With a headlamp attached to his forehead, 22-year-old Zhang Zhaohua is a regular at a park in Zhengzhou, capital city of central China's Henan Province, after finishing his day job as an editor. There, with a set of professional tools, he provides ear cleaning services for passersby.

"I loved cleaning my family members' ears, it used to be a hobby," Zhang said. But after watching a TV program introducing the ear cleaning culture and business in Chengdu of Sichuan Province, Zhang was awed by how popular it was as a profession.

"It is more like entertainment for people living there and it is easy to find ear cleaners on the street," Zhang said. "The scene was very interesting to me." He decided to quit his job and go to Chengdu to learn how to clean ears professionally, spending two months learning the skill.

"It is rare to see ear cleaners in Zhengzhou, I may be one of the first," Zhang said, admitting that at the beginning, he felt a bit shy to be in the public eye. "I thought it would be awkward to meet friends or co-workers," Zhang said. In addition, he said, "Being new to the business, I was nervous about whether customers would feel comfortable or not. But after all the positive feedback, I settled down and started to enjoy the work."

Zhang spends about 20 minutes on each customer, charging 20 yuan ($2.92) per cleaning. He now has about 10 customers per day. "Cleaning ears is not just about hygiene, it's also a way to enjoy leisure time," Zhang said. "For me, I feel happy to both enjoy my hobby and earn money from it. Using a word that is now in fashion, I am a slasher."

Slash professional

Originally coined in the 2007 book One Person/Multiple Careers by Marci Alboher, the term slasher refers to people with several careers at the same time. "I noticed slashers in 2013," 27-year-old Hu Xinxian, CEO of two startup companies based in Shenzhen, south China's Guangdong Province, told Beijing Review.

In his book, Alboher explains, "The time we have to build a career is suddenly more expansive than it's ever been; we are simply living and working longer. And we all know that joining a large company where we will work until retirement is no longer a viable plan."

The technological factor, according to Alboher, has given a boost to this phenomenon. "So much of the work that's done today can be done anywhere. When your job is portable, it's that much easier to take on another one."

Hu echoed Alboher by saying that the smartphone and easy access to the Internet and social media has made work increasingly break through the confines of space. "Slashers don't need to belong to a company to start their own businesses either," Zhang said. "It's easy to just do it."

Before the word slasher came into vogue, there were many expressions for people with multiple careers, such as "nomads of the Internet era" or "USB people," comparing them to a USB drive, which is light and easy to carry and can be used on any computer or laptop. A group formed by these people on the Internet called itself "the free union of free people."

"Actually, there is a sharp contrast in the number of slashers in different circles," Zhang said. "Among my regular classmates or workmates, I would say there are only 5 percent that can be called slashers, but among friends that are active in related social groups on the Internet, I would say more than 95 percent are slashers and the number of such people is quickly increasing."

Hu's definition of slashers can be categorized into two types. One is the person whose career has nothing to do with his slashes, such as a doctor who is also a violinist. In this case, the slashes mainly consist of a hobby or a passion. The other is the person whose career is more or less connected with his slashes, like a radio host who trains people to enunciate their words in a more accurate and pleasant manner. This type of person is driven by the desire to be more professional in his career in differing ways.

Hu used himself as an example to illustrate his point. "My major in college was marketing, but this major is rather expansive. I knew I would like to focus more on new media operations in my future work and spent more time on this in college," he said. "Since my first job, I have never stopped learning. I came up with new ideas for the development of a company and got going quickly."

Now Hu is a coach for new media operations along with running his two startups. "Most of my classmates, though, are still working as salespeople. Compared to them, I am more financially stable and enjoy my work a lot more."

The boom of slashers in recent years is due in part to the growing anxiety in society, according to Hu. With more competition in almost every profession, when eight-hour office work doesn't meet some people's needs for a career lift, they choose slashes to be more expansive in a particular area. "But it is different from just getting a part-time job, which focuses on only getting paid and not on elevating your skills," Hu said. "The smartphone and the growing popularity of social media can help magnify a person's abilities."

Hu encourages young people, especially recent college graduates who are just embarking on their career paths, to become slashers in their specific fields so as to get more expertise in their profession.

For a netizen named Yoyo, who called herself "everything but slasher," slashing is being abused.

"Anybody can have a couple of slashes as long as he wants to, like someone who just took a baking class and slashed himself as an amateur baker. Such slashes are wishy-washy because when a person has too many slashes, I think he is just dabbling in this and that and not focusing on his passion," Yoyo said.

Slashing into a career

Pang Youle, a 26-year-old working in Wuhan, capital of central China's Hubei Province, is a professional and popular PowerPoint (PPT) designer, a title that was his slash just two years ago while he was working in a state-owned coal company in his hometown in Shanxi Province. Previous to that, he worked at a language training school in Beijing for half a year as an intern.

"My parents wanted me to get a stable job after college and the coal company was an ideal career in their eyes," Pang said. "The work was mostly easy except when I had to go down into the coal mine and stay there for a couple of hours to check the

conditions."

The complete darkness in the mine made Pang think more about his life and career. "Every time I emerged from the mine and saw the sunlight, I asked myself whether I wanted to spend the rest of my life like this," he said.

At the time, he was also honing his skills in PPT presentations and making resumes. "This was something I loved to spend time on and before I got the internship, I spent three months on my resume to make it stand out from the mass of applicants," Pang said. At the same time, he shared his opinions online and attracted many followers.

Zhang Zhi, a professor at Wuhan Institute of Technology and an expert in PPT design, contacted him and asked him to join his team. After months of hesitation, Pang decided to accept.

"It's a startup company, so we had to work hard to make everything run smoothly," he said. "But I enjoy it a lot and love to share my skills and help younger people with their careers."

His new work has brought financial rewards. By the end of last year, Pang was able to buy his own apartment in Wuhan. "There are more opportunities in our society now and we need to try to tap our potential in different ways. There may be many surprises waiting for you as long as you work hard," he said.

Copyedited by Rebeca Toledo

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