Personal stories are worth sharing. Each one of us has one. When there are 1.3 billion Chinese, most of theirs get lost in the mix. This is Shuan Shuan, one of my better friends in Hangzhou. She was born in Henan, a poor province in central China and completed school through fourth grade. Hers is a family of farmers. In her mid teens, she moved to Hangzhou and has worked ever since in a pottery wholesale shop 60 hours a week, mostly selling to hotels.

One on hand, Shuan Shuan is success story. Born twenty years earlier, she would have grown up a farmer, probably never attending school because of the cultural revolution. As it is, Shuan Shuan and her family have become rich poor people. They have access to healthcare if need be, they live in a city, they have some money to spend on nicer clothes. But Shuan Shuan is stuck, almost a sacrificial generation on the road to development. She wrote to me recently, saying,

"Time moves extremely fast, yet another year has passed. And following time's flow, it has also taken me in the direction of old age. I think it's extremely scary. I have been all right recently, I have happy days and sad ones. I feel somewhat weary, feel like I don't want to do anything but stay home, every day lay at home. I would like to ask for vacation time, to visit my old hometown in Henan, but I don't know if my boss would permit it..."

Shuan Shuan is stuck, and it's hard to watch. Especially because she knows it too. Without a college education, she will not escape retail.

Sometimes development and life is not fair. And this is one of the success stories. My point is certainly not that development is bad. Lives are better all over the world in the last 20 years. And Shuan Shuan would certainly take this life over being a peasant. I simply want to bring one life up to the surface for a moment.