I spent some time with my classmates some time ago. After graduating from college, she went to work in Beijing and has been drifting north for several years. She lives in Gulou Street on the Second Ring Road in Beijing, about 20 minutes' walk from Tiananmen Square. At first, I didn't understand why she lived in the city center. It was inconvenient to go anywhere, and shouldn't the rent in the city center be more expensive? Later, after living for a while, I realized that the old community in the city center was not as expensive as I thought, and it was not much more expensive than the price of the Fourth and Fifth Ring Roads. Unlike my city, the rent outside the Third Ring Road in Beijing is far from the city center, and there is an Olympic Park on the Fifth Ring Road in Beijing, which is quite prosperous.
She works in Zhongguancun, and it takes more than an hour to get to and from work every day, and it takes more than two minutes to walk by bus. She said that this will be very soon, and the subway will not be blocked, because she is going in the opposite direction to most people, and because most people are similar to me, they will choose to live in the fourth and fifth ring roads or places closer to the suburbs, so most of them come to work in the city, and she works from the city center, so commuting should be considered.
My other classmate lives far away, and it takes almost two hours to drive to and from work every day. There are traffic jams everywhere in Beijing, so driving is not as fast as taking the subway, but she lives far away and it is inconvenient to take the subway bus, so she can only drive. This is the hardship of drifting north, spending too much time on the road.