Chinese Post80s Generational Resilience: Chengyu (成语) as Communicative Resources for Adaptation and Change

Abstract

The combined forces of China’s reforms, resurgent traditional values, and problematic labor market have led the Chinese Post80s generation to reconstruct their careers. Drawing on 33 in-depth interviews, this study examines how Post80s professionals communicatively constitute resilience as they utilize and transform meanings of chengyu (成语, Chinese four-word idiom encapsulating shared values). Guided by chengyu, Post80s construct resilience processes from temporal (past-present-future), relational (self-other-collective), and introspective perspectives (passion-practice). As discursive cultural resources of resilience, chengyu legitimize choices, frame actions, inspire ways of managing change and expectations, and offer comfort in difficult times. This study expands resilience research to a non-Western context and highlights how cultural and generational discourses can mobilize agency in the constitution of resilience. Findings offer practical implications in promoting and cultivating resilience.

Keywords

resilience career Chinese Post80s organizational communication

Resilience, a process activated when humans experience disruption, is critical for individuals and communities not only in disastrous or traumatic situations but also in everyday hardships ( Bonanno, 2004; Buzzanell, 2010, 2018). Scholars have theorized communication approaches to human resilience and strategies for resilience-producing interactions (Buzzanell, 2018 Doerfel & Harris, 2017; Hall, 2016; Long et al., 2015). Despite their calls to understand resilience as constituting processes in different contexts, research is only beginning to explicate how resilience is enacted drawing from cultural and generational resources with none investigating the community of Post80s generational professionals in China.

Although every generational cohort faces unique circumstances in which they utilize their values and understandings of the world to act in complex and significant ways (Hansen & Leuty, 2012; Joshi, Dencker, Franz, & Martocchio, 2010; Lyons, Ng, & Schweitzer, 2014), at 240 million members in a political-economic national superpower, the Chinese Post80s generation (born: 1980-1989) is one of the largest and most influential cohorts in today’s global workforce and politics. Urban Chinese Post80s face many challenges as they consider current work, career aspirations, and perceived precarious futures in terms of income, return on investment, ability to fulfill familial obligations, and position in Chinese and global economies. Identifying these struggles and how their responses are culturally situated provides insights for organizational communication scholarship and development of Post80s generational workers.

Drawing from scholarship on occupational narratives (Lucas & Buzzanell, 2004), metaphors and frames (Agarwal & Buzzanell, 2015), and memorable messages (Lucas & Buzzanell, 2011; Medved, Brogan, McClanahan, Morris, & Shepherd, 2006) that serve as discursive resources to generate resilience and socialize intergenerationally, we position Post80s’ constitution of resilience as influenced and guided by Chinese chengyu (成语). Chengyu are idioms that crystallize traditional Chinese ethics and philosophies (e.g., Taoism, Confucianism) and function as linguistic expressions widely used and implicitly referenced today (Guo & Hu, 2010). The ethics, wisdom, heroes, and storylines underlying chengyu reinforce cultural identity, surface predominant values, and reveal pathways for reintegrating after setbacks. This study unpacks the nuances of cultural and generational construction of resilience in everyday work by identifying how cultural philosophies and sayings, appropriated by individuals and communities, enable resilience in particular spatiotemporal-generational locations. Our study further explicates how discursive resources such as chengyu are mobilized to induce and cultivate resilience not only to respond to but also anticipate hardships. We also contribute to the communication theory of resilience by indicating how resilience constituted by Chinese Post80s professionals is multifaceted. Their focus on overcoming everyday workplace obstacles to bring together self-other, past-present-future, personally satisfying and societally contributing work into lifelong flexible careers required the values and insights of chengyu. Finally, we respond to the call of communication scholars (e.g., Hanchey & Berkelaar, 2015; Kang, Jia, & Ju, 2016; Mitra, 2015) to disentangle Western influences on non-Western, particularly Chinese, organizational communication and promote greater understandings and applications of the forms and functions of Chinese philosophies and their linguistic manifestations (chengyu) for resilience in career and organizational life.

Literature Review

A Communicative Perspective to Resilience

The communicative perspective situates resilience in human interaction constituted by discursive and material resources (Buzzanell, 2018). Studies of human resilience suggest that the processes through which people (re)integrate and transform difficulties often coincide with what is meaningful to them within the sociocultural and communication infrastructures of their communities (Aldrich & Meyer, 2015; Buzzanell, 2010; Houston, Spialek, Cox, Greenwood, & First, 2015; Xu, 2013). Although past research depicted human resilience as atypical, scholars and practitioners now regard resilience as everyday processes (Afifi & Keith, 2004; Bonanno, 2004; Buzzanell, 2010, 2018; Long et al., 2015). They consider human resilience to be common and just as important to individual and community renewal as repairs to physical infrastructures (Doerfel & Harris, 2017), noting that culturally patterned strategies differ (Houston et al., 2015; Luthar, Doernberger, & Zigler, 1993; Ulturgasheva, 2014). To capture the everyday constitution of resilience, Ungar (2004) conceptualizes resilience as “the outcome from negotiations between individuals and their environment for the resources to define themselves as healthy amidst conditions collectively viewed as adverse” (p. 342). Similarly, Agarwal and Buzzanell (2015) describe resilience as “intersubjectively constructed through co-crafting productive narratives, identities, emotions, and networks that enable reintegration and/or transformation after change” (p. 415). Both highlight that individuals have agency in drawing upon and negotiating contextual resources by which they adapt to, and/or transform collectively viewed adverse conditions.

