, and whether it can be more than others a ray of hope?
Or, in front of the powerful forces of nature, we are all just a tiny ant, any struggle, toughness can not help?
? Two
On October 23rd, the plane landed at Ninoy Aquino Airport in Manila just after eleven o'clock in the evening, and it was already twelve o'clock after settling down at the Chinatown Hotel in the district of Minluno. My boss warned me that the security in Manila is not too good and that it is best not to go out alone too early or too late. But I am used to going to any city to insist on running, or less than six o'clock to get up, put on running shoes along the first night when I came to the feeling, coupled with the impression of Google Maps, towards the outside ran out.
Just as I was getting ready to run, a local old man saw me and greeted me enthusiastically, and I waved back. Although it was only six o'clock, the street was already full of cars, and across the street was a Chinese-language Mecca Plaza, while the motorcycles on the street made a huge roar that seemed to wake up the whole city.
Toward the Chinatown gatehouse ran, along the way to see a lot of speeding past the strange car, a jeep in front of the front, behind the open trunk, which sits a lot of people, it should be similar to the bus as a means of transportation, accelerating the noise is huge, deafening. Back to learn, this car called jeepney, is also considered a scene in Manila, he was initially converted from the U.S. Army retired jeeps after World War II, and now is generally converted from the Japanese out of the car, is the main public **** transportation in Manila, although each car has a fixed line of travel, but beckoned to stop, can be down at any time. The price is cheap, a few pesos can sit a trip, and therefore more popular with the local ordinary citizens. This kind of car is similar to the previous domestic bus, of course, the Chinese bus is in much better condition than the jeepney, far less noise. This kind of car in order to passengers up and down convenient, no door at the back, some passengers even hang in the back, look really let a person trembling, but the locals seem to be used to it, in the local so many days, also never seen any accidents. Manila is said to have eight strange, two of them are: traffic chaos, car accidents are rare. The motorcycles are loud and the jeepneys are noisy. The first morning I ran out only a kilometer, I had a deep feeling about this.
One kilometer from the hotel to the gates of Chinatown, across the river is a Romanesque building, Manila City Hall, and to the left, past a market is the Catholic Church of the Black Nazarene. 85% of Filipinos are Catholic, one of the few Catholic countries in Asia, and churches are everywhere in the city. By the side of the road, there are many homeless people sleeping on the streets, dark and skinny, with longing and sad eyes when they see pedestrians holding out their hands. The Light Rail Transit (LRT) passes over the road, running for a few minutes, with six cars in each trip. I later learned that Manila's LRT has only two lines, mainly through the old city area, but I'm not familiar with the area, so I didn't have the chance to take a ride and see what it's all about.
On my first day, I ran through the Santulo district on the north bank of the Pasi River, which is the oldest part of Manila. The houses are dark and old, but there are a lot of schools, and I kept passing by primary and secondary schools, and saw students in various uniforms going to school. Schools in Manila are very small and have no walls, usually just a doorway on the first floor. All the schools I saw in the area did not have playgrounds, but only one or two open spaces the size of a basketball court. According to the son of the owner's friend, who attends the more famous CKS school in the Chinese neighborhood, the students don't have a chance to run at all, and they can't even stretch their arms out completely when they do a drill, so you can see how crowded it is.
I usually run about ten kilometers a day, and after running out five kilometers, I returned to the hotel the same way. After taking a shower, I went across the street to have breakfast at Jollibee, the largest restaurant chain in the Philippines, which has now entered the Chinese market, and whose owner, also a Chinese, is aiming to beat McDonald's to become the world's largest restaurant chain.
According to my boss, Jollibee is doing better than McDonald's in the Philippines, and from what I've observed in the local area over the past ten days, the number of stores and the number of people spending money on them is indeed higher than McDonald's, and far better than KFC. In fact, there is not much difference between the two restaurants in terms of product and pricing, but perhaps the owner of Jollibee understands the Philippine market and the taste of the people better. From my experience at the two local restaurants, Jollibee seems to be a bit more flavorful.
I ordered a set meal, including a cup of Coke, a burger, a chicken leg, the price of 95 pesos (pesos to RMB 7.5:1, 95 pesos is about 13 yuan,) the price is far lower than McDonald's prices in the country, at first I thought that McDonald's because of the expensive to compete with Jollibee, after all, Filipinos in general, the income is not high. But then I saw that McDonald's prices are about the same.
Although Jollibee a breakfast in our view is quite affordable, but the locals will eat a meal as a luxury enjoyment, I saw most of the locals are in the roadside stalls to eat, I did not go to ask, I do not know how much a breakfast, I guess in the twenty or thirty pesos or so.
