Big Bowl Tea

The following story was translated from the June 26's issue of Beijing News. To make the story more readable, the translator has rearranged and adapted the original material.

Before Wang Xiuchen returned to Beijing in 1977, she had spent eight years in a remote village as a farmer. Though she was called an "educated youth", at the age of 17, she had only finished junior middle school.

Wang was not alone. From December 1968 onward, millions of urban youth were sent "up to the mountains and down to the villages" (上山下乡), i.e. to rural villages and to frontier settlements.

Wang was not happy with her life as a farmer. She dreaded working in the fields and was not used to the life style. Finally, with a counterfeited doctor's diagnosis from a resourceful relative, Wang was able to go back home.

When she returned to Beijing, she found the city where she grew up was not very welcoming. All her childhood friends had got married and had jobs in the state-run factories while Wang didn't have anyone or any job waiting for her. She said she felt inferior to the others.

"Everyone dreamed of being a worker in a state-run factory, but the jobs were in short supply. Sometimes hundreds of people were competing for one job and it was always those who knew the right people who got the job." said Wang.

In 1977, there were over 400,000 "educated youth" who returned to Beijing. Most of them were just like Wang, jobless and hopeless. Qi Bing, who worked in the neighborhood committee (街道办事处) at the time remembered that the yard of their office was full of people asking for jobs, and one of them threatened that if there was no job for him, he would either commit suicide or become a criminal.

After two years trying different temporary jobs, Wang finally got this one: selling Big Bowl Tea for a privately owned company. At a time when people had neither much money to spend or many things to buy, tea served in a big bowl that cost only 2 cents apiece soon became popular.

But it didn't work out smoothly. The country wasn't ready for any kind of business that was not run by the state. The company had some difficulty in registering. Moreover, it was difficult to find a place to operate the business. Their first tea house was a in a shack just next to a public toilet in Qianmen Gate, south of Tian'anmen Square.

However, the first day of business was a success. They sold tea for 60 yuan. By the end of the year, the tea house made 110,000 yuan in net profit and everyone who worked there could get 50 yuan or so as monthly salary, which was more than a factory job could offer. But still people left because, in their minds, state-owned factories could provide more stability, and to be a worker was much more dignified than selling tea. Many doubted if the private tea-selling business could last.

But to the surprise of many, Big Bowl Tea not only survived, it also thrived. It's now a big and established company, managed by entrepreneur Wang Yingxiu.