Eight years of hard work and study she spent on a degree in clinical medicine and gynecology. Now, as a newly graduated doctor, she works at a hospital in Shanghai, where a 36-hour shift and distrustful patients are part of everyday life. But when payday comes around, the state does not distinguish between gynecologists and delivery drivers.
It is late in the evening, and I am tired. After a steady round of hot pot, my Chinese friend Sven and I stroll through the brightly lit streets of Chongqing, walking off our meal.
“You don’t seem tired at all,” I say to Sven.
“I am a high-energy person,” she announces.
Clearly, I am not the first to point out her intense aura of energy and resilience, and I begin to think that this must be the answer to how she manages the enormous workload and the unreasonable salary she wakes up to every day.
A Salary with Crap on Top
Sven is 26 years old and grew up in Chongqing. She is an only child, her parents are divorced (like many others among this generation in China), and she was always good at chemistry and biology in school.
Now Sven works as a gynecologist in Shanghai, living out the dream she has had since childhood, when TV dramas set in operating rooms rolled across the screen:
“As a child I loved watching foreign TV dramas that took place in hospitals. It may sound a bit macabre, but I always looked forward to the moments when they would perform surgery. Ever since then, human anatomy has interested me.”
Being able to perform a complicated craft such as surgery is what drives Sven in her work.
“Besides that, I am a feminist,” she adds (Sven does not want a husband or children because she believes it would slow down her career), “so I also really enjoy spending so much time with women at work.”
I understand all of that. But when I ask her about salary and working hours, I get a shock:
“As a newly graduated gynecologist, I earn between 8,000 and 10,000 RMB per month as a full-time employee.”
And just to make clear what that equals in US dollars: 1 RMB = 0.5 USD. That means Sven’s maximum monthly salary (before tax, mind you) corresponds to 1,452 USD per month.
“And what does it actually mean to be ‘full-time employed’ in China?” I ask.
Sven explains that she usually arrives at work at eight in the morning and finishes at five in the afternoon. “But if there is an important surgery that day—which there often is,” she adds, “I might not get home until one in the morning.”
On top of that, Sven has 4–5 night shifts every month. And a night shift in China is not like in Denmark, I can tell you. Four or five times a month, Sven wears her uniform for 36 hours straight. In China, a night shift does not mean that you have the day before or after off.
“Those days are just normal working days, so the night shifts are simply an ‘add-on’,” Sven explains—what to my ears sounds like “crap on top of crap.”
Taxes and Distrustful Patients
“So how much tax do you pay?” I ask.
She explains that if you earn 5,000–8,000 RMB per month, you pay 3% tax.
8,001–17,000 RMB per month is 10% tax, and
17,001–30,000 RMB per month is 20% tax.
Sven therefore pays 10% tax on her monthly salary, which at most is 10,000 RMB. That means she receives a maximum of 9,000 RMB (1,307 USD) per month after tax, of which 3,500 RMB goes toward the rent for her run-down one-room apartment (Sven’s own words) in Shanghai.
Compared to the salary of a teenage part-time worker in a Danish supermarket, I hardly know what to say…
But for Sven, the worst part is neither the low salary nor the unreasonable working hours—it is the distrustful patients who refuse necessary treatment.
“Many Chinese people believe that the treatments we doctors recommend are only offered in order to make money from them,” she explains.
Patients are simply suspicious of whether doctors truly want what is best for them, or whether they are recommending an MRI scan just to bring money into the hospital.
“The negative attitude means that I often work under great pressure, because I have to fight for my patients’ trust.”
Why Not Just Be a Delivery Driver?
Even though I know Sven loves her profession and is proud of it, I find it hard to understand how she does not burn out under these conditions.
One of the many yellow delivery drivers passes us on his scooter, and I ask Sven how much someone like him earns.
“It’s about the same,” she replies, laughing as she sees my jaw drop.
In a communist-run country, you obviously do not discriminate. I should have known that.
“So why didn’t you just become a delivery driver?” I ask.
She laughs a little and replies:
“Actually, if I hadn’t chosen to study medicine, I might have studied art or literature. But from a realistic point of view, that doesn’t offer good job opportunities in China—only for those who come from wealthy families.”
With a medical degree, Sven is therefore better off. She is aware of that, and her biggest motivation is to look for greener pastures in either Germany or Belgium.
“The only downside,” she concludes, “is that the weather is cold and wet in those countries.”
But with a salary many times higher than what she earns now, I comfort her by saying that she would always be able to take a trip to the Maldives or Hawaii if the Western climate ever became too chilly.
We reach my hotel, where we say goodbye for the night. Tired, I lay my head on the pillow. My last thoughts before I close my eyes are about all the young people in China who, unlike Sven, are not “high-energy persons.”
How do they manage under these working conditions?