During the day, and the owner to see the local market. The hotel is opposite Manila's largest wholesale market of small commodities 168 mall and 999 mall, several floors are partitioned into a few square meters of small stores, selling a variety of various kinds of small commodities, the boss said that these malls from the developer to sell things, basically Chinese, Filipinos are very few. The Philippines local people, if you read well to go to college, into the government agencies or foreign companies, no one will do this kind of small business, and the general people neither economic ability, nor resources to do business, can only come to work for the Chinese bosses.
These Chinese, in addition to a small number of old Chinese second generation, most of them are the new generation of Chinese who came to the Philippines after China's reform and opening up in the 1980s, and most of them are holding Philippine green cards without naturalization, and most of them are from Fujian, with most of them from Quanzhou.
The market is crowded, traveling slowly, the boss said that after a while, Filipinos want to purchase Christmas gifts, the road is even more watertight. The people themselves are like crucian carp, there are a variety of stalls in the needle, walking is even more difficult, at this time there are actually some cars to pass through these roads, I really do not know how long it takes to pass through the short distance.
I pay attention to the roadside vendors selling fruit, look and domestic varieties are not very different, just apples, bananas, longan, oranges, etc., a few days after I tried to buy a few kinds of, the price is slightly lower than the domestic, the taste is also good.
Three
The next day, I ran from the King City of Spain to Rizal National Park. Spain ruled the Philippines from the mid-to-late 16th world until the end of the 19th century when it was replaced by the United States, so the Philippines has a deep Spanish imprint, and the City of the Kings of Spain is the highest-quality and best-preserved part of Manila's old town architecturally.
When I went through a church, magnificent, solemn and beautiful, simple and dignified, let a person have a sense of admiration. I hurriedly took a couple of pictures and then continued to run, the traditional Spanish buildings lined up past me, instantly thought I was in Madrid rather than Manila.
After the run I clocked in and realized that it showed an Augustinian cathedral, which I thought I had run past. It wasn't until the day before I left Manila that I realized it was the Manila Cathedral that I had passed, and the Augustinian Cathedral was not far south of him, just a few hundred meters away. Both churches were built in the late 16th century, shortly after the Spaniards ruled Manila, and I was a bit surprised to learn that two churches were built at the same time in such close proximity to each other. Perhaps the Spaniards were so fanatical about religion that one church was not enough to accommodate their devotion to God.
The city of Manila is not that big, only more than 6 million square kilometers, while the actual population of more than 20 million people living in the city, known as the most crowded city in the world. So, with very little public **** space in Manila, it's hard to find a good place to run. Rizal National Park, is supposed to be the largest public **** park in the city. The park is spread out in three pieces by the road, the center piece is the core, and there are a lot of people running and exercising in the morning. The brick paved road in the middle is exactly one kilometer in a circle, surrounded by a beautiful water feature in the middle, with various shapes of fountains, while there are several small gardens in the side, there are Chinese garden, Australian garden, Japanese garden and so on. The Chinese Garden is the largest and the most beautiful, the entrance is inscribed with Mr. Sun Yat-sen's "The world is for the common good", I also ran in and took a look around. In addition to runners, there are also tai chi practitioners, swordsmen, and those who dance similar to the Chinese square dance, but their square dance is more energetic, and there are also leaders, but the participation of young people is mainly.
After that, I basically ran to Rizal Park every day and did a few laps in it. Only once, because of the customary weekend stretch, and because I wanted to see the view of the Rawls Promenade, said to be the prettiest in Manila, I ran out of Rizal Park towards the Rawls Promenade below.
It was a Sunday, and strangely enough, there was no traffic on Rawls Boulevard. On the opposite side there was what looked like a parade of floats, and on my side there were a lot of people running, but not as many as in a domestic marathon, and there were no road closures, and no cheerleaders or volunteers or anything along the roadside, and what's more, there were no numbered bibs hanging from the chests of these runners.
I've been trying to get to Manila to participate in a local running competition, preferably a half-marathon. When I turned the bay and ran to a waterfront plaza, I saw that there was really a timing arch for a running race, and judging by the time displayed on it, it should be a half marathon. I took a picture and continued to run, and then ran a few kilometers back to pass the arch, the race is not yet over, finally saw some runners have hanging number bibs on their chests, but most of them did not hang, I do not know whether most of the people came to dabble in the run, or they did not necessarily have to hang the number bibs in the first place. When I asked the owner's wife later, she said that the marathon is held every Sunday in the area, and that Rawls Avenue is closed to traffic. But partly because of the weather and partly to minimize traffic, the races start very early. No wonder I started at 5 a.m. and by the time I got to Rawls Avenue after running in Rochelle Park for a while, many half-marathon runners had already finished. And the local marathon is far from as formal as the domestic, but a bit like the domestic running group to run, may be the supply are responsible for their own. Next time I have the opportunity to go to Manila, I strive to participate in one of their marathons to play.
