A life less ordinary: China's young entrepreneurs
Lured by their dreams and encouraged by the state, graduates on the mainland are increasingly drawn to starting their own businesses
Like a growing number of young graduates on the mainland, An Chuandong, 23, chose to take a risk and prove himself by starting his own business.
He quit his job, sold his car, and slept on his company's conference table for six months to save on rent so he could pay back the debt.
"I enjoy life like this, doing something I'm passionate about. I don't believe in regrets. I believe the more hardship you encounter, the more you can achieve later," he said with determination.
It's an outlook the government is working hard to encourage. In March it introduced a new corporation law removing the minimum requirements on registered capital for limited liability companies.
And last week, the Ministry of Education asked universities to allow entrepreneurial students to defer studies so they could try out their business ideas.
An, a recent graduate of Renmin University's business school, ventured out as an entrepreneur after working for one year at Sohu, a major internet portal on the mainland. He quit in March to start a technology company with three partners in Beijing.
"My boss [at Sohu] thought highly of me, which made me feel all the more the need to prove my ability," An said.
"I wanted to see how much I could achieve after breaking away from the glory and resources of a big company."
His company's first product is a smartphone application which collects information on all activities held on university campuses.
It was made available for download on the Apple Store on Sunday.
An and other young entrepreneurs describe their attempts to start a business as , a phrase that translates roughly as trouble-making, getting side-tracked and causing self-inflicted setbacks.
The word may reflect the doubts and worries that many parents and teachers have about the young generation's entrepreneurial behaviour; but for youngsters like An, is a positive quality.
Su Boxin, 23, who left Alibaba to start a mobile app firm in Shenzhen, said the biggest barrier for young people starting their own business was society's perception.
"Many parents and teachers think young entrepreneurs are just goofing around," Su said.
"When you are young, you need to . Between 20 and 30 years old, you should as much as you like, instead of focusing too much on the gain and loss of the moment or material comfort, because this is a period when you don't have much pressure - your parents are not too old; you are not married yet; you don't have family burdens - you can be bold and do what you want to do," An said.
"The key word for this stage of life should be 'dream'. It's like drawing up a blueprint for your future. The more irregular the patterns, the more beautiful it may be."
The number of people taking the entrance exam for the civil service - dubbed the "iron rice bowl" due to its job security, steady income and benefits - reached a five-year low this year, suggesting mainland youth are developing a distaste for the ordinary, stable and less-eventful life.
"I would rather live a restless life than a boring, meaningless one without challenge or excitement. Living a life like that is just like drinking a Coke that has gone flat - it's just sugary water," says Freeman Lian, 26, who left his job as marketing promotion manager at Meizu Technology, a major smartphone brand, and started an online-based glasses brand with his best friend in Shenzhen last year.
Su agreed. "My job at Alibaba was very stable, with an income of more than 100,000 yuan per year (HK$126,500). However, my desire to start my own business, which dates back to my university days, only grew stronger and stronger. In a big company … I didn't see any added value for society in my work," he said.
Both Lian and Su say the mainland offers a great environment for young entrepreneurs, especially in information technology, where start-ups require relatively little capital.
They applaud the Ministry of Education's request for universities to be more flexible.
"This is a big step forward for China's education system. If the Ministry of Education had such a policy when I was in university, I would definitely have chosen to give it a try, no matter how far I could have gone or whether I could have succeeded in the end.
"The cost for young people to make mistakes is very low, [we] have plenty of chances," Su says.
Lin Jiejun, 22, a final year student at Guangzhou's Sun Yat-sen University, hopes to take a year off from his master's course to devote himself to a sports start-up company established by his schoolmate.
"Starting your own business is risky. If universities allow students to take a gap year and try it out, our mental stress will be less," he said.
In his second year Lin and a group of friends had tried to start a company that used biotechnology to recycle waste. However, the project failed because they were too busy with their studies.
"If we had done it full-time, maybe we could have gone further," he says.
