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Profiles
(which included a course in IB Chinese),
I took a semester off to return to China. I
enrolled in Tsinghua University, known
throughout China as the “best… or maybe
second best” university in China.
A Generation Without
Economic Worries
That fall I met Xiao Chao in front of
McDonald’s in Wudaokou, the foreign student
district of Beijing. I was looking for a tutor
with whom I could practice my oral Chinese.
In his early 20s, he spoke in slow, unaccented
Mandarin, a must for Chinese teachers in
China. He walked me into the small, paved
courtyard of a slightly rundown apartment
complex to his “office.” As we climbed the
dark outdoor staircase toward his apartment,
he turned and said, “Please don’t call me laoshi
[teacher] around here – you
can’t conduct business in a
residential space in China.”
In 2008 when I returned to
Beijing as an intern for The
Nature Conservancy, I met
again with Xiao Chao. He
invited me to his office in
the central business district
of Beijing on the top floor
of one of the city’s newest
buildings. You could see
for miles out the window,
almost far enough to make
out the little apartment
where he had started out
three years earlier. He now
had two offices, twenty
employees, plenty of cash, and a beautiful
fiancée. He was living the Chinese dream.
Entrepreneurialism and hard work are rewarded
generously in China, and stories like Xiao
Chao’s are ubiquitous. While he was on his way
to wealth and success by his mid-twenties, older
entrepreneurs had been taking advantage of
China’s free market since the 1980 reforms. It
is their children who have now helped create
a new Chinese phenomenon: a generation of
young people who have grown up without
pressing economic worries.
In 2006 I began studying at Middlebury
College in Vermont, where I continue to
learn Chinese. When I returned to China for
a semester during my junior year, I studied
at a university in Hangzhou. I chose this
city after hearing about its reputation for
continued
Mike West ‘05 in
Tiananmen Square
in 2000.
Spring 2009 | 31