? Four
Going to Manila, a very important task is to examine the local real estate industry. And domestic real estate is the pillar of the economy compared to Manila, although in recent years real estate is also very hot, but far less than in the country as much as everyone cares about the topic, or even say, he and most Filipinos have no relationship. According to a rough observation, the population of more than 20 million Manila, a year of new real estate transactions may be less than a million square meters, less than a million people in the country's prefecture-level cities.
On the one hand, it is because Manila's average GDP is only about $5,000, and there is a huge disparity between the rich and the poor, with the average person earning only three to five thousand RMB a month, while the price of a new house in Manila is more than fifteen thousand RMB, which is certainly not affordable for the average income class. Moreover, Filipinos are not as keen on buying a house as the Chinese, who are the only people in the world who are keen on buying a house. They are much happier renting and spending their money on food and fun. The Filipinos' favorite saying is that the most important thing in life is to be happy, so they will spend most of their income on consumption and have very little savings, not to mention taking on decades of mortgage payments to be a slave to their home.
The underdevelopment of real estate in Manila is also due to the fact that the Philippines is a privately owned land system, so developers can only buy land from private hands if they want to acquire it for development, and it's difficult to develop large-scale projects due to the fragmentation of land. So the real estate projects in the Marathon City area are usually very small in size, if the area reaches 20,000 to 30,000 square meters, it is a large project. And Marathon is no plot ratio and building density restrictions, so most of the houses are dense, many households are not good ventilation and lighting, of course, it is not possible to have a domestic pass gardening and landscaping public **** support, so the overall quality of living is relatively low. Like the boss to rent a house, the bottom six floors are shopping malls, the top is residential, shopping malls have a layer of elevated gardens, can be in that walk, which in the local has been a very good condition.
Of course, there are very few big developers and big projects. Ayala, for example, the number one developer in the Philippines, a Spanish consortium. Manila's CBD Makati City (locally known as the city, in fact, equivalent to the size of a street office in Shenzhen or so), is the whole of the Ayala planning and construction, the level of construction is very high, can be said to be no less than the domestic CBD of any first-tier city, many internationally renowned enterprises are in that office, there are also a large number of international famous stores. Makati was developed from the seventies, and then Ayala developed BGC New Town not far from Makati, which is a more modern business office area than Makati. When you arrive here, you feel like you're in a different world from the old town. The architecture is stylish, beautiful, modern, luxurious and elegant, wide roads, traffic order, high-end shopping malls in a row, public **** space clean and comfortable, like a piece of paradise, beautiful.
BGC has been developed, Ayala in the run BGC five kilometers and began to develop a new city called ARCA SOUTH. This new city covers an area of nearly 1,000 acres, mainly residential, supporting a large commercial, but I am surprised not to see a supporting school, I do not know how to solve the problem of children's enrollment in the future of such a large community, is the government responsible for the construction next to it? In short, Manila's real estate development model is still very different compared to the domestic.
For example, for such a large project, the country will first build a beautiful display area at the entrance, a beautiful marketing center, an exquisite garden landscape, surrounded by towering advertising walls. And even for a Philippine No. 1 developer like Ayala, this is not the case at all. A small, slightly shabby sales office is inside the project, and you have to drive in from the construction road, not to mention the landscaped advertising wall at the entrance, there is not even a guide, we asked the security guards before we could enter. There are a few high-rise apartments in the first phase of the project, which have been sold for two years, and the price has risen from 15,000RMB to 18,000RMB now, which shows that the sales speed is still very slow. I think the same project, if it is Vanke, Evergrande such a large domestic real estate companies to develop, even if the demand for real estate in Manila is not as strong as in the country, the sales speed will be much faster.
It should be said that Ayala's level of architectural and interior design is still quite high, which can be seen from the appearance of BGC's buildings and the model houses we saw in their headquarters building, but their overall development concept, especially the marketing concept, may still have a big gap with the country. It is said that there are already well-known developers in China who are ready to develop large-scale real estate projects in Marathon, which may then have a huge impact on the real estate industry in Marathon.
Because the houses in Marathon are freehold, coupled with a relatively high rental return, the highest annual return of up to 10%, the low is also more than 5%, so in recent years a lot of domestic investors began to get involved in Manila real estate, and Ayala such a big developer is naturally their first choice. When we looked at the Ayala headquarters, there were only two groups of people inside, and the other group was Mandarin-speaking Chinese.
In addition to the high-rise apartments in the city, we also looked at some villa projects. These projects are mainly located in two areas, one in Pasay City near the airport and the other in Alabang, which is south from BGC.
The Philippine legal system is almost an exact copy of the US. Their land is privately owned and there are two types of land for real estate development, one for villas and one for condominiums. The first one is a condominium, and the second one is an apartment, and the third one is a condominium. Therefore, both local Chinese businessmen and Chinese investors can only buy condominiums. The first thing that you need to do is to get your hands on a new car, and then you'll be able to get your hands on a new car, and then you'll be able to get your hands on a new car, and then you'll be able to get your hands on a new car.
