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)

前兩天和我拍檔藍小姐聊天，聊到“站在風口上，豬都會飛起來”這件事，想起人選擇職業的重要性，想起這些年我們看到過的風口。

對60后來說，90年代初下海做生意是一個風口。我的一個表哥原來是鎮機械廠的普通工人，當時還是別人覺得應該牢牢靠靠守著廠子的80年代末的時候，他不顧全家反對，辭職開了一家磚廠，后來慢慢做大，竟然把原來的機械廠吞下來，是我們老家有名的成功企業家。

對70后來說，房地產是一個風口。90年代初，大學有三個專業很吃香，一個是外語，一個是計算機，一個是土木工程。事實證明學外語的現在混得一般，當年拼命出國的同學現在真心后悔，因為完美錯過中國這20年迅猛的發展期；學計算機的人總的來說都不錯，至少是中產；學土木工程的人則發了財，無論是自己開房地產公司，還是進房地產公司，還是改學建筑設計的，只要是跟房地產公司沾邊的人，現在都比我們有錢，當年土木工程系最差的學生都在長沙買了別墅。

對80后來說，是學金融。

藍小姐這些80后當時流行兩個專業，一個是新聞，一個是金融。當年有理想的孩子都學新聞，沒理想的孩子才去學金融，誰知從2008年開始，新聞媒體就進入不景氣行列，而當年學金融的同學統統進銀行，年紀輕輕就開起寶馬、奔馳。當然，這幾年金融又不行了，但至少10年之前入行的80后們，在這個行業賺足第一桶金。

而90后呢，自然是各種互聯網和自媒體運營者。從2013年興起的自媒體大號們，包括網紅和直播達人、游戲達人，百分之九十是90后。我見過一個最勵志的例子是，一個家境普通的三線小城姑娘，藝校畢業后，先在一個K歌網站唱歌成了紅人，后來搞直播，再后來她做起微商，現在一年是幾百萬元的生意，把她打了一輩子工、年收入不超過五萬的父母驚得目瞪口呆。另外一個是我們鄰居家的孩子，一個胖胖的宅男，整天打游戲，大家都覺得這孩子將來肯定沒出息，但聽說他靠網絡直播成了大富翁，買了保時捷豪車。

時代日新月異，中國人這三十年經歷歐洲三百年都沒有過的劇變，活在激流里的人要改變命運，很大程度上是靠運氣，很多人靠運氣淘到第一桶金。但后來也不完全是靠運氣，當年我們那個土木工程系里最有背景的師兄，因為父親的關系成了90年代第一批富翁，后來因為賭錢以及投資失敗輸了個干凈。大家同樣下海進房地產，可沒有幾個人能成為許家印和王石——風口是運氣，但如果你是豬，到最后還是會摔下來。

而我自己，一個學外語又轉去做媒體的倒霉的70后，這些年除了寫稿就是寫稿，一頭扎在娛樂行業十來年，終于僥幸在2014年搭上原本只屬于90后的自媒體快車。雖然說跟風火的大號們沒法比，但也算是脫了貧，過上自己想要的生活，說運氣也真是運氣，但如果沒有這些年的堅持，怕是想搭也搭不上。

回顧往昔，想起一個道理，“有錢難買早知道”，與其茫然尋找下一個風口，還不如活在自己的節奏里，先尋找一件自己擅長又喜歡的事，然后一頭扎在里面，勤懇努力。通常，做到行業的前百分之二十，你肯定餓不死；如果運氣好，將自身的行業和當時的風口對接起來，也許就能改變自己的職業生態。

每當有焦慮的職場新人問我，要怎么選擇職業，要怎么感知風口時，我都淡淡地說，風口是運氣，不可強求，活在自己的節奏里，努力提高專業技能，可能是更為實在的路。畢竟，風口不常有，而做到自己能力范圍里的最好，且一直做下去，這才是我們這些普通人更為現實的選擇。

（摘自《上海采風》2017年第11期）

這些年看到過的風口

文/黃佟佟