Down the social ladder
Dramatic fall from grace sparks national introspection
China is no stranger of rags to riches stories. In fact, its past 40 years could be called a ragsto-riches era, replete with migrant workers turned billionaires, successful entrepreneurs and numerous ordinary people who rose from poverty to wealth.
Usually, few would notice those who were left behind. But the fall of Wu Jihong, a 43-year-old mother of six who now lives in a village in Xiushui county, East China’s Jiangxi Province, was so shocking to the Chinese public that she recently became a trending topic online.
One wouldn’t imagine that the destitute country woman, who hasn’t even used a cell phone, was an alumna of Renmin University of China, one of China’s top 10 universities, graduating there in the 1990s – a time when higher education in China was still considered a privilege and a bachelor’s degree was considered a ticket into the middle class.
For many Chinese who struggle to climb up the social ladder, Wu’s fall became an alarming tale that has been repeated with cautionary comments. For others, the aid and support she received from her alumni following the media exposure seems to show that she still holds some kind of privilege.
Career failure
Wu’s fall is due to a combination of timing and personality reasons.
When she was enrolled at the university in 1994 with a major in archive management, most college students were assigned jobs by the government.
But with the expansion of higher education, China was in the midst of an education reform. By 1996, a new regulation advised that all colleges stop assigning jobs to graduates. Wu became one of the first cohort of college graduates in China who had to look for jobs on their own.
A series of failures during her job hunting journey dealt her a severe blow. Hoping to become a civil servant, Wu sat China’s civil service exam, but didn’t pass the job interview. Insisting on getting a government job, she made one call after another to Beijing’s government organizations, but most were either not recruiting or didn’t give her an offer.
A devastated Wu left Beijing to South China’s Guangdong Province, where her hukou was registered. There she found her first job at an education software company. It was a booming industry. “The purpose was to help Chinese primary school students improve in their studies… My job was to collect data and input them into the computer,” she recalled to Red Star News.
Earning a decent salary of 3,000 yuan at that time, Wu could have lived a moderate life in the southern city. But unable to get along with colleagues, she resigned eight months later. She then worked at a calendar company and a clothing factory in Fujian Province. None of these jobs lasted more than a few months.
Left behind
In 2000, Wu went to the city of Shunde, where she met her ex-husband, a labor worker. Their marriage officially marked an end to Wu’s short-lived career. For the 17 years that ensued, Wu never had a job again.
Five years after getting married, when she was pregnant with their first child, her ex-husband abandoned her. Wu then married her current husband Deng Gaohua, a villager in Xiushui who only had two years’ formal education.
Since then, Wu’s destiny drifted further apart from her classmates. She had five children with Deng, and her life became an endless struggle of poverty and family burdens. Asked why she gave birth to five children, she said she was told by her motherin-law that “a tubal ligation would be life-threatening for me.”
Wu soon became a symbol for someone who’s left behind in China’s rapid development.
Many articles started to analyze what contributed to Wu’s tragic fall on the social ladder.
One article attributes part of her failure to her unsuccessful marriages. In both her marriages, she married down - to men who had little education and worked as laborers. “Many articles say that marriage is the beginning of a woman’s second life… When a woman marries someone with a bad or major ethical flaw, her life quality will decrease immensely.”
Lack of understanding of China’s rapid social development is another reason why she failed, the article wrote. It argues that Wu’s obsession with government jobs in Beijing delayed her job hunting process. The article went on to give advice to the readers: “If you are not vigilant and have necessary skills to cope with change, you could immediately fall from the elite to a middle or lower class.”
Wu’s story also received the attention of her alma mater. Days after Wu’s story was revealed, Jiangxi alumni of Renmin University of China launched a crowdsourcing campaign that aimed to help Wu “get out of her trouble.” The campaign soon collected a sum of 150,000 yuan.
Officials and former classmates from her school also went to Xiushui to visit Wu. They encouraged her to pick up her previous major and get a job. “As her former class teacher, we hope everyone who cares about her could help her rebuild the confidence that’s needed to re-enter society,” An Qingfu, Wu’s former class teacher, told the Global Times.
But the help Wu received sparked controversy online as to whether it is fair for Wu to receive this assistance. After all, there are hundreds of thousands of country women who live Wu’s life, and yet people take their life for granted.
However, after all these years, Wu remains obsessed with a government job and told reporters that she wants to enter a public institution to secure an “iron rice bowl.”