Cheng Ajuan stands disconcerted at the end of a long queue. "Please keep in line," drone the staffers around her. She is waiting to take the entrance exam required to become a village official.

"Show your admission ticket and ID card before entering the examination room," she's told repeatedly. Cheng can only tell herself chances of passing the exam are slim.

Given today's tough economic climate and rising unemployment, college graduates have become more practical about jobs. Village official posts are now more popular option for post-80s graduates.

According to a recent survey by Hu Yuegao, a professor at China Agricultural University, there are 180,000 incumbent student-turned-village-officials at present. Last year, 19,376 graduates in Beijing competed for 1,600 of these positions. Working in rural areas has become more attractive for graduates.

Student-turned-village-officials are those with undergraduate degrees or higher who work as leading members in rural villages. In the mid-1990s, Jiangsu Province began to encourage college graduates to work in grassroots administrative organizations. By 2005, the practice had been widely adopted across the country.

Luckily for Cheng, she was recruited as a village official in Beijing's  Fangshan District. Her two-year job in the Changyang Town government is to smooth communication between the government and rural residents through video publicity. "I'm very fortunate to have this experience," Cheng told ChinAfrica. 

Getting involved

 It would be easy to assume that college students used to an active campus life would find adjusting to a rural existence a dull task. However, this is not the case for Cheng.

"Rural life is much better than I expected, partly because I am in a suburb of Beijing where it is more developed," she says. "People here are leading happy lives. They live in spacious houses outfitted with high-definition TV sets, refrigerators, air conditioners and microwaves. Most of the villagers enjoy government-subsidized medicare, and they often get together to participate in various activities such as painting, singing and dancing. I became fond of this place quickly."

Working in the countryside is a good way to build bridges, so to speak. Due to different backgrounds, rural residents often misunderstand college graduates, seeing them as arrogant and spoiled, unwilling and unable to bear hard rural life. And what they have learned in class may not always be applicable in a real-life situation. As a result, villagers are often not very supportive of their work.

"An effective way to gain their acceptance is to find common ground," Wu Guohao, another village official in Fangshan District, explains. "Once, I dealt with a dispute between two families, and I felt so helpless that I [was unable to] calm them down," he said. When he learned that the son of one of the women involved was his age, he started a conversation revolving around the young man's interests and from there guided the topic to the dispute. "Finally, with her son's help, the woman accepted my solution to the issue," Wu said.

"Through my experience, I've learned that to be friends with villagers is a great help. You have to relinquish any airs and treat them as equal. You should be aware that you come here to serve rather than to govern, and you should know their needs," he added.

Dedication

 Being a village official means giving up many attractions and the well-paid jobs that can bring extensive networks of contacts and experiences in developed cities. Generally, both the relatively harsh living conditions in rural areas and few material rewards are not huge draws. The college graduates who do get involved are endowed with a sense of dedication to the rural cause.

"Frankly speaking, as I have received a Master's degree, being a village official kind of wastes my talents in minor jobs. However, my heart tells me I should choose this. Everyone should have this sense of responsibility and dedication," says Cheng, adding that if something is gained, something has to be lost.

"In 2008, I was chosen to be one of 20 volunteers selected from four top universities in China to work as a pre-game volunteer for the Beijing Organizing Committee for the Olympic Games. However, this honor also meant giving up something at the same time. To be a pre-game volunteer, I had to postpone my graduation for half a year, causing me run into the toughest time for job hunters as economic meltdown hit the world in 2009," she says. Cheng ended up missing her graduate degree graduation ceremony. "However, I never regretted my choice," she says. "I learned about dedication, which is the same reason why I chose to be a village official."

Personal gains

 In spite of the sacrifice and hardship of working in rural areas, the valuable experiences are myriad. Working in grassroots administrative organizations develops people skills. It also teaches citizen-oriented policy-making to this post-80s generation who will be the mainstay of China's political arena in 10 to 20 years.

In Changyang, Cheng has witnessed the difficult process of housing demolition and relocation of local villagers and she has learned a lot. "[When] we listen to their needs patiently, our work has been more easily done," she explains.

"At first, locals were not supportive of the demolition. They worried about their accommodation, and the quality of [yet-to-be-built] new apartments. To erase their worries, we patiently explained the policy on demolition and involved them in supervising the whole process. It proved helpful," Cheng says, noting that her close contact with rural residents has revealed to her the true meaning behind serving people's best interests.

No matter the ups and downs of her work, she realizes her future is full of promise.