IMHO, STEM careers not sure about now, but before the mid-90&#x27;s were considered more prestigious in China than medicine and law.<p>Back then, lawyers never really had a spotlight in Chinese commerce or politics given Chinese Community Party&#x27;s one-party rule and state-owned enterprise dominated economy; also in civilian realm, Chinese business partnerships are governed by &quot;Guanxi,&quot; your reputation and standing within your personal network than the culture of litigation in Western world.<p>Also, hate to be blunt, medicine is not as much upheld in esteem (relatively) in China due to the perceived less value of human life and socialized medicine at the time: a country of 1.3 billion people roughly the same size of US with a fraction of the GDP, marred by the Great Leap Forward, cultural revolution and until recently one child policy. Chinese hospitals clinic&#x27;s queues is more like going to the DMV where you bring and keep your own medical chart and queuing up, compare with the Western medicine&#x27;s obsession for &quot;personal well-being,&quot; &quot;resuscitate at all cost&quot;.<p>Individuals are not as considered as the State or the Collective. Now compare the puny individual with fragile bodies and limited agency to the grand gestures of the grand dams that conquer the Yangtze River or big bridges that crisscrosses metropolises.<p>Children are taught at the early age that the reason for the Chinese &quot;Century of Humiliation&quot; is Qing Dynasty&#x27;s reluctance to reform and adopt Western technologies; Chinese engineers that built railroads and scientists that built nuclear bombs were hailed as heroes as much as say, civil rights leaders in US social studies curriculum.