The site manual of the first Beijing International Automobile and Craft Equipment Exhibition more than 30 years ago
At an exchange seminar held at the Beijing Auto Museum, Jiang Haicheng presented a commemorative stamp envelope in his speech
Donation Certificate awarded to Jiang Haicheng by the Beijing Auto Museum There is a "treasure place" in the home of Jiang Haicheng, the first generation of auto media people in China, a small "car museum". In less than 20 square meters of space, more than 200 original car models are displayed in large and small sizes: Mercedes-Benz, Volkswagen, Subaru, Beverly Wilshire, Porsche, Ford, Lincoln, Beijing Hyundai... His collection includes almost all the car brands in the world since the rise of the modern automobile industry, many car fans and friends have come to visit, Jiang Haicheng is proud of his collection, and it is absolutely "unique" in the Beijing automotive circle.
In mid-January, a reporter from the Beijing Youth Daily met Jiang Haicheng at his home in Changping. The old man is eighty years old this year, but he is in good spirits, and when he tells the story of his car, he still speaks clearly and loudly. In the conversation, it is obvious that the first generation of Chinese auto media reporters love and pursuit of automotive culture and rigorous attitude towards automotive history. Under his leadership and explanation, this small "automobile museum" hidden in his home became vivid and rich.
Over the years, Jiang Haicheng has been committed to the promotion of automobile culture and the study of automobile history. At the end of 2021, he still has a wish in his eighties that has not been fulfilled - with the help and efforts of all walks of life, he can hold a commemorative exhibition of the centenary of "automobile introduction to China" in 2022.
The reason why the feelings for automobiles are so deep, in Jiang Haicheng's own words, "Our generation has witnessed the changes of Chinese automobiles from scratch, and has also experienced many important moments in China's automobile industry from small to large." ”
Private "Car Museum" of less than 20 square meters
The "Automobile Museum" is located in the study of Jiang Haicheng's home. Walking into this slightly austere space, the eye will first be drawn to the glass bookcase that occupies a wall on the left side of the room – there are more than 200 car models, large and small. Take a closer look, Mercedes-Benz, Volkswagen, Subaru, Beverly wagon, Porsche, Ford, Lincoln, Beijing Hyundai and other models are on display, almost all the world's car brands since the rise of the modern automobile industry, including many Beetle, lengthen Lincoln and other brands of classic models of the past, these original official models are difficult to see on the market today, but here they are well preserved as new.
The origin of each car model, Jiang Haicheng can elaborate on it. Some are souvenirs collected by Jiang Haicheng when he participated in the new car off-line ceremony of various brands when he was a car reporter, and some were gifts from friends in the industry, such as the car model of Beijing Hyundai Sonata from the first generation to the tenth generation, every time a new model came off the line, it would be sent to Jiang Haicheng's home by the staff of Beijing Hyundai Public Relations Department.
Jiang Haicheng also retains the press cards and work cards of many brands he has participated in at the off-line ceremony of various brands, such as the first Buick sedan of Shanghai GM and the first of the Zhonghua sedan, and Jiang Haicheng is present.
In addition, there are many photos in the room, documenting Jiang Haicheng's decades of association with the automobile industry. In some group photos, it is not difficult to find the figures of Miao Wei, former minister of industry and information technology, Zhang Xingye, Zhang Xiaoyu, legends of China's automobile industry, Bill Ford, Xu Heyi, the fourth generation of Ford Motor, who are not only witnesses of the times, but also participants of the times.
On the window sill to the right of the bookcase, there are several handmade models, which are the "simple" car history that Jiang Haicheng himself has summarized and made: Xi Zhong, the originator of the Xia Dynasty 4,000 years ago and the inventor of the two-wheel-drive carriage; the original bicycle invented by the Frenchman Count Shiflak in 1790 (entered China in november 1868); the car invented by the German Carl Fritlich Benz in 1886 (introduced to China in 1902); and finally the modern fuel car.
On the double bed on the right side of the room, almost half of the space is occupied by countless newspaper materials. This is the automotive media publication that Jiang Haicheng has collected for decades, and he has neatly arranged them here, and the thickness is more than half a meter high. Most of these publications are closely related to the automotive industry, including Beijing Youth Daily, Beijing News, Beijing Evening News, Reference News, China Automotive News, Beijing Times... As long as there is a car version or a special publication of the media, it has been carefully preserved by Jiang Haicheng. The earliest newspapers date back more than twenty years, and even have copies of newspapers from the late Qing Dynasty. Some were sent to him by his peers, old friends or juniors, and some were bought by himself at the newsstand, a habit he still preserves to this day.
With the passage of time, the newspapers stacked on the bottom have appeared a little yellow, but for Jiang Haicheng, these are precious historical materials, and if you want to know what major events happened in the automotive field in which year, you can clearly restore the scene at that time by flipping through the newspapers corresponding to the past.
On the other wall at the end of the bed, there is a bookshelf that reaches the top of the sky, full of various car magazines and on-site manuals for car fairs. The earliest magazines can even be traced back to the first International Automotive and Process Equipment Exhibition held in Beijing more than three decades ago in 1990.
