From my observation, most Chinese people especially those living in a small city like Fuzhou where genuinely good job opportunities are so few, their greatest life’s ambition is to buckle down to a secure job no matter how menial and repetitive. Great examples include when highly qualified engineering grads enter into clerical roles in government departments where starting pay + allowances（工资+奖金）generally go higher than RMB2000/month but like most things in supposedly egalitarian China, you’ll need connections to get into a cushy government job. At the risk of sounding like a ‘know-it-all’, this side of Chinese society may be more difficult to observe for foreigners living in China.

While I agree that hairdressing is a fantastic career option in the Westernised World promising pretty decent money, low barrier for entry, and if you’re good, a whole lot more money and glamour than any law school graduate paper-pusher would ever enjoy, the reality of hairdressing remains pretty gloom in China. In fact, I believe most private-sector jobs in Fuzhou are pretty horrible due to an oversupply of college graduates and an even greater glut of lowly-skilled migrant workers from the country in a country where labour laws are still pretty much non-existent. I certainly hope that Mao Mao fulfills her dream but it would be so difficult in a city where citizens are highly price-sensitive especially when it comes to manual labouring services. Please bear in mind that disposable income is pretty high in the West so people place lower value on physical goods and are generally happier to pay for personalised services. This is in contrast with China where the average un-married person still lives in cramped apartments with parents and could quite easily spend 50% of net income on food.

What I’m trying to say is it is an extremely rare but courageous thing for a Chinese person to sacrifice better pay in pursuit of their dreams. I mean even in the West where living standards measured by the amount of material goods we could afford is almost too high, there are still a lot of people who forego their intuitive interests in pursuit of more money/status. It is hence not surprising that in China where the average person’s desire for material goods are no where near saturation point they would choose a CK spray over dream:-p

Or you took my comment as coljac’s? in which I case I needn’t be putting up the following elaboration.

I agree that the hairdressing business is not as fascinating as it could be. You don’t see much creativity in this job in China. ( because too many are not treating it as a career but merely a way of making subsistance living?)

That said, you don’t have to be a bored and boring hairdresser just because you work in China. The art of hairdressing is a worthy dream, as opposed to Coljac’s claim.

A certain famous hairdresser here in Singapore charges a few hundreds SGD for a haircut. Of course, most of his clients are rich TaiTais and celebrities but hey, he is sort of a celebrity by his own right.

To me here is what is fascinating. In the US (and apparently in Japan) becoming a hairdresser is not considered a bad job, and I think this is mainly because (as coljac says) it requires both skills and creativity. If you adjust for cost of living, I think the income levels are quite comparable. However, in the US and Japan (I am guessing) there are also many more jobs which allow for more creativity and less repetition than cutting hair. In China, the percentage of people who work “interesting” jobs is far less than it is in the US (I wish I had statistics to support this, but anybody who has lived in both countries could back me up on this point). In other words, Chinese jobs on average are much more boring than American ones. One would think a job such as cutting hair, would be more sought after in China than it is in the US, but based on my experiences, this is clearly not the case.

Good Luck to your friend though.