Wang Yang is 28, she has been married for two years and has no plan to have kids. She is now HR manager at the Chongqing Marriott Hotel, after having graduated from a Hotel Management school in Switzerland.
At first sight, she fits with the ambitious working girl profile, yet, she quickly adds, smiling, ‘I always tell my parents that I am just a small potato’ and start talking about how she wants to escape pressure for success that Society and her parents put on her. ‘In China every parents think that their child will be the next president’.
She would like to open a fashion store and move to Chengdu because the pace is much more relaxed there. Yet she feels that she has to keep working for Marriott until she becomes HR director within 3-5 years. ‘To succeed in life, you have to choose a direction and stick to it, even when it’s a bit boring’. Then what about keeping rising further in the hierarchy? ‘No because that would mean forgetting about my own life and devote everything to my work’.
Much in her life is about this attempt to combine her ambition and her willingness for a pressure free life. Her opinion on Europe, where she stayed for two years (she speaks fluent French and English), is interesting: ‘Europe is too boring, there are no opportunities there, you just have to follow the rules or be left out. There is no room for creativity there.
When asked to describe how she feels about the next generation attitude to today’s China, she actually gives an insightful portrait of herself: ‘young people don’t make choice, so they don't move on or sometimes they even move back (to university)’. Then concluding that it’s better to have only one Party in China, as it makes one choice less to make!
At first sight, she fits with the ambitious working girl profile, yet, she quickly adds, smiling, ‘I always tell my parents that I am just a small potato’ and start talking about how she wants to escape pressure for success that Society and her parents put on her. ‘In China every parents think that their child will be the next president’.
She would like to open a fashion store and move to Chengdu because the pace is much more relaxed there. Yet she feels that she has to keep working for Marriott until she becomes HR director within 3-5 years. ‘To succeed in life, you have to choose a direction and stick to it, even when it’s a bit boring’. Then what about keeping rising further in the hierarchy? ‘No because that would mean forgetting about my own life and devote everything to my work’.
Much in her life is about this attempt to combine her ambition and her willingness for a pressure free life. Her opinion on Europe, where she stayed for two years (she speaks fluent French and English), is interesting: ‘Europe is too boring, there are no opportunities there, you just have to follow the rules or be left out. There is no room for creativity there.
When asked to describe how she feels about the next generation attitude to today’s China, she actually gives an insightful portrait of herself: ‘young people don’t make choice, so they don't move on or sometimes they even move back (to university)’. Then concluding that it’s better to have only one Party in China, as it makes one choice less to make!
Clearly choice is at the core of her personal dilemma. Chinese Society is stressful because it now offers so much choice, yet she feels anything outside of China would just not offer her the reassuring feeling of having many opportunities available to her.
And the fact parents are over protecting their child makes that worse. What Yang describes is a leathal cocktail of choice, pressure and overprotection that suddenly paralyses the young generation, making them feel there are too many choices to know how to make one.
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