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Bian Da Cheng stands outside his shop on a weekday afternoon. "It was our own personal choice to open the business," Bian, 54, said. "We have little pressure to make money; we are already retired. We are doing this to consume our time."
Bian Dacheng and his wife, Liu Zhiying, are proud to own a children's clothing store alongside a bustling four-lane street in the heart of Beijing. Their pride is noticeably centered on their ability to choose what they want to do for the rest of their lives.
Inside their small store on Diananmen Wai, Bian sits next to Liu, who busily knits an infant’s sweater. The couple began selling children’s clothing at the shop more than 20 years ago, when it was one of 10 businesses on the block. They own the property and live in the back of the building, while most of the stores surrounding them pay an exorbitant rent.
Like other Beijing natives, Bian and Liu owned property before Beijing became the thriving hot spot it is today for small business opportunities. This has enabled them to take advantage of economic reforms and carve out their piece of the new Chinese dream within the world's second largest economy.
After the establishment of the People's Republic of China in 1949, China pursued a centrally planned economy in keeping with its communist tenets in which every citizen was guaranteed a job—a task the Chinese government took into its own hands.
The Chinese people were rarely given the opportunity to choose their career paths. Students were taught in school that it was important for them to be placed in occupations that were needed, not in ones that were necessarily of interest to them. Such was the case with Bian, who was assigned to work in a factory producing electric products.
Bian remembers his childhood growing up in Beijing as a happy one. He and his friends went ice skating in the winter and swimming in the summer. He began working in the factory at 16 years old, and remained there for more than 20 years.
Liu, 51, came to Beijing when she was 13. She returned to the countryside to work three years later, in 1973, during a time period when Mao ordered millions of educated Chinese urban youth to learn the ways of the rural people in a movement called shangshan xiaxiang (meaning "up to the mountains and down to the villages"). She returned to Beijing after three years in the country, where she worked in a factory for 28 years.
After Mao’s death in 1976, Deng Xiaoping put in place market-style reforms beginning in 1978. The opening of the economy paved the way for a shift to a contractual employment system, where jobs were no longer guaranteed.
Because of the shift, Bian stopped working in the factory, and began to wait tables at a restaurant. He and his wife also had a short stint providing printing services and selling notebooks and pens before they retired and opened up their children's clothing shop.
From 1980 to 1990, the government emphasized raising personal income and consumption, helping to set the stage for China's economy to grow at an average rate of 10 percent a year during the period between 1990 and 2003.
Bian and Liu reflect a new Chinese identity in which those who grew up during Chairman Mao Zedong’s reign have experienced a growing freedom of choice since economic reforms began to gain traction in the 1980s.
"When we don't feel like opening the store, we just leave the doors closed," Bian said proudly. "We have the freedom to do this."
Submitted by gmarge (not verified) on June 14, 2008 - 2:13pm.
Well done!!! I always read articles with the intention of "hard critique", but you held my interest and answered all my inquiries. Keep up the good work.
Looking forward to more articles!
Interesting to learn about
Submitted by Anonymous (not verified) on June 12, 2008 - 5:32pm.
Interesting to learn about people's life experience on the other side of the world. I wonder if they collect pensions from their prior factory work or if they have a form of social security that they collect or will collect.