Bo Chi <chi@vlsi.waterloo.edu> (02/03/91)
* * * C H I N A N E W S D I G E S T * * *
(CND Canada Service, Weekend Leisure Readings)
Feb. 3, 1991
Table of Contents
# of Lines
1. Leaving Behind the Iron Rice Bowl ........................... 147
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1. Leaving Behind the Iron Rice Bowl
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The Globe and Mail, Saturday, February 2, 1990
Entered by Haosheng Zhou at UBC.
From: Haosheng Zhou <hszhou@ee.ubc.ca>
By Jan Wang
China Bureau
Beijing
YANG Oulin's dream has come true. In one year, he made more money
than most Chinese will see in a lifetime. This week, Mr. Yang,
23, boarded a plane for Berkeley, Calif.
Zhou Yue's dream is just starting. At the moment, though, it
seems a bit nightmarish as she freezes in an unheated hovel and
works 70-hour weeks.
Both have done what most Chinese would never dare -- quit the
cradle-to-grave security of their state job. About 80 per cent of
Chinese, mostly peasants, work for themselves. Until recently,
their biggest ambition was an iron rice bowl, a state job with
health care, subsidized housing with cafeterias and light,
undemanding work.
Such jobs were so coveted that a steelworker might take early
retirement so his offspring could inherit the slot. Indeed, the
penultimate punishment short of jail terms for some Tiananmen
Square dissidents has been dismissal from the job.
But in the past decade the iron rice bowl has grown rusty.
Salaries have not matched inflation. And with the opening to the
West, ambitions young people have new goals.
"That iron rice bowl isn't worth regreting," said Ms. Zhou, 24.
Still, the plunge into capitalism has been a shock. Mr. Yang
became an enterpreneur and rode a boombust cycle. Ms. Zhou became
a receptionist and is learning about the cold, cruel world out-
side the state cocoon.
Ms. Zhou went to work at a state publishing house three years
ago. She soon clashed with her supervisor. A college graduate,
she wanted to do more than type. He thought she was not subser-
vient enough.
In the political witch hunt after the 1989 massacre, Ms. Zhou
naively admitted going to Tiananmen square. After all, her com-
pany had even supplied the bus. Then she learned her colleagues
all denied going, "even the guy who drove the bus."
Unable to stand the blistering criticism sessions, Ms. Zhou quit
her job last fall. Through friends, she found a job at a joint-
venture company answering phones. She tripled her salary, but
found herself with new expenses.
For instance, she lost her state-as-signed dormitory bed. She
moved into a damp, windowless storeroom. It was free, but one day
it flooded. So she rented a small room without heat, running
water, a toilet or kitchen.
A public outhouse is half a block away. She gets a hot lunch at
work, but can't affort restaurant meals, so she eats peanuts or
bread for supper. In the evenings, she hibernates in bed. By
morning, the water in her toothbrush mug has iced over.
Last month her manager cut her salary because he considered it
too high. For the extra money -- and the heat -- Ms. Zhou took a
night secretarial job with a Japanese firm. But her manager, who
had introduced her to the Japanese, kept 80 per cent of her
salary for his company.
Ms. Zhou was outraged but kept her mouth shut. She stays on
because another manager has promised her a promotion.
"I have no regrets," she says. Like Mr. Yang, her ultimate dream
is to study abroad.
A decade ago, Mr. Yang, a sofspoken man with a mop of silky hair,
failed college entrance exams by two points. At 21, he got a job
at a state laboratory. His work, washing test tubes, took an hour
a day. In his spare time he read biographies of Henry Kissinger
and U.S. industrialist Armand Hammer.
Inspired, he hung some calligraphy on his bedroom wall. "The less
opportunity there is, the harder I struggle."
By 1985, he began planning his departure. First he studied
management at night school. Then he looked for the right oppor-
tunity.
Two years later, he found it: a vacant restaurant at a busy
intersection. The rent was exorbitant. But Mr. Yang, a slick
dresser who weres Italian tasseled loafers and double-breasted
trnch coats, persuaded the landlord, a school, to defer the rent
until the end of the year.
He gambled that electrical goods were hot. Using a network of
friends and contacts, he obtained merchandise on consignment. he
could sell first, pay later.
"Others couldn't sell the staff. It was the same whether it sat
in my store or in their warehouse," Mr. Yang recalls over lunch
in a posh French restaurant. "We'd sell anything -- air condi-
tioners, copiers, televisions, refrigirators."
When he quit his state job in 1987, his parents, both state
employees, were horrified. "We fought for three months," says Mr.
Yang, spitting a watermelon seed into the plush carpet.
But his timing was perfect. Rumours has sparked an epidemic of
panic buying. The first year, Mr. Yang made a profit of 90,000
yuan ($19,000). He hired seven staff, leased a chauffeured car
and installed a private telephone. He opened a U.S. dollar
account at the Bank of China. And he began smoking Marlboros, the
quintessential sign of the Beijing nouveau riche in Beijing.
The next year, consumers went crazy over video-cassette record-
ers. "We raised our prices every three or four days," he says.
Net profit soared to 700,000 yuan in 1988. To match that, Mr.
Yang would have had to work at his state job for 424 years.
"I couldn't believe it was so easy," he exults. It wasn't. The
next year was 1989. The economy was edging toward a recession.
The Tiananmen Square crackdown in June was the final blow.
his business died as quickly as it had flourished. There were
other problems. Flush with sucess, he had poured a third of his
money into a sourenir shop. But tourism dried up after the June
massacre.
It was time to activate the second part of his plan: going
abroad. Twice ha applied for a U.S. visa and was rejected. The
third time, he got it.
A job with a trading company and English lessons await him in
California. He won't disclose his current net worth, but he prob-
ably has at least 500,000 yuan in cash (about 135,000).
"I have enough to live on for a few years," says Mr. Yang, who
has stayed single despite being one of Beijing's most eligible
bachelor. he hopes to return one day, perhaps as a U.S. citizen.
"See this ballpoint pen?" he says, grabbing a reporter's cheap
Bic import. "Chinese pens are no good. I'd like to bring the
technology back and make pens like this in China.
**End**
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