Word: sonly
(lookup in dictionary)
(lookup stats)
Dates: during 1990-1999
Sort By: most recent first
(reverse)
Zhong Qizhi is going to make it, whatever the cost. "I am the son of a farmer and a factory worker," he says. "It was impossible for me to get help from anyone." So the 31-year-old from Chengdu taught himself English while working as an elementary school teacher, went off to run a travel agency in Tibet for four years, then set up a computer store in the southern city of Kunming. In 1996 he passed a university entrance exam to study international finance and economics. He paid for his sister to study Japanese; she now works...
...which he is studying. He lights a cigarette from the butt he has finished and looks around at the students at the other tables. Most are 10 years younger, from more privileged backgrounds. When Zhong was their age, in the late 1980s, there was no way a peasant's son from rural China could have contemplated hopping between jobs, getting an education and applying for a job with "Goldman Sachs or Citicorp," as Zhong hopes to do. Today, with the economic reform being pressed by Zhu Rongji, the new Premier, the Chinese dream knows no limits. "Making money has become...
Chen has two sons and two daughters; his elder son and a daughter work in the provincial capital, Chengdu. His other son has gone south to the booming city of Guangzhou, where he works as a welder while his wife does shift work at a shoe factory. They send back $75 a month to the family. "Just about every family in this village has someone in Guangzhou. They say life is all right there. They have fish and meat to eat every day. Of course it is better to be in the village where you come from, but there...
From high on the hill in the riverside town of Wanxian, Gu Xiaoli looks out over the boat dock from her kitchen window and sighs. She is cooking a modest dinner of rice soup, pigs' feet and steamed buns. In the past two years, she, her husband and her son have all been laid off from textile factories in the town. With their combined pensions of $100 a month, they also have to support her 85-year-old father. Her biggest worry is for her son. After being laid off, he opened a restaurant that failed; then...
...hope things will get better for him. He's 30 now, but he can't find a good wife without a job. Right now we are saving all we can." Her son chimes in for the first time: "In China it's like one big experiment now. And we are the test subjects." Gu Xiaoli ignores his bitter tone. "In China things will get better. But there are so many people...