I described my job as a most accidental landing in my life. Departing from London in the middle of the pandemic, losing my job and PhD offers due to institutional financial difficulties, I had to go home and figured out my next destination. I spent a few months with my family, which is rare in the past six years. Luckily, we all enjoyed the time immensely, and it well prepared me to work out my next stage. I traveled with my parents to first Yun’nan and then Shan’xi and passed my driving license test in between two trips. Right after the Spring Festival in the end of February, I thought, holiday is about to over.

I did not realize how disadvantageous I was until my job applications slowly came back. The process of applying for a single job normally lasts a month, and hence I had to acquire careful time management to avoid clashes among multiple applications. Social network, meaning university friends, parents’ network etc., could efficiently speed the whole process up, but I had none due to my oversea education background and ego. I started my job seeking with editors, and then moving to consultant and media. I even seriously consider marketing at some point but soon gave up. I did many written tests per week, learning things that I had little knowledge of and pretending to be an expert in interviews. They are strangely interesting experiences and more strangely, I was good at it. I eventually got numerous offers in two months and chose the media consultant one whose main client is the state-owned telivision, like the CGTN.

Indeed, there are a lot of ‘if’ before landing on this job. I prefer Shang’hai than Beijing primarily because of living quality and less political atmosphere, but the city did not offer me any good chance. I prefer jobs like journalists or editors, but their salaries do not allow me to provide myself in a mega-city. I never thought of working for a state-related sector, and I was not interested in (politely put it) state promotion at all. My parents and most of my friends were all surprised, if not shocked, by the decision I made, as it seems to be against faiths that I have been upholding for years, while my grandparents were rather excited. They wrongly took it as an attempt or compromise that I made to integrate into the real Chinese society, and my grandma called all her friends to celebrate the grow-up of her granddaughter.

I made the choice for five main reasons. First, the unsatisfying job-seeking experiences taught me to start from somewhere first, as I understood that it is nearly impossible to have an ideal one as my first job. Second, as the choice is essentially pragmatic, it would be better to start with a job that gives me more leaverage for my future career. Third, my interviews with my current boss are all very much focused on research than ideology, and it left me with good impression that room for research is not so surrpressed as I would expect. Fourth, having state department as your clients makes a strong CV in China, especially at the moment. All companies would love to have someone know what their state counterparts have in mind and therefore they can move accordingly and in advance. At last, the money is reasonable.

I arrived in Beijing on May 10, at 4am, after a five-hour flight delay. The flat was near railways leading to Beijing West Station 2km from my place. It is a loft with an unusually decent kitchen. A nice park called ‘the lotus pound’ located 1km away, which later became my running field. Three malls can be found within 3km, and one of them has a movie theatre. As a cyclist trained by Scotland’s weather and hills, I normally cycle to work. In a city where transportation time easily gets to an hour and above, this fifteen-minute route is my daily mental-health saver. Another saver to me are restaurants in my neighborhood. Yi’yang, a small city in Hu’nan province, where my family comes from, has its Beijing office 0.7 meters away from my flat, and they quietly run a restaurant on the ground floor. A Japanese Izakaya which hides itself in an alley is another secret favourite of mine. It took me 5 minutes to walk there and ordered beer along with reasonable food. Given that the west side of Beijing is known as ‘the desert of delicacy’, I am already blessed.

I have been working for 18 weeks now. Looking back to the starting point, I am rather calm and emotionless. The unpredictability of life is self-evident, but the pandemic-level unpredictability remians overwhelming. I am happy that I did not immerse myself in regret and dissapointment. At the same time, I appreciate that no huge difficultise have occured as I tried to reposition my life (fingers cross + knocking on wood). Representing people who know me and have witnessed these changes, my mum did asked me: don’t you feel upset about derailing from ‘the’ path? Well, I sometimes do, but I choose to move forward.