Villas are generally larger in size in the suburbs. But because the villa land can only build villas, unlike in the country, usually do composite real estate, is an organic combination of villas, houses, high-rise, can be digested more quickly. Pure villa projects are naturally slow to digest. Coupled with the underdeveloped local economy, congested transportation, lower level of development, so we look at a few villa project development progress is quite slow, a number of years inside the households are still sparse.
Manila sells villas is the whole plot of land is planned into a block of land, the customer is to buy land, and then entrusted to the developer to build and renovate (you can also build and renovate their own, but entrusted to the developer to save a lot of trouble), the developer will have a few design options for the owners to choose. A villa ranges from 300 sq ft to 500 sq ft, with a plot of land selling for around RMB 2 million to 5 million, and a construction fee of around 1 million. This is not a high price for a capital city. However, Manila's villa areas have very few public facilities, and are basically just a single house, so the actual quality of living is not very high. From the point of view of the several projects we looked at, is a lonely gate there, completely unable to see the domestic high-end projects common those exquisite landscape display, luxury clubhouse. Only in the Ayala development of a villa project, because the first two phases have been occupied, the periphery has some commercial support, inside the guests are also more, with a strong sense of life.
? Five
Near the residence, there are some St. Thomas University, I look up information from the Internet, said the university is the world's largest Catholic university, which preserves a lot of old buildings, I naturally want to go to explore.
I looked up the path on the internet first, and then drove my goo over there, but still turned around for quite a while before I found this university. The reason is that this Catholic university, which is said to be the largest in the world, is so inconspicuous that it doesn't have the walls of a domestic university, nor does it have a large campus, so you can hardly notice it even if you pass by it. I wandered around at the map for a while, and finally made my way to the ancient building I had seen online. There are many beautiful sculptures on this Romanesque building, and the ancient stone walls show the thickness of history, I would like to go in and have a look, but unfortunately, the security guards do not allow to enter, I just had to ask someone to take a few pictures for me and then left in frustration.
There is a standard soccer field on campus, but no track, and it was the only one I saw in Manila. Most schools in Marathon don't have playgrounds by inches. I saw the most in Manila, is a simple basketball court, these basketball courts are in a small piece of open space on the side of the road, choose a high place to hang a basketball hoop (height is not necessarily standard, there is no rim, there is a frame on it), some on the middle of the road to set up two racks, more exaggerated, in the go to the tent island on the edge of a hamlet, I saw a tree branch hanging a basketball frame, a few children in the land under the tree Play basketball.
When I was looking for the University of Santo Tomas, I passed through a slum area, and a group of kids were playing on a basketball court by the side of the road, and one of the kids immediately stopped and posed for me to take a picture of him, with an expression of triumph and joy. The Filipinos love basketball, and at one point, they were leading the way in Asia. I wondered if one day in the future, this young man would represent the Philippines in an Asian game and catch my eye again. Who can say.
On my last day, I went to the Chinese mountain, a place where the souls of the Chinese living in Manila return to their homeland. They come from thousands of miles away from their homeland to make a living here, and perhaps all their lives they have been thinking of returning to their roots, but in the end, they can only go to heaven to look for the old dream of their hometown.
It was Halloween, and the sky was drizzling, and the mountain was crowded with people, some of them tourists like me, and more of them the descendants of those who died. The price of a cemetery in Yishan is expensive, even higher than the price of a house, and after the expiration date, you still have to pay the land fee every year. A graveyard is less than ten square meters and more than a hundred square meters, which highlights the economic strength of the deceased's family. In some cases, when the family's business declines and they can no longer afford to pay for their ancestors' graves, the cemetery will destroy the graves and re-sell them to other people. The newest addition to the list is the newest addition to the list, the newest addition to the list, the newest addition to the list, the newest addition to the list.
The descendants of a dead person, many dozens of mouths, may rarely get together on weekdays, and on this day, they gather from all directions, even from overseas, to commemorate their ancestors and to talk about their relatives. There are even rooms and beds in the side of the big crypts, so you can live in them. Of course, most of them just come to pay their respects, and perhaps by the afternoon, the cemetery will be silent again. And a Filipino Chinese anti-Japanese monument, although the monument is engraved with the names of hundreds of people, but because the dead are not after the memorial hall is cold and quiet, saddening.
Buried tens of thousands of Chinese cemetery, also seems to be a universal architecture museum. There are traditional Chinese architecture, Lingnan architecture, Romanesque architecture, Greek architecture, more luxurious Byzantine church-style buildings, and mixed architecture, a wide range of various types. The experience of these people must be full of legend and rich waves of life, death also left the world a magnificent architectural complex, so that people from a pile of solidified monuments in the stone wall to peep into a period of history of the complex.