Career Choice and Envied Luck

By Huang Tongtong

Career Choice and Envied Luck

By Huang Tongtong

In the past few days, my bestie Miss Blue and I have been engaged in a lively discussion about the recent buzzword “the rocket pack that allows pigs to fly,” which reminded us the importance of career choices in one’s life and the “rocket packs” we’ve seen in China over the past few decades.

For the post-60s generation(those born between 1960 and 1969 in Mainland China), there have been many such “rocket packs” as going into business and being your own boss in the 1990s. For example, one of my cousins was a worker in a machine factory in our town. Back in the late 1980s, everyone thought that punching a time card at the factory every day was the best and most stable way to earn a living.Yet ignoring objections from his family members, he quitted job,started a brick mill and gradually became somebody, and later even bought out the machine factory which he worked for before.Now he’s a local celebrity in my hometown.

For the post-70s generation,engaging in the real estate business was their “rocket pack.”In the 1990s, three red-hot majors as foreign languages, computers and civil engineering are more favored in my college time. Time proves all things as many of those who majored in foreign languages in college are now mediocrities.They fought tooth and nail to go abroad but now sincerely regret that they missed out on China’s 20-year period of lightning-

fast development. Those who majored in computers did pretty well for themselves; at least they are a part of the middle class.But those who majored in civil engineering are absolutely loaded.It didn’t matter if they opened a real estate company or worked at a real estate company, or if they majored in architecture, as long as these people did something remotely associated with real estate, they are now richer than anyone I know. Even the lowliest of those who went into real estate back in those days now have a mansion somewhere in Changsha,the capital city of Hunan Province where we spent our college time.

For the post-80s generation, it was finance.

For people like Miss Blue,there were two popular majors:one was journalism, the other being finance. Back in the day,the idealistic ones went off to study news media, while the non-idealistic bunch went off to study finance. No one could have predicted the Great Recession of 2008 that hit the news media industry like a ton of bricks.Those who studied finance went,one after the other, off to work at the banks. Now those upstarts are driving around in BMW and Mercedes Benz. Of course, the finance industry didn’t entirely escape the collateral damage of the recession, as for the last few years it hasn’t been doing that well either, but for at least ten years or so, the members of the eighties generation who went intofinance have gotten to live high on the hog.

For the post-90s generation,it was definitely anything weboriented or being a me-media personality in the Web 2.0 internet landscape. Rising to prominence in 2013, the memedia stars, including internet celebrities, vloggers and gamers are from the 90s generation. I myself have seen an incredibly inspirational example of this with my own eyes. A non-descript girl of a family of limited means hailing from small-town China who graduated from a generic art academy became an overnight sensation on a karaoke website.Later she began to do live video streaming, and finally became a WeChat entrepreneur. She now does several million yuan in business per year, leaving her parents, who themselves make only around 50,000 yuan per year, with their mouths agape and eyes as big as dinner plates.Another perfect example is my neighbor’s son, a chubby nerd who sat at home all day playinggames like some couch potato.The whole family was convinced he had no future, but I heard he made millions doing live video streaming and is now the owner of a shiny new Porsche amongst other flashy toys.

Every new era ushers in sweeping changes. China has had thirty years of change equaling three hundred years of change in Europe. Those who want to control their own destiny amid the torrents of life mostly do so by luck, and many people have parlayed their luck into their first fortune. But later they didn’t rely entirely on luck alone. My wellconnected friend, who made his riches in civil engineering became the preeminent mogul of the 1990s due to his father’s connections in high places,later lost it all on high-stakes investments that didn’t pan out.Likewise, not many of those who risked it all to go into the real estate business became a genuine real estate mogul in their own right, someone like Xu Jiayin or Wang Shi. The odds are stacked against you getting a hold of a rocket pack. And even when you get one, whether it propels you to wealth and glamor is ultimately just up to whether you are able to grasp it.

Take myself for example, I’m an unlucky member of the post-70s generation wholly engrossed in learning foreign language who made the switch to media communications and suffered from hand and brain cramps on account of all the writing I had to do. I had been in the entertainment business for ten years when, by a fluke, in 2014 I got my big break by hopping onto the post-90s generation’s memedia gravy train. And though I can’t say I compare to those white hot social media personalities with massive social authority,

you can’t say that I’m struggling either. I’m living the kind of life that I want. Maybe we can just chalk it up to luck, but if I hadn’t been so persistent and tenacious after I got that big break, I would never have gotten my golden ticket aboard the said gravy train.