Such an important city as Beijing cannot do without its own car brand
Jiang Haicheng was not engaged in the automotive industry at the earliest, and began to work at the Beijing Planetarium for more than thirty years. In those years, his biggest hobby was to use his spare time to study cars, and Jiang Haicheng remembers that the first auto show he watched was the Beijing Exhibition Hall opposite the Beijing Planetarium.
In those years, the information was not developed, and there were few cars, and going to the exhibition hall to see cars became his greatest interest. In the early 1990s, more and more cars began to appear in Beijing, and Jiang Haicheng's love for cars became more and more intense, so he made a decision at the age of nearly fifty - leaving the Beijing Planetarium, where he had worked for most of his life, to become an automotive media reporter.
Jiang Haicheng's first article on automobiles was published in the World Information newspaper in 1992, and in the front page of the headline, he wrote an article about the development trend of China's car market, which won a lot of social attention. "At that time, cars were not as common as they are now, running all over the streets, but they already heralded the development trend of cars and were about to enter the families of ordinary people in China." It is precisely because of this forward-looking vision that Jiang Haicheng began to write articles related to the automotive field one after another.
Since entering the automotive media industry in the early 1990s, Jiang Haicheng's pen has involved various fields such as automobile knowledge, automobile life, and automobile industry, and has written for "Automobile World", "China Automobile Pictorial", "Times Automobile" and so on. It is worth mentioning that later, after he served in the "Shopping Herald", he hit it off when chatting with the editor-in-chief, and opened an auto version in the "Shopping Herald", which can be regarded as the earliest batch of media people in the domestic media to open a special edition of the car.
Telling his feelings about the car, Jiang Haicheng took out a special photo. It was taken on December 22, 2002, when he attended the ceremony of the first Beijing Hyundai car off the production line, and in the photo, he took a photo with Beijing Hyundai's first car, and signed his name on the car, which he treasured and placed prominently on the bookshelf.
"The off-the-line of the first Beijing Hyundai sedan ended Beijing's history of not producing cars. The reason why I have a special love for this photo is because it marks the 'from scratch' of the Beijing automotive industry. Jiang Haicheng told the Beiqing Daily reporter that he once stood on the overpass of Xizhimen in Beijing, counting how many cars passed in ten minutes, and most of the cars counted at that time were XiaLi made in Tianjin, at that time he sighed in his heart, "Beijing is such a big city, even buy a car to go to Tianjin."
Therefore, from receiving news, to Beijing Hyundai setting up a preparatory office in a building opposite the Xiannongtan, to later building an assembly line factory in Shunyi, Jiang Haicheng has been paying attention to and participating in the report. Now that Beijing's automobile industry is booming, Jiang Haicheng is also very pleased. "I also went when Beijing Hyundai was founded ten years ago, and I still want to go to the 20th anniversary of the establishment of Beijing Hyundai in 2022!" Jiang Haicheng expressed his expectations in this way.
Because of the accumulation of many years of experience in the automotive media industry, since 2000, Jiang Haicheng has shifted his attention to the study of automobile history and begun the road of automotive research that belongs to one person.
Years of research on "Cixi Royal Car" and "The First Car Introduced to China"
There is a car parked in the Summer Palace, which is said to be a gift from Yuan Shikai to Cixi's sixtieth birthday. There are many legends about this car, such as this is the first car imported from China, which Yuan Shikai dedicated to Empress Dowager Cixi as a birthday tribute, and the car is the second generation of Mercedes-Benz cars..." According to my research, all this is not true. Jiang Haicheng said.
In 2001, when Jiang Haicheng went to visit the Summer Palace, he found that the Mercedes-Benz logo was not seen on this "classic car", but a logo with "DURYEA" (Tulia) printed on an iron foot pedal, which was obviously not the relevant word of the Mercedes-Benz car. So, when was this car produced? When was it introduced to China? Around this car, Jiang Haicheng raised many questions. To this end, he found the source of the saying "the vehicle is a Mercedes-Benz second-generation car": Wang Huapeng, editor of the Encyclopedia of China: The History of Chinese Automobiles.
Wang Huapeng, a former director of the Automotive Research Office at the Academy of Sciences of the Ministry of Communications, told Mr. Jiang that he had made it speculatively after inspecting the car in 1979. Later, Wang Huapeng went to Germany to visit the Mercedes-Benz Museum in Stuttgart and found no cars of similar styles and models to cixi royal cars. At this time, Jiang Haicheng basically came to a conclusion that Empress Dowager Cixi's classic car was not a Mercedes-Benz car, but a Tulia car. Therefore, he wrote these doubts and after examination and found an article, which was published in China Automobile News, entitled "The "Mystery" Left by Cixi's Royal Car".
Within a few years, the saying that Empress Dowager Cixi's royal car was a Mercedes-Benz brand became popular again, and Jiang Haicheng once again began his path of examination. In 2005, Jiang Haicheng learned that the Ford Museum in the United States had materials for Tulia Motors, so he contacted the chief representative of Ford Motor in China, hoping to find relevant information about Cixi's royal car. Soon after, he received a reply: in 1896, the Tulia Company assembled 13 cars of the same style as the royal cars of Empress Dowager Cixi, and the cars used by Empress Dowager Cixi were the only survivors of those 13 cars.
