Dream US job, but thinking of home
Print Edition
ZUO Aining has always been a hard worker, and is always making plans.
After excelling at high school in the rustbelt city of Changchun in northeast China, she was exempted from the country’s college entrance exam when a business university in Beijing offered her early acceptance.
After graduating from the University of International Business and Economics with a degree in business English, she got to work on her next plan.
Zuo dreamed of going abroad to study, an increasingly common path for the children of China’s affluent families.
She applied to George Washington University in Washington, DC, which her parents — her father is an accountant, her mother a technician for electronic instruments — were able to afford.
She was accepted, and earned a Master’s degree in accounting, which landed her a job as a tax consultant in Washington.
Her plans to stay on in the United States were threatened after she failed to get a US work visa for two straight years in the annual lottery.
That meant Zuo had to sign up for expensive MBA courses at a night school to maintain her legal status as a student. At the same time, she worked full-time for an accounting firm. She finally got her visa last year at her third attempt.
But now, after achieving her dream, Zuo — the granddaughter of former soldiers in the People’s Liberation Army — has been looking wistfully at her homeland.
She has always had clear career goals, but also a strong sense of pride in her country.
In college, she spent the summer of 2009 marching with schoolmates in preparation for a parade in Beijing’s Tiananmen Square to celebrate the 60th anniversary of the founding of the People’s Republic of China.
Zuo and her colleagues were only on TV screens around the country for a few seconds, among the tens of thousands of others participating.
But it was a proud moment for her and her parents.
Now, as she watches China’s rise with equal pride, she wonders if it’s time to return.
“Many industries in China are developing rapidly, it is likely that China might surpass the US in terms of technology and market one day,” she said.
Relaxing in a park in Beijing, where she returned this autumn to take care of some official paperwork, Zuo said she was stunned by the changes she saw in China.
The advances in financial technology, fast rendering Chinese cities cashless, were surprising. Things like app-linked bike sharing, which has become ubiquitous in Chinese cities, amazed her. Something new started gnawing at her.
“This time back in China the feeling that I have is one of worry that it would be very easy to be left behind if I return to the US,” she said.
That might make her change her plans, she said.
“My life is going as I planned five years ago,” she said. But “if there is a better platform and opportunity for me to do what I want to do, I will come back without any hesitation.”
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