Looking back on it I can’t help but think of a universal truth,that is, “Money can’t buy a crystal ball.” It’s better to live your life than to go searching high and low for a rocket pack to blast you into the stratosphere. Put priority on going in search of what you are good at and what you like to do and then become devoted to that body, mind and soul. Most of the time, if you can land in the top twenty percentile of your industry, no matter what industry it is, you will never have to worry where your next meal is. And if you’re lucky enough to pair your industry with a rocket pack, you can probably change your whole occupational sphere.

There are always those angsty newbies to the job market who ask me how to choose a career,and how to zone in on where the rocket pack might be stashed.I look them straight in the eyes and tell them point blank: the rocket pack is just the luck of the draw, you can’t force it make an appearance, so don’t bother trying. A much more practical way to go is to live your life and work hard at leveling up your skills. It’s like this, at the end of the day, the rocket pack comes but once in a blue moon, it’s best to concentrate on what you can control, and see it through to the end. That is by far the best choice for all the average Joes out there in the world who will probably never get the chance to blast off to the stars. (From Shanghai Wave, November 2017.Translation: Chase Coulson)

前两天和我拍档蓝小姐聊天，聊到“站在风口上，猪都会飞起来”这件事，想起人选择职业的重要性，想起这些年我们看到过的风口。

对60后来说，90年代初下海做生意是一个风口。我的一个表哥原来是镇机械厂的普通工人，当时还是别人觉得应该牢牢靠靠守着厂子的80年代末的时候，他不顾全家反对，辞职开了一家砖厂，后来慢慢做大，竟然把原来的机械厂吞下来，是我们老家有名的成功企业家。

对70后来说，房地产是一个风口。90年代初，大学有三个专业很吃香，一个是外语，一个是计算机，一个是土木工程。事实证明学外语的现在混得一般，当年拼命出国的同学现在真心后悔，因为完美错过中国这20年迅猛的发展期；学计算机的人总的来说都不错，至少是中产；学土木工程的人则发了财，无论是自己开房地产公司，还是进房地产公司，还是改学建筑设计的，只要是跟房地产公司沾边的人，现在都比我们有钱，当年土木工程系最差的学生都在长沙买了别墅。

对80后来说，是学金融。

蓝小姐这些80后当时流行两个专业，一个是新闻，一个是金融。当年有理想的孩子都学新闻，没理想的孩子才去学金融，谁知从2008年开始，新闻媒体就进入不景气行列，而当年学金融的同学统统进银行，年纪轻轻就开起宝马、奔驰。当然，这几年金融又不行了，但至少10年之前入行的80后们，在这个行业赚足第一桶金。

而90后呢，自然是各种互联网和自媒体运营者。从2013年兴起的自媒体大号们，包括网红和直播达人、游戏达人，百分之九十是90后。我见过一个最励志的例子是，一个家境普通的三线小城姑娘，艺校毕业后，先在一个K歌网站唱歌成了红人，后来搞直播，再后来她做起微商，现在一年是几百万元的生意，把她打了一辈子工、年收入不超过五万的父母惊得目瞪口呆。另外一个是我们邻居家的孩子，一个胖胖的宅男，整天打游戏，大家都觉得这孩子将来肯定没出息，但听说他靠网络直播成了大富翁，买了保时捷豪车。

时代日新月异，中国人这三十年经历欧洲三百年都没有过的剧变，活在激流里的人要改变命运，很大程度上是靠运气，很多人靠运气淘到第一桶金。但后来也不完全是靠运气，当年我们那个土木工程系里最有背景的师兄，因为父亲的关系成了90年代第一批富翁，后来因为赌钱以及投资失败输了个干净。大家同样下海进房地产，可没有几个人能成为许家印和王石——风口是运气，但如果你是猪，到最后还是会摔下来。

而我自己，一个学外语又转去做媒体的倒霉的70后，这些年除了写稿就是写稿，一头扎在娱乐行业十来年，终于侥幸在2014年搭上原本只属于90后的自媒体快车。虽然说跟风火的大号们没法比，但也算是脱了贫，过上自己想要的生活，说运气也真是运气，但如果没有这些年的坚持，怕是想搭也搭不上。

回顾往昔，想起一个道理，“有钱难买早知道”，与其茫然寻找下一个风口，还不如活在自己的节奏里，先寻找一件自己擅长又喜欢的事，然后一头扎在里面，勤恳努力。通常，做到行业的前百分之二十，你肯定饿不死；如果运气好，将自身的行业和当时的风口对接起来，也许就能改变自己的职业生态。

每当有焦虑的职场新人问我，要怎么选择职业，要怎么感知风口时，我都淡淡地说，风口是运气，不可强求，活在自己的节奏里，努力提高专业技能，可能是更为实在的路。毕竟，风口不常有，而做到自己能力范围里的最好，且一直做下去，这才是我们这些普通人更为现实的选择。

（摘自《上海采风》2017年第11期）

这些年看到过的风口

文/黄佟佟