Career Tales from China.

I have just returned from a three-week vacation in China with a new perspective on career development. What I saw, heard, touched, smelled, tasted, and read was overwhelming, so I won't try to recount all my impressions. Seasoned "China hands" warn that first-time visitors are the only ones foolish enough to think they understand anything about the country. So I'll tell career stories about the experiences I had and the people I met or observed.

First, the people were far better dressed and fed than I had expected. Gone are the Mao green jackets and quasi-military clothing. Today the uniforms of airline personnel, ticket takers at tourist venues, and wait persons could be those of people from any country. While feeding China's billions remains a severe problem, outdoor food markets and shops are full of produce, meat and fish (dead and alive), soy products, spices, and baked goods. Nothing is hermetically sealed, but everything looks fresh. Many people make their livings as shopkeepers, selling farm products and handicrafts encouraged by an emerging market-based economy.

My first career story involves the "Hello People," entrepreneurs who assault tourists with "Hello! Hello! Hello!" and handfuls of goods for sale wherever tourist busses stop. "Made in China" took on new meaning when I bargained for lovely silk scarves at $1.50, ties at $2, and silk robes at $7. "Hello People" are intrepid, assertive, and good negotiators--not bad qualities for anyone in the workplace. Sometimes they became annoying and intrusive, and I quickly learned not to make eye contact or tarry too long if I was really not interested in buying their wares. I wondered whether there were lessons to be learned from them about managing our own careers in highly competitive environments.

In each city, our guides were employees of the state-owned tourist agency, China International Tourist Service (CITS). Many guides shared the same speech pattern, repeating a phrase twice, so it couldn't be ignored. Most were young, eager, and willing to please. Customer service has arrived in China. While it was clear that the guides had scripts for describing cities and tourist sites, the better ones departed from the standard line to reveal their personalities and disclose a bit about their lives. Our guide in Beijing told us she had moved out of her parents' nice apartment with wood floors and carpets to live on her own in a traditional courtyard where she stores her cabbage under the window and shares cooking facilities and a bathroom with her neighbors. Those of us with young adult children recognized the universal quest for independence.

Two young men took us beyond buildings and artifacts to describe what life was like for them and their families during the Cultural Revolution in the 1970s. One of these men came from an educated family that was relocated to the country to be re-educated by farmers. His grandfather, a learned man, responded to his public humiliation by taking his own life. Because of this family shame, our guide's older brother was denied education and was assigned a factory job. Our guide, raised in less restrictive times, was admitted to university studies on the basis of academic prowess rather than family history. On the side, he is a freelance photographer and is slowly rebuilding the treasured family library that was burned by the Red Guards. The career lessons for me were bittersweet: the tragedy of losing a valued life to political whim, and the unfathomable value of a grandson's courage and integrity in searching for meaning in life.

Nearly nine million people will lose their present livelihood when the Three Gorges Dam is complete in 2009 and hundreds of thousands of acres of rich river-bottom land along the Yangtze River are flooded. It's a career counselor's nightmare. Farmers constitute 80 percent of China's population, and those who live along the stretch of river we cruised for three days seem to have terraced, irrigated, and tilled every arable inch. They will be relocated into towns and cities now being constructed above the new water level. Our river guide told us that those who choose to continue farming at higher (less productive) elevations will be excused from the one-child policy and will not have to pay taxes for 10 years.

One alternative for someone who can't or won't continue to farm is to become a taxi driver. In towns and cities, few automobiles are privately owned, and state-owned taxis are rapidly replacing bicycles for those who can afford them. The cultural changes faced by peasants moving from family courtyard compounds to linear towns along a lake are mind boggling. The new towns will, however, provide electricity and indoor plumbing--a first for most of these refugees.

I don't know what career-planning initiatives are under way for the displaced residents of the Yangtze River valley, but it was clear to me that the control of the Communist government over people's careers is fading fast along the pedestrian shopping mall in Shanghai. It was here we found an Athlete's Foot franchise, and we began to replace my husband's clothes, which had gone to Paris instead of Beijing. The attentive clerks couldn't believe their good luck when we bought out their supply of XXL shirts and their one pair of size 11 shoes. Across the river from the Bund, the old commercial center of the city, more than 25 skyscrapers have risen from rice paddies in the past seven years. Construction there has created a countrywide shortage of building cranes, and the river port now competes with Hong Kong and Guangzhou (Canton). The city has a cosmopolitan, optimistic atmosphere, many young affluent professionals, and more dot-com billboards than I've seen in any American city Career opportunities for educa ted people abound, and the World Trade Agreement was greeted with enthusiasm.

The last career story came in a five-star hotel in Guangzhou, where 60 U.S. families who had just adopted Chinese baby girls were waiting for exit papers. A few had brought older adopted Chinese daughters along. The babies all looked healthy; the parents all beamed. I was near tears--happy for the individuals and sad that a country would sell its children. The one-child policy has successfully curbed population growth that would otherwise create devastating social and economic problems. By some accounts, that policy also has created a deficit of females of up to 20 million--because when families can have only one child, they prefer males. Stories of women being kidnapped and of bachelor villages have begun to surface, and the policy is now being reconsidered. My Western lens on women's career issues doesn't know how to focus on the enormous implications of this phenomenon.

I'd go back tomorrow if I could, to learn more from this remarkable country.

Dr. Hagevik has agreed to provide NEHA members with a free resume review. If you desire assistance in creating or making revisions to your resume, a reasonable price for this service will be determined based on the extent of work requested.