Xiao Mingna is a 27-year-old college graduate working as a forklift driver in Zhengzhou, capital of Henan Province. Driving a forklift had never been on her career bucket list until she saw an online stunt featuring a forklift in an amusing way.

The humorous video had a serious impact on Xiao, leading her to consider a job in forklift driving. At that point, she had just quit her third marketing job and was at a loss for what to do next. "My major in college was marketing," she told Beijing Review. "But I am more of an introvert, rather than being the kind of extrovert required for marketing. I wanted to find a job that involved more technical skills and less communication with people."

She was willing to consider manual labor as she had just read the book The True Believer by Eric Hoffer, an American social philosopher who spent years loading and unloading ships as a longshoreman. Many of his more enlightened thoughts came to him while he was laboring. "His experience reassured my opinion that brain work and labor work could be combined," Xiao said.

A good find 

Xiao researched the working conditions of forklift drivers and found it wasn't a very demanding job. Plus, almost all provincial capitals in China had such vacancies. Xiao even made a plan to stay in each capital city for seven or eight months of each year working as a forklift driver and spending the remaining months traveling in that province or region.

She acted swiftly on her plan and spent 2,050 yuan ($298) on a forklift driving course and license, which took her half a month to complete. The forklift driving school also recommended jobs for its graduates. As a newly qualified forklift operator, she found a job in a factory with the relatively low wage of 125 yuan ($18) a day.

Her workday is from 8 a.m. to 6 p.m., with a two-hour break at noon for lunch and a nap. "Normally we can finish our work before 5 p.m. and don't need to work any extra hours," she said. "It is more relaxing than working in marketing, which is stressful almost around the clock."

The factory has three female forklift drivers and their workload is normally lighter than that assigned to male drivers. In her spare time, she can learn more forklift driving skills from veteran drivers, which is a great bonus as employers pay higher salaries to experienced drivers.

The income of being a forklift driver is not that high in general, about 5,000 yuan ($727) each month, which, for Xiao, is enough to make ends meet. In some eastern provinces such as Zhejiang and Jiangsu, it can be higher—about 8,000 yuan ($1,164) each month.

An advantage of this job, according to Xiao, is that it places fewer limitations on age. It is common to see veteran drivers of over 50 still working in the factory. "It has largely relieved my aging-related anxiety and I pretty much feel calm," she said. "I sleep much more soundly now and have time to explore other areas or jobs that I might be interested in, or even prepare for postgraduate entrance exams."

If this job has any disadvantage, it's that she doesn't want to tell her parents she is driving a forklift for a living as she feels they would be unable to accept it. "They would never expect me, with a college degree, to do such a job," she said. "Also, the work environment is dusty and when it is busy, you might spend the whole day working on the forklift, which could hurt your back and waist."

Finding a real interest 

The year-on-year increase in the number of college graduates has been posing a greater challenge to them actually securing a job—with the little to no experience they have, in recent years. Figures from the Ministry of Human Resources and Social Security show that the number of college graduates in China will reach 11.58 million this year, an increase of 820,000 from 2022.

The fierce employment competition is pushing a growing number of college graduates to stay on campus for several more years to pursue postgraduate or doctoral degrees, in the hope of improving their chances in the job market. In Beijing, which ranks No.1 in number of universities in China, among the 285,000 graduating college students this year, the number of fresh graduates with master's degrees will exceed that of undergraduates for the first time.

Some graduates are therefore beginning to reassess their career plans and contemplate taking jobs they wouldn't have considered before. On Douban, one of China's most visited social media platforms, especially among young people, a new group named Light Labor Job Exploration Group was set up in November 2022, sharing information on light labor jobs and working experiences in those positions. Now, it has about 40,000 members.

"We've seen how many people are unhappy nowadays and I don't think that is the goal of education," the group's founder wrote in a post. "Life is full of possibilities. I think it is only because we've received a high level of education and read so many books that we can have the courage to explore these possibilities."

One of the most popular posts in the group is from a member named Luoluo, who graduated from Xi'an Jiaotong University and once worked as a visual designer for a major Internet company in Shenzhen for over three years.

The long working hours and high pressure quickly took their toll. "Each day, I stepped out of my apartment and got onto the subway in the morning and took the subway back home at night," she wrote in the post. "I felt like I was living like a rat."

The job only looked fancy. She spent most of her time meeting endless requirements from clients and didn't feel any improvement in her design skills.

In 2022, she quit the job and took herself on a self-driving tour across Yunnan Province, where she met many interesting people. Their experiences taught her about other professional and lifestyle options. The trip marked a turning point in her life.

After returning to Shenzhen, she applied for a job as a pet groomer at a pet care store right downstairs from her apartment. She studied fine arts and design in college, which helped a lot in picking up the job and becoming very good at it in a very short time.

"Now, I start work at 10:30 a.m. and it is much more relaxing than my previous job," she wrote in the post. "As a pet lover, no other jobs would bring me this great pleasure of working with animals all day."

She said she is considering making it her lifelong career and will study hard to get the highest pet grooming certificate as the salary is tied to one's level of qualification.

"Anxiety surrounding finding jobs has been common among young graduates," Wang Peng, an associate professor at Jilin Normal University, told Beijing Daily. "It is necessary for colleges to help students find their real interests instead of having them blindly follow social trends."

(Print Edition Title: Thinking Outside the Box) 

Copyedited by G.P. Wilson 

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