Baobao, Beibei's sister in Texas, is coming back to Beijing on a business trip. She is on her way to her company's Beijing office on Ritan Road. It was opened a year ago and currently has seventy employees.
In the red cab, the taxi driver talks to her nonstop as if she was his old pal. "In the old days I was driven by a chauffeur. Now I have to be a driver myself to make ends meet. The older I get, the less useful I become. Shame on me! I was laid off a year ago when our work unit was in the process of youhua zuhe, optimization. I was a chuzhang, a department chief. In other cities, I would be a big deal. But a chuzhangis nobody here. I guess you've heard of the popular saying: 'Only in Beijing will you know your rank is low, only in Guangdong will you know your pay is low, and only in Hainan will you know that your energy level is low.' "
"Oh, yeah?" Baobao laughs out loud. It seems that every Beijing cab driver knows how to be Jay Leno. Although the car engine makes weird annoying noises and the air conditioning is broken, Baobao doesn't regret not taking the more expensive Citroen cab: this driver is funny.
"I was laid off 'cause I was over forty, too old to be a chuzhang" the driver continues in his slippery Beijing accent. "My replacement is only thirty-two. After staying at home for eight months, I decided to be a cab driver, since I needed bucks to send my kid to college. I tell ya, the adjustment isn't easy. I have to swallow all kinds of shit. Just a while ago, a kid got upset when I honestly told him I was new and didn't know the roads well. He left the car immediately. I heard him calling me an old idiot after he got out. He's younger than my son," the man exclaims, almost in disbelief.
"He was rude!" Baobao shakes her head.
"Nowadays, kids become so bad-mannered – I was better off as a Red Guard," the driver comments as Baobao pays him. Nicholas Tse's "Everybody Is Stupid" plays loudly on the car radio.
Baobao walks toward the building, and Big Chen, the office manager, greets her outside the door. As they walk in, she sees lines of model-type young women sitting and standing along the hallways.
"Why are there so many girls here? It looks like a beauty pageant," Baobao says to Big Chen.
"We're conducting interviews for administrative jobs today," Big Chen replies, giving Baobao a stack of resumes. To her surprise, on each resume, next to the applicant's name, is her age, and they are all between twenty-one and twenty-five.
"What are their requirements?" asks Baobao.
"Female, twenty-one to twenty-five, pleasant-looking, college graduate, good phone manners, Chinese and English typing skills, college English six plus," Big Chen recites.
"We can't do this. American companies won't tolerate ageism," Baobao warns Big Chen.
"We aren't just an American company. We're an American company with Chinese characteristics," Big Chen corrects Baobao. " China has too many people. We need to find the most qualified people in the shortest amount of time. It's what we call efficiency."
"But what about women over twenty-five?"
Big Chen chuckles, making Baobao feel like he was telling her, "You are over the hill."
" China changes at an incredible rate, much faster than the United States. Five years here is like ten in the States. It's already another generation, with new knowledge that is lost on their elders. There are a lot of limitations to older people. They can't keep up with the Internet age, their English is poor…" Big Chen explains.
"You can't make such generalizations. A Chinese man just won the U.S. national book award for writing in English. He's over forty."
"But he is in the States, not in China," Big Chen says, shrugging.
If age and beauty play such an important role in job seeking, what about finding a boyfriend? What are the fates of women who are neither young nor attractive? Looking at those starry-eyed young women, Baobao says good-bye to Big Chen and wishes him good luck.
She strides into the street, thinking, "What on earth are the Chinese thinking these days?" She enters a bookstore out of curiosity. On the new releases table, she sees several titles: I Say No to My Parents by Cold Mountain, age fourteen; Young and Wild by Chuchu, age eleven; and My Problems with Boys by Nuzi, age seven. Baobao can't help but laugh; there is a market for books by little rebels.
Baobao was a rare rebel in her generation. She abandoned her comfortable life for the United States at a young age. Now, a dutiful wife and mother of three, and an engineer who works nine to five and lives in a San Antonio suburb, she is not edgy or antiestablishment. Suddenly she feels old.
Walking out of the bookshop, she enters an art gallery nearby. In each painting, whether the subject is peonies or horses or monkeys or landscapes, all the painters signed their age along with their name. Yani, eighteen years old; Xixi, fifteen year old. The younger they are, the more expensive the paintings are. Since when has this old civilization become youth-obsessed? she wonders.
"Hey, Baobao. Is that you?" A woman calls her.
"Oh, Mimi!" Baobao greets Mimi, Beibei's lawyer friend, "What are you doing here?"
"I'm searching for paintings to place in my new living room," says Mimi.
"You bought another house?"
"My husband and I are expecting a baby. We bought a second home so our parenets can visit us and the baby and stay there."
"Can I go see the condo with you?" Baobao asks. "I'm thinking of buying property in Beijing as well."
"Sure," Mimi agrees.
In the Soho condominium, they and two other couples are taken on a tour of the luxurious "Manhattan-style" model homes by a young salesman.
"How old are you?" the salesman asks one of the young, fashionable-looking couples.
"Twenty-eight," the couple answer with pride.
"So young! You are from the new new generation. I admire you for having the money to buy a Soho. Are you also from the new new generation?" The salesman asks the other couple, who also look to be in their twenties.
Now Baobao understands how fast the generations change in China. The new generation used to mean the young revolution-aires, the generation that participated in the Cultural Revolution from 1966 to 1976. During this time the "ideological purity" of the party was reestablished and the revolutionary spirit was rekindled. After the Cultural Revolution ended, the new generation meant those who became college students and gained Western influence in the late 1970s and early 1980s. They were the ones who could look back at the Cultural Revolution and give it a fair evaluation with their knowledge and new ideas. Nowadays the 'new' new generation means the GenXers and GenYers who were born in the 1970s, who drank Coke at an early age, who don't have any painful memories of the Cultural Revolution, and who are more liberal in their lifestyle.
"Although we were born in the 1970s, we aren't part of that new new generation, we are the 'post-new' new generation, those born after 1976. We started to learn English in grade one. The 'new' new generation didn't start learning English until middle school. There is quite a difference here."
"So you're even younger and more successful!" says the salesman.
"That's correct!" The woman grabs her husband's arm, looking at the others triumphantly.
Baobao finds the conversation unbearable, so she speaks. "Talking about age and success, you are in no position to be competing with my friend's baby," she touches Mimi's belly. "He's already living in a big house and he's going to live here before he is even born! And Soho is only his second home."
CHUZHANG: Department chief.
YOUHUA ZUHE: Optimization.