Entrepreneurs deserve support prior to success

The Internet has been abuzz recently over the story of a college graduate who attained an unusual level of success after he quit his white-collar job to start a business selling roasted pig feet.

The engineer-turned-entrepreneur, Lai Zhangping, graduated in 2008 and went to work in Zhejiang Province as an engineer earning 5,000 yuan ($816.19) a month. He happened upon his new career selling trotters in 2012 after visiting a friend who was studying in Chengdu, Sichuan Province. On his friend's campus, Lai met a vendor who said he sold 3 million yuan worth of roasted pig feet a year.

Lai soon quit his job and moved to Chengdu, where he spent two months learning the vendor's "secret recipe." He then came to Shanghai and started a business with two friends selling roasted trotters out of stall near the universities in Songjiang district.

Lai's family didn't take his decision well. Many people cannot understand why someone would leave a white-collar career for an undistinguished job that made almost no use of one's education or professional skills. His parents wondered why they paid to have him educated if he was just going to spend his life selling pig feet.

These types of stories regularly pop up in the Chinese media. Notable examples include a former middle school physics teacher from Hunan Province who became a construction worker and a graduate from Peking University who opened his own rice noodle shop. Those stories also stirred up debates about why and whether educated people should take jobs doing what many people consider to be menial labor.

There has always been a link between class and career in Chinese culture. There is a Mencius quote that says the man who uses his brain will govern, while the man who uses his strength will be governed. Confucius said that a good scholar can become an official - a job that was as good as it got for an ordinary person in his day.

Both Confucius and Mencius divided people in classes based on their jobs. In feudal China, officials were at the top, followed by peasant farmers, laborers and merchants. Clearly, times have changed, but the traditional concepts of prestige linger in the Chinese mind-set. Many people still believe that a civil servant job is the best one can get. Likewise, there isn't a lot of prestige in selling food out of a stall. It's the same way for many entrepreneurs.

This helps explain why Lai's parents didn't back his career change. Of course, there were some who supported Lai. While he was still operating his business out of a temporary stall, Lai caught the attention of the Shanghai Technology Entrepreneurship Foundation for Graduates, which offered him start-up capital. The funding allowed him to rent a permanent stall on Wenhui Road.

Lai eventually won the support of his parents and others. In a recent online poll, the majority of respondents backed Lai's decision. But it should be noted that the support came only with success. According to the media reports that detailed Lai's story, he said he can earn up to 40,000 yuan a month selling roasted trotters. That's eight times the salary he earned as an engineer. It's safe to say that he wouldn't have received as much support if he hadn't been making significantly more money than the average white-collar workers.

A recent commentary in the People's Daily said that consumers will have different demands and expectations for goods and services as China's economy develops, opening new opportunities for entrepreneurs.

It would be better for both society and the economy if more people begin to recognize and support entrepreneurs, even those who choose to enter a low-prestige industry.