Do you still remember the big white goose Dingqiao? More than 160 photos in Lao Shen's self-made photo album bear witness to the earth-shaking changes in Dingqiao over the past forty years.

2018-08-26 09:20

On the wedding day, Lao Shen took photos of the children in front of his hay shed.

Convert thatched shed into bungalow

Convert bungalow to building

Those who got rich first in the village built villas.

The "Big White Goose" cruise ship built by Lao Shen

Dingqiao taken in July 2002 (before urbanization was promoted)

In March this year, TusXiexin Technology City (rendering) settled in Dinglan Smart Town.

The photo album "Forty Years of Changes in Hometown" is finally ready. 20 pages, more than 160 photos. What’s inside is the story of Jiangganding Bridge.

The photo album was made by 79-year-old Shen Bingtao. A total of 130 books were made and it took him nearly three months. On the morning of August 14, he selected a few books and gave them to some old friends.

Lao Shen said, "These photos bear witness to the earth-shaking changes in Dingqiao, my hometown, in the past forty years."

Dingqiao is now Dinglan Street. Connected to the Shanghai-Hangzhou High-speed Railway and Jianqiao Airport to the south, and Gaoting Mountain to the north, it is a well-known hometown of filial piety.

The camera I rented for 1.5 yuan when I got married

Successfully helped the bride “solve the problem”

Lao Shen worked as a teacher in his early years, teaching physics and mathematics. Later, he went to the commune cultural station to do publicity work, and he felt like a fish in water.

"Taking photos and editing text are my favorite things." I have been doing this for more than 20 years.

To what extent? When I got married, I didn’t forget to borrow a camera to take pictures.

This photo was taken at around 2 pm on December 28, 1961. "Old Shen" or "Little Shen".

At 6 o'clock in the morning that day, Xiao Shen got on his bicycle and set off to pick up the bride. The destination was Xiantou Village, Beixiaolin Commune, Linping Mountain. He had borrowed the bicycle from his cousin's house in Jianqiao one day earlier.

A car, a person, and nothing brought the bride back. The person who sent the bride off was her younger brother, who was still in his senior year of high school at the time.

Three people pushed their bicycles all the way to Linping Xiyang Bridge, preparing to catch a boat from Xucun to Genshanmen, which would save them a few miles. It's a pity it's too late. By the time they arrived, the ship had already sailed far away. The three of them had no choice but to walk along the Shanghai-Hangzhou Railway from Linping to Dingqiao.

By the time the three of them arrived home, it was already afternoon and the wedding banquet was almost over. The two newcomers didn't care. They washed their faces, ate a bowl of sugared longan, and took the table calmly.

The little ones couldn't wait for a long time and swarmed around to enjoy the candy.

"This is really embarrassing." Lao Shen said that in those days, you had to rely on money to buy candy. You couldn't buy it just by having money. The few kilograms of "shirtless hard candy" that you finally bought were wrapped in red paper by yourself. of. "So there really aren't many wedding candies to hand out."

Seeing the bride in trouble, Lao Shen came up with an idea and took out his camera to "rescue" the situation, hence this photo.

"At that time, taking pictures was also a very rare thing." Old Shen successfully attracted the attention of the little ones.

The camera is a Haiou brand film machine. The rent is 1.5 yuan per day, and Lao Shen rented it for one day. The seven children in the photo were all wearing the best clothes in the family. Seeing themselves "living" in this small frame, this unprecedented joy was as good as getting a few wedding candies.

From thatched hut to bungalow to building

"Better days are yet to come."

In the old photos, the straw shed behind the seven children is Lao Shen's wedding room. The one with the darker roof on the right is his uncle's house. Because Lao Shen got married, the family covered it with new straw, so it looked newer.

Three brothers lived in the three thatched huts next to each other, totaling 11 people. "It was considered a wealthy family at that time."

The "wall" of the thatched shed is made of bamboo strips and grass pieces. The ceiling is also paved with hemp straw. When they got married, Lao Shen was in a thatched hut, surrounded by paper, "very beautiful."

In the spring of 1966, two cousins from my uncle's family moved away, and Lao Shen rebuilt three "thatched houses" on the original site. It's good-looking. "At that time, few families living in thatched houses had glass windows." Lao Shen was also the first to jump on the trend.

