Profile #5: Zhao Min

Unfortunately for her, my most distinct memory of Zhao Min (赵敏) is the trip to the hospital I took after a weekend at her house when she graciously hosted my fraternity brother Clay and I. Now, there’s no conclusive evidence that the otherwise delicious food at Zhao Min’s gave me industrial strength food poisoning. But as delicious as the endless crayfish meal was, it may have been the culprit. It’s unfortunate because getting someone sick is about the last thing Zhao Min would try to do to someone. I met Zhao Min through Xingxing during the middle of my first year in Changzhou. Zhao Min, Xingxing and Qin Chen were a unit with whom Dave and I spent a lot of time during the first year. This past year she was generally present at dinners, parties, and most social activities that the foreign teacher crew engaged in.

Zhao Min is from a fairly well to do family in a very poor part of the country. Her dad is a retired teacher and with her mother manages a small hardware store in Da Feng, the town where they live. It’s a nice, quiet, if country tough town north of the Yangzi, and close to the Pacific Coast in Jiangsu Province. For me, Zhao Min represents very well her generation, and a generation that will be the business owners, teachers, government leaders, and possibly voters (oh the horror) in the China that will undoubtedly be of major import over the next few decades. She came from a family that had lived in the same general area for a long, long, long time. China’s massive development over the last 40 years allowed her to attend college in another city. It allowed her to learn a foreign language (something held for only a few (very few) elites in China until these past 40 years. Learning this foreign language allowed her to get a job working in exports, another thing which was essentially unheard of in China until 40 years ago (some of the 19^th century experiments with foreigners did not work out too well). This job gives her enough money to buy all sorts of products, especially name brand clothes from Europe and the US and make up from Japan. All these things are so utterly new and different from a China that for thousands of years avoided expansion and invasion.

Zhao Min works for a company that makes and prints shopping bags for Abercrombie and Fitch, Wal Mart’s specialty and holiday bags, and an assortment of lesser-known Western retailers. Her job, with her business English degree, is to translate contracts, orders and printing instructions for these bags. Not exactly growing rice and peanuts like the generations of people in her family did before her. Another way in which she personifies China’s generation Y is that Zhao Min works a lot. A lot. Even during her final semester, as she was interning at the same company, she would put in 50-60 hours a week. She’s paid by monthly salary. Such is the competition among China’s current college graduates. China’s commendable push for education has created a surplus of college-educated workers as the economy has not developed quickly enough to need these skilled workers. Contrarily, there is a dearth of unskilled laborers. So, Chinese workers like Zhao Min will put in long hours without any overtime pay, just to keep a job. I think the pressure making Zhao Min work 70 hours a week for pay that isn’t going to make anyone rich anytime soon comes from two sources. With its lack of religion or open discussions about society, values, and all that jazz; young Chinese people seek acceptance in consumption. China’s never been rich before, at least not across such a wide part of society, so it’s buy, buy, buy. Zhao Min, as humble as her roots, is certainly a part of this group. So, you have to work if you want that new jacket or purse. Additionally, the other pressure comes from China’s older than dirt filial piety. Zhao Min thinks that she owes all her success to her parents (and not at all to the fact that Americans won’t think twice to open a new Abercrombie and Fitch credit card). So, Zhao Min will throw her all at the best job she can get to prove her love to her parents. Zhao Min is very traditional, so despite the many pleads I made her to take just sentence off a page of a chapter of my book and try to enjoy her youth when she is more or less unencumbered, she is still grinding away at a job she does not necessarily like. To be clear, there are plenty of job opportunities in China, even with all the competition, and Zhao Min would be overqualified for jobs in the area she’s from. (The Yangzi River Delta, where Changzhou is, is maybe the most competitive region in China).

But don’t just think of Zhao Min as a workaholic, because she also is, like so many Chinese people I met, gracious and hospitable like no one else. Always willing to do a favor and suffer through some poorly planned shopping adventure in Changzhou. And, like the food poisoning, I won’t soon forget how her parents gave up their bed (despite our protests) so Clay and I could sleep in the room with air-conditioning when we visited.