2005年NPR美国国家公共电台八月-Breaking Into City Life in Modern China

Today we are going to wrap up our series A Nation of Individuals. All week we’ve been examining the rise of individualism in China. We've heard about an Internet entrepreneur, an AIDS activist 1, a village leader and an evangelical Christian 2. In this final piece, NPR’s Rob Gifford talks to a young woman faced with a very simple but a very difficult choice. It’s a choice that will decide her future.

The leaders of China have many difficult choices today: how to keep the economy growing; what to do about pollution; how to deal with Taiwan. Many of these choices have top-down impact on the lives of ordinary Chinese people. For decades under Maoism everything was decided 3 top down. Big political decisions still are. But the choices that are really transforming China are not being made in the party Politburo, they are being made by ordinary people.

Sitting in a coffee bar in the university district of northwest Beijing, 21-year-old Li Jia has a choice of her own to make that will change her life. She is a confident polite young woman who is happy talking about her life to a Western reporter, but like many people here conditioned by China’s recent totalitarian past, she will not let her real name be used. She has come to Beijing for a 6-month teacher training course from a town in a remote part of southern China, where she worked for two years in a government-paid job as an English teacher. During that time she attained 4 a Bachelor’s degree by correspondence course. After two years’ teaching, though, she couldn’t help thinking there must be more to life. The principal of her school allowed her to come to Beijing on condition that she return after the course is over.

I think life should be wonderful and colorful. I think in the big cities there are more chances and more opportunities I can get. And I can do more things I want. But in the small towns I have some feelings of confinement 5. I don’t like that and as a young girl I have a lot of dreams. And I think in the big cities I can fulfill 6 my dreams.

For decades under Mao and in fact for centuries under the imperial system before that, most Chinese people could only dream of fulfilling their dreams. Now for the first time many have both the social space and the economic wherewithal to do it. There are still many migrant workers in China who leave their tiny hometowns and come to find work out of sheer necessity. But there are also a new breed of young people who are leaving their safe jobs in small towns all around China to dive into the sea of risk and opportunity in the big cities. They are the dreamers who are reshaping China’s urban landscape just as the European migrants did to North America 100 years ago. But Li Jia now has a dilemma 7. She doesn’t really want to return to her safe, stable teaching job as she had promised.

My dilemma is that should I go back to my old job in the, in my hometown, or should I just stay in the big cities to lead a new life. I feel a little nervous. Um, because I think this is really a very big decision for me in my whole life, this is a turning point. And I know that if I make the decision, en, the life will be totally different from the previous one.

Standing 8 at the crossroads of life is made more difficult for Li Jia because her parents do not want her stay in the big city. Confucian tradition, the One-Child Policy and just general concern about safety in China’s convulsing urban centers make many small town Chinese parents very protective of their children. But after 21 years of obedience 9 as a very filial Chinese daughter Li Jia has taken the radical 10 step of going against her parents' wishes and is about to inform her old school that she is not coming back.

It is a big change for me to make the decision by myself and according to my thinking and my judgment 11. And, yeah, it’s really a big change. And, it’s a difficult process. And it’s not so easy for me to persuade my parents to agree with me.

A few days later with classes finished for the summer and the deadline for her decision looming 12, Li Jia is out shopping with one of her friends. Wei Yu is from Li Jia’s hometown and was also a teacher there. She's decided not to return. And Li Jia is leaning that way, too. Li Jia says they love going out shopping together in Beijing stores that are overflowing 13 with goods.

Beijing is much more expensive than my hometown. There are more choices and you, you can buy anything that you want. But maybe in my hometown sometimes the goods are limited.

While Western women juggle 14 at post-modern lives, many Muslim women still struggle to win basic freedoms, Chinese women seem to fit somewhere in between. Maoism destroyed China in many ways. But Mao also said that women hold up half the sky. Although he did much to enslave the entire nation to his political creeds 15, he undoubtedly 16 did much to liberate 17 women. There are of course still many inequalities, but Li Jia and Wei Yu seem to have an unbounded optimism that the world is full of opportunities for them. Li Jia wants to be a businesswoman in a smart suit carrying a briefcase 18. Wei Yu wants to become a scientist or a researcher.

I want to say nothing is impossible. As a woman, as a young woman in China, I think, just I think, if you try your best nothing is impossible. Chinese women are liberated 19 and also in our society there are many many good examples, female examples that they really make a big success in their career as well as have a very good family. I think it’s more equal at this than Japan.

In fact, the choices made by Chinese women like these could well play as a large role in China’s emergence 20 as women who've ever played in any country's emergence as a world power.
Rob Gifford. NPR news, Beijing.

You can meet the other people profiled in our series at our website npr.org.
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to wrap up: to conclude, to close
top-down:至上而下的
correspondence course:函授课程
wherewithal:资金，手段