About China blogosphere, travel, and entrepreneurship

Sorry for the late post — just got in as Wednesday wounded up my time (as in timezone). There was one big thing I noticed today when we (as in the thesis team) had a reunion; out of all the folks in the team, I was the only freelancer. And I was the only one doing what I wanted to do — and getting paid for this.

See, that’s the thing. For too many Chinese folks out there (especially for those “born local, grown local”), the first thing that they want to do — is to remain “alive”. They need to earn the money. They’ll have to accept the fact that they have to go through what is considered in the West as cruel and unusual punishment to get the money. As a result, many a modern resumé (by that I mean the resumé of the average guy/lady in their 20s) can easily span pages upon pages — they give up on their present job and look for new ones faster than you shift gears in your average auto.

The Chinese, by the way, have reason to do this: they’re more “reality-based” and are less likely to spend time what I call the “ideological ivory tower”. Folks like me pursue what we want to do (regardless of the econ results; it’s a miracle that I’m paid at all to do what I do, in the eyes of the average local), but folks in the Chinese world pursue what makes their ends meet.

There’s a saying that in the mainland job world, women are used as men, and men are used as livestock. That’s probably too grotesque and graphical, but it’s — well, how can I say this — true. Keeping people in the office over weekends, forcing them into millions of meetings, and making the receptionist stay until late (because the boss is there) — these are the things that many a Westerner probably won’t really come to accept, but many a local do. They “have” to, to some extents; this is how they get paid.

Freelancing is probably not viewed with a negative predetermination; the reason why freelancing hasn’t taken off in China lie mainly in two possible reasons. First and foremost, you have to make ends meet, and you need the money to live to the end of the month. Second, the “traditional bits” in the average Chinese, plus the relative “newness” of freelancing, has meant that few people get to try this new job — or collection of jobs — or few people even have a chance to freelance.

Yours truly, by the way, doesn’t think he’s a freelancer. He thinks he’s a multi-gig guy working from 8 AM in the morning to 11 PM in the evening. Now the only thing that prevents him from being a full-time 8-to-11-er are those Spanish lessons in the morning…

But seriously, can learning a new language be considered as a detriment to productivity?