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By Root 1344 0

biologist with her specimens. She observed that when the head of the human resources department gave a speech, he was so nervous that his hands trembled. Around the new year holiday, a manager on the factory floor ignored her until she boldly wished him a happy new year; he responded warmly and gave her ten yuan in a red envelope, a traditional gift. From this incident, I understand: Some people who have always seemed unapproachable may not really be so. You just need to make yourself a little more approachable.

Her plan to remold herself kicked into high gear. In her diary, Chunming no longer recorded the details of her days but copied the rules for becoming someone else, a task for which she read widely if not always coherently.

Self-confidence, dignity, and elegance are the image that professional women should have.

Benjamin Franklin’s Thirteen Rules of Morality

1. Moderation: Do not eat to saturation or drink to excess.

2. Silence: Do not engage in unimportant talk.

3. Order: Place things in fixed positions and do tasks at fixed times.

4. Decisiveness: Decide what you want to accomplish, be unyielding.

5. Thrift: Do not waste money. Spend money on things that benefit yourself and others . . .

Receiving Criticism

1. When other people criticize you, you must be calm and dispassionate and show that you are listening attentively.

2. Look at the person who is speaking to you.

3. Do not criticize someone who has just criticized you.

4. Do not be dejected.

5. Do not make jokes . . .

The ideals in Chunming’s diary bore an inverse relationship to the world she lived in. One of her lists, entitled “The Fifteen Traits of Unqualified Leaders,” could easily have been called “How to Be a Dongguan Boss,” including trait three:

Busies himself over small things and participates in everything.

and trait fifteen:

When the group is given bonuses or awards, he appears first on the name list; among the executive members, he sits in the front row.

She enrolled in a correspondence course to learn secretarial skills, but gave up because the textbook looked too complicated. An effort to learn public relations also foundered.

How do you plan to learn public relations studies?

Answer: To learn public relations properly, you must first learn how to behave as a person.

At one point, Chunming decided to learn English on her own. She made a list of vocabulary words—

ABLE

ABILITY

ADD

AGO

ALWAYS

AGREE

AUGUST

BABY

BLACK

BREATH

—but gave up before she got to C.

So many things would have to be learned, and the rules for getting ahead bled together in her diary. Sixty percent of people do not have a goal. For a look of “Gorgeous Radiance,” blend black, gray, golden yellow, sapphire blue, and bright red eye shadow. Can be drycleaned; “A” means any detergent can be used. The exchange of greetings is the catalyst and lubricant of conversation. When you drink soup, don’t let the soup spoon rattle against the plate. People who don’t read books will find their speech dull and their appearance repulsive.

* * *

With their mothers far away, migrant workers looked elsewhere for advice. Magazines for migrant readers appeared in the mid-1990s, particularly in the factory cities of southern China. They were published on cheap newsprint and sold for about four yuan, or fifty cents, an issue. The magazines investigated migrant work conditions and gave advice on legal questions, job-hunting, and relationships. In first-person stories that traced the lives of individual migrants, life followed one of two trajectories: A young woman went to the city, endured hardship, and triumphed, usually by starting her own business and buying an apartment. Or a young woman went to the city and was brought low, typically by a man who turned out to be lazy, faithless, or married with a child. These could have been the heroines of Theodore Dreiser, Edith Wharton, and Henry James, for upon such narratives was built the modern Western tradition of the novel. But in the pages of the migrant magazines, the moral