The days get better and better. In the summer of 1975, Lao Shen changed the thatched cottage into three "flat tile houses" with white walls and black tiles.

In the autumn of 1988, Lao Shen converted three bungalows into three "buildings." In the summer of 1996, Lao Shen renovated the two-and-a-half-story building.

Steel tube walls were built on three sides, and large aluminum alloy wall doors were installed. The main door platform was also covered with colored steel tiles, which was very "foreign style".

From straw huts to bungalows, and then to buildings, these three upgrades are called the "triple jump" of Dingqiao houses. In the late 1990s, those who got rich first in the village even built villas.

The original location of the old house, on the east bank of Qinfeng Port east of Dinglan Kindergarten, is now a beautiful landscape trail. Old Shen often said: "Better days are yet to come."

It took more than 20 days to make the "Big White Goose Cruise"

Won the Silver Award at the First West Lake International Boat Festival

In the summer of 1992, Hangzhou ushered in a large-scale event integrating economy, trade, culture, and sports—the first West Lake International Boat Festival.

On this festival, Lao Shen brought a "big white goose boat" from Dingqiao, which was 4.2 meters high. Winning the silver medal is a great honor.

After winning the prize, someone wanted to buy it at a high price, but Lao Shen refused to do anything. "Because the people in Dingqiao haven't seen this big white goose yet. Once it's done, it's put directly on a big truck and taken to the West Lake for competition."

"Big White Goose" was born in the foreign trade warehouse behind Lao Shen's house. Lao Shen also carefully drew the drawings at that time.

"Despite its height, it didn't fall down despite strong winds during the competition. Others shorter than it almost fell over."

The body of the "big white goose" was made of bamboo and wood, and the head was made of bamboo strips. There is a "flagpole" in its neck. When swimming, it can move forward and backward, and its mouth can open and close. The wings made of moso bamboo slices flutter and flutter. When he swam across the rostrum, he suddenly became the focus of the audience.

This big guy can swim. In addition to Lao Shen's ingenious design, it also relies on the operation of the two nephews hidden in the "goose belly". "It's not for viewing. It's not a problem for 3-5 people to sit on it," said Lao Shen.

It took more than 20 days to make this "big white goose" and cost about 1,000 yuan. This amount of money was not a small amount at that time.

It used to be Hangzhou’s “vegetable basket”

Now it is a "very smart industrial park"

Most Hangzhou people’s impression of Ding Lan is inseparable from the “vegetable basket”.

In the past, Ding Lan's main business was grain, hemp, tea, and fruits. A photo taken by Lao Shen in April 1995 of the "vegetable field of the fifth team of Tongxie", "a continuous vegetable field without a house in the middle. Such a large scene does not exist in other places in Jianggan."

Riding on the spring breeze of reform and opening up, Dingqiao Private Economic Park was built here in November 1999, and subsequently many private enterprises from inside and outside the province gathered. By 2005, hundreds of private companies that had grown here had gradually gone abroad and entered the world, becoming the backbone of Dingqiao’s economic town, including Shengli Electrical Appliances, Asijia Down, Jiadewei Piano, Xilin chain, etc.

Many people also think that Dinglan is a "large residential area in Dingqiao" and say that it is the "junction between urban and suburban areas." In fact, they don't know that urbanization has started here very early, and it is also an important area for the development of smart industries in Jianggan.

In 2015, the provincial characteristic town-Dinglan Smart Town was born here. The former "vegetable basket" of Hangzhou has become a "very smart industrial park" after repeated transformation and upgrading. At the end of July, at the fourth plenary session of the 10th Jianggan District Committee, Teng Yong, secretary of the Jianggan District Committee, said, “We will make Dinglan Smart Town bigger and stronger this year.”

This year, Dinglan Smart Town, which turned three years old, has introduced heavyweight industrial development platforms and more than 700 enterprises, such as TusXiexin Technology City, Xizi Smart Industrial Park, Hangzhou Iron and Steel Health Industrial Park, and Hangzhou Young Eagle Innovation Incubator Park. . In the future, more practical and “smart” high technologies will be born here.

The changes of Dingqiao under the lens of Lao Shen are a microcosm of Dinglan's urbanization process. What used to be the corner corner has become the new center of the core area in the north of the city.

Photos for this edition (except renderings) are provided by Shen Bingtao