Young and rich in China
Caraba Chen just had started placing the meal on the table when we walked into his sixth-floor apartment in Baoding, a city of 1 million people a few clicks south of China’s enormous capital city, Beijing. The apartment is a large two-bedroom located on the edge of the city in one of those unremarkable cookie-cutter apartment complexes one finds nearly everywhere in China.
But his place has class: overstuffed plush furniture, a large, white dining room table and a mud-brown shag rug inspired, no doubt, by a catalog selling authentic 1970s “style” carpets made by hand. The carpet softens the stark, white atmosphere enough for the room to feel comfortable. And sitting on the couch with my bare feet lost in the shag of the rug, I felt a sudden desire to discuss the implications of the Summer of Love and the war in Vietnam.
Instead, we just talked about the tragedy that is Chinese pop music.
This was my first dinner party at the home of a person who has become part of China’s newest social class: The Young Professionals. This label, a relatively new term for many Chinese, is given to men and women in their 20s and early 30s who are independent and, compared to their parents’ generation, wealthy. There are millions of these young professionals, and they are all beneficiaries of the economic reforms and the stunning growth of the past 20 years.
And while this social class is just beginning to grow in places like Baoding, which many Chinese consider to be a “backward, old-fashioned” city, young professionals are nearly everywhere in Beijing. They drink expensive coffee at any one of the 63 Starbucks locations, or at one of the many imitators, they shop at Gucci, Prada and Tiffany’s located in underground megamalls that litter the city, and they drive German luxury cars, like Audis, Mercedes and BMWs — and for some strange reason (slick marketing?) every one of these luxury cars is black.
Wealth does not come easy to people in Beijing, and it is even more difficult to attain in a small city like Baoding. But nearly every member of this new group has one thing in common: an incredible work ethic.
A strong work ethic is not exclusive to this group. China is well-known to be a place that champions the worker, not only during the Communist era of the last 50 years, but throughout its long history. It was the Chinese, after all, that built the Great Wall.
But, only 35 years after Chairman Mao famously rid the Middle Kingdom of classes and individual wealth, the Chinese have taken entrepreneurism and capitalist zeal to unimaginable heights, and Mao would be turning over in his grave, if he had one. (Mao’s body is embalmed and on display in a Mausoleum in the center of Beijing).
After Mao died and Deng Xiaoping took control of the Communist Party, things began to change. One of Deng’s most famous quotes, “To be rich is glorious,” was a complete about-face from the economic policies of his predecessor. This spawned a chasm between the champion farming and working class and the new, emerging wealthy class.
People who lived in cities began to experience unprecedented opportunities to make money in white-collar jobs, and soon they began to discover ways to distinguish themselves from their poorer comrades.
“If you would have been here 15 to 20 years ago, you would have seen most everybody dressed in the same dark blue worker clothes,” reminisces Terry, an American who has been working in Beijing for the last two decades. “But now, everything has changed.”
Perhaps not everything. I can still see the occasional person wearing the same outfit, and there are lots of men who still sport the extra long pinkie-fingernail, an outward (and, to this reporter, bizarre) display that they rarely lift a finger for manual labor.
But the new emerging class seems to be less concerned with tradition and history.
Frankie Huan, a recent graduate from Hebei University College of Business, just landed a lucrative position as the manager of an upscale hair salon. He knows little about hair styling, but he excels in smooth-talking tax officials and city inspectors. His English is pretty good, too. During a recent afternoon, Huan managed to get away from the buzzing salon floor in order to take a break in his office, tucked away on the second floor from all the hubbub going on down below. He sat back in his black leather chair, put his feet up on the desk and lit a cigarette. “I love being a boss,” he said. “This wouldn’t be possible without my education, you know? And the best part is, my office has air conditioning.”
Chen is also snubbing tradition. He does not have the long nail; instead, his fingernails are neatly trimmed so they do not interfere with his work on a computer, or when he plays the guitar.
“Music is my life,” he said.
He is a musician and he makes his money by producing jingles for commercials, sound bites for radio stations, and by playing in a band. He drives a black Audi and is very fond of low-brow comedies from the United States.
Indeed, the new wealth has reached many young Chinese, and they will be the first to say they deserve it. But when asked, nearly every one cites the sacrifices his or her parents were forced to make in order for this generation to succeed. Admittedly, there was nowhere to go but up from the devastation of the Cultural Revolution, and it seems the growth is not going to stop any time soon.
That means more dinner parties and comfy couches for years to come.
Chris Gauthier is a recent Massachusetts College of Liberal Arts graduate spending a year in China teaching English at Hebei University. He writes regular columns for The Advocate during his stay in China. To read all of his Advocate columns, visit blogtheberkshires.com. Readers can also read more about his experiences on his own blog at chrisinchina.wordpress.com.