WINES and spirits saleswoman Chan Wai-bing tucked into her lunch, chatting cheerfully to a friend sitting opposite her in the McDonald's restaurant in one of central Guangzhou's bustling hotel areas.
'Let's go shopping after this,' she said, to her well-dressed friend.
Earning almost 3,000 yuan (about HK$2,730) a month, Ms Chan is much better off financially than many of the other young men and women in the provincial city. Her salary is higher than that of many middle-aged professionals, even doctors or university lecturers, who receive a little over 1,000 yuan a month.
A recent survey by Guangzhou's Zhongshan University indicates attitudes about careers are changing, with highly-paid jobs being more coveted than professions traditionally held in high esteem for their 'qualifications and social contributions'. Career choices such as doctor or engineer fall outside the 10 most respected professions, as cited by 1,195 adults aged between 21 and 60.
And the signs are that the craze for monetary rewards in Guangzhou could be greater than in Hong Kong. About 34 per cent of those surveyed rate salary as the most important factor in assessing the social status of occupations, compared to 25 in the same survey done in Hong Kong in 1993 by the City University, which covered 1,079 people in the same age range.
'My main purpose in working is making money,' said Ms Chan, who spends two-thirds of her monthly salary on clothes and beauty care and was fashionably dressed in a tight pastel-orange sweater and a matching jacket.