Based on these data, Jiang Haicheng felt that Cixi Royal Automobile had a conclusion for the Tulia brand. With the determination of the brand, the time when Cixi Royal Automobile came to the Summer Palace also came to a conclusion. In 1897, facing the threat of restoration forces, Empress Dowager Cixi had no intention of holding a birthday celebration. Moreover, with the trade environment at that time, the cars produced in the United States in 1896 would not have spread to China so quickly. According to historical records, in 1902, after the Gengzi Incident, Empress Dowager Cixi rebuilt the Summer Palace and held a 68-year-old birthday ceremony in the Summer Palace. At this time, Yuan Shikai had the opportunity to present the car.
Jiang Haicheng further discovered that the first car to enter the land of China was not this car, but an American-made Osmobile car that was registered in Shanghai a few months before the car, owned by Hungarian businessman Li Enshi. "This carriage license plate was obtained after arriving from Hong Kong to Shanghai, it is the first car imported from China since the beginning of history, the registration date is January 30, 1902, it was issued by the Ministry of Works at that time, and it is necessary to pay a certain fee every month to get on the road, which is the earliest road maintenance fee." This is the conclusion reached by Jiang Haicheng's efforts to consult a large number of historical documents.
This process is very cumbersome and complicated, he went to the National Library several times to read the materials, referred to the Qing Dynasty newspapers, Chinese traffic history, Chinese customs history, Qing Dynasty road traffic, Shanghai road transport history and other historical materials, and then collected evidence from a number of industry experts, and finally determined this conclusion. His relevant research articles have also been published in Beijing Evening News, Friends of Automobiles, and Automobile Vertical and Horizontal.
Jiang Haicheng also mentioned a small episode: he wrote to Mr. Shan Jixiang, former director of the Palace Museum, and Mr. Li Guorong, deputy director of the China First Historical Archive, hoping that they would help find old photos of Empress Dowager Cixi taking photos with cars. The two gentlemen did their best and could not find the relevant pictures, so they specially wrote back to Jiang Haicheng to express their apologies, and their help and support also made Jiang Haicheng feel extremely warm.
In May 2017, Jiang Haicheng donated China's first automobile commemorative envelope and commemorative medal representing his research results to the Beijing Auto Museum for museum display. To this end, the Beijing Automobile Museum also issued a donation certificate to Jiang Haicheng as a token of gratitude.
The original traces back to the source, only to form a complete historical chain
Jiang Haicheng said that he still has two unfulfilled wishes, the first is to build an automobile culture park in Changping District, restore the first Osmobil car that enters China, and display it; the second wish is to hold a "car into China" traceability commemorative exhibition in 2022. Jiang Haicheng feels that this is of great significance to him personally and even to the source culture of Chinese automobiles.
In January 2018, a number of experts and scholars from the Summer Palace Administration, universities and the automotive industry gathered at the Beijing Automobile Museum to jointly hold an exchange seminar on "Tracing the Origins - A Century of Automobiles Entering China". As a researcher of "The Origin of China's Automobile History", Jiang Haicheng shared the research results of many years with the experts present at this seminar and gave a speech entitled "Is the Empress Dowager Cixi's Royal Car the First Car Introduced to China". At the end of the symposium, the relevant leaders of the Beijing Automobile Museum also expressed their admiration and respect for The spirit of Jiang Haicheng's decades-long exploration.
Four years have passed, Jiang Haicheng is still insisting, a seemingly simple topic, but condensed his years of efforts. For these years, there have been some almost stubborn running, Jiang Haicheng frankly said that people who say cool words are not nothing, but he has endured, "sour, sweet and bitter and spicy only I know", Jiang Haicheng said.
The reason why he is so determined to "trace the original source" is that Jiang Haicheng wants to express an attitude. He believes that China should have a more mature automobile development history and automobile culture research institutions to form a complete historical chain. In addition, although the car is an "imported product" for Chinese, Chinese is not far behind in the research and development of the automobile industry. In 1958, with the emergence of the first Dongfeng brand car, the mainland officially owned its own self-manufactured car, and the Dongfeng brand car also opened up a new path for China's car industry. In recent decades, China's auto industry has completed many transformations and upgrades, with tremendous development and changes.
There is a scroll hanging on the wall of Jiang Haicheng's home, "Old Ji Futuo is determined to be in a thousand miles, and the martyr is full of courage in his twilight years." Although he is old, Jiang Haicheng has not given up the study of new things, he mentioned that in the car model museum he set up at home, the part of the history of human automobile development should be supplemented with new energy vehicle models, even driverless car models, so as to be complete.
Everyone who comes to visit the museum, Jiang Haicheng will take them to explain from the door, the most impressive thing is that he pasted a pair of self-written couplets on both sides of the door - "Room Ya why should be big, the fragrance of flowers is not much", this may be Jiang Haicheng's requirements for himself and the belief he has always insisted on.
Article/Reporter Lei Ruotong
Courtesy photo/Jiang Haicheng