Resilience processes happen in the moment but also develop productive discursive and material patterns for the future (Long et al., 2015; Lucas & Buzzanell, 2012; Villagran, Canoza, & Ledford, 2013; Wilson & Gettings, 2012). These anticipatory processes are captured in memories invoked by particular materialities (e.g., foods distributed during economic downturns, see Lucas & Buzzanell, 2011), in narratives (e.g., post-Wenchuan earthquake story sharing, see Xu, 2013), in phrases aligned with identity anchors and community values (Lucas & Buzzanell, 2004; Villagran et al., 2013), and in perceived meaningfulness of actions and events (e.g., “calling” among Chinese students, see Zhang, Dik, Wei, & Zhang, 2015). Language (e.g., memorable messages, occupational stories, and colloquiums) provides root metaphors and stories that help people create new normals, construct identities, and foreground productive action (Buzzanell, 2010; see also Agarwal & Buzzanell, 2015; Lucas & Buzzanell, 2004, 2011, 2012). These discursive resources rooted in cultural contexts integrate into identities (Medved et al., 2006) and become activated in situations demanding adaptive-transformative possibilities (Buzzanell, 2018). Buzzanell and Turner (2003) demonstrated how families use phrases and storytelling to reconstruct normalcy by portraying their current and pre-job loss lives as similar. Crafting norms helped them regain control, preserve dignity, and foreground positive outlooks and actions. Lucas and Buzzanell (2004) explored how occupational narratives that people tell at and about work enable them to redefine career success and find dignity in their work. Agarwal and Buzzanell (2015) studied how disaster-relief workers enact resilience to overcome emotional and physical challenges. They use discursive frames such as family, humanitarian work ethics, and spiritual callings in handling tensions encountered in extreme work contexts. This body of research highlights the role of discursive resources in constituting individual and collective resilience. Extending this scholarship, we study resilience constitution in a non-Western context.

Cultural Discursive Resilience Resources in China

As one of the most neglected topics in the study of resilience, culture is foundational to shaping resources and practices to cope with adversity (Liebenberg, Ikeda, & Wood, 2015; Panter-Brick, 2015). For example, Liebenberg et al. (2015) found that cutlural resources–the collectivist worldview of Aboriginal life philosophies that emphasizes holistic understandings of support including ancestors, linguistic choices, spirituality, well-being, and the environment–shape how resilience is enacted in Aboriginal communities. Despite cultural variations, extant resilience research has relied mostly on North American empirical data and constructs anchored in Eurocentric epistemology (Ungar, 2008).

A few scholars have studied resilience processes of Chinese youth and children (Stewart & Sun, 2007), victims of natural disasters (Xu, 2013), marginalized members such as farmers in degrading ecological environments (Van Haaften, Yu, & Van De Vijver, 2004), and urban migrant workers (Wong & Song, 2008). These studies focus on individual’s sensemaking about adversity and what she or he perceives to be behavioral options for resilience processes in China. Wong and Song (2008) studied the relationship of stress and meaning of migration of migrant workers in Shanghai. They found that strong/positive meanings of migration (e.g., bringing money to the family, improving status) promote resilience development. Female migrant workers achieved better mental health because they could construct more positive meanings of their current life stressors. Shek (2005) investigated how traditional Chinese cultural beliefs of adversity encapsulated in chengyu influence adolescents’ resilience behaviors. Adolescents with stronger endorsement of positive Chinese beliefs about adversity (e.g., Zhi zu chang le, happy is she or he who is contented; You zhi zhe shi jing cheng, when there is a will, there is a way) attained better psychological well-being and adjustment. Lee, Kwong, Cheung, Ungar, and Cheung (2010) also investigated the relationship between resilience-related beliefs and positive child development, concluding that “resilience beliefs are a cognitive resource contributing to the maintenance of quality of life in the face of adversity” (p. 449). Despite important insights regarding the role cultural discourses play in resilience constitution in China, these studies are limited in presenting a robust picture of how cultural discursive resources are mobilized by individuals to enact resilience in situated contexts. A grounded approach privileging participants’ voices and accounts is also needed to add greater specificity and cultural insights.

Taking communicative and cultural perspectives, this study focuses on how Post80s professionals use chengyu in constituting resilience in the workplace. Chengyu are classified as cultural narratives consisting of sociologically significant stories that sustain social worlds (Richardson, 1990). Different from other cultural narratives, most chengyu are based on stories and events that can be traced back thousands of years.¹ Similar to how Western cultural understandings of the frontier (Harter, 2004), meritocracy (“cream rises to the top”), and steadfast determination and “can do” attitude (Lucas & Buzzanell, 2004), chengyu guide communicative behavior even when phrasing is not invoked explicitly. Frequently used in contemporary Chinese language, chengyu provide natural discursive sites to explore cultural and generational understandings of adversity and resilience. The meanings of chengyu cannot be inferred from their elements but need to be considered within specific cultural and historical contexts. Such meanings are (re)collected, adapted, and contextualized. Individuals’ use of chengyu “reside in relation to other collectives’ [generations’] landscapes of meaning” just as places offer sites for collective memories (Aden et al., 2009, p. 324) that then operate as resilience-producing agents (Buzzanell, 2018).

Workplace Adversity for Post80s Generational Workers

The Post80s cohort² is important because of its size, positioning between reformed and emerging policies and practices, and transformational potential. Their own and others’ understandings of their motivations and expectations pose challenges as this generation bridges past and future to deal with webs of interconnecting issues unique to them and their worlds. Post80s are members of the first generational cohort in China born into a society that was beginning the Reform and Opening Up. This society was and is dealing with effects of one child policies, establishing new employment and labor practices, witnessing massive rural-to-urban migration, navigating soft power diplomacy, and becoming increasingly global, capitalistic, consumerist, and entrepreneurial (Z. Cheng, Smyth, & Guo, 2015; Wallis, 2013). Professional Post80s are expected to change China and Chinese workplaces because of their education, Internet sophistication, and opportunities (Sun & Wang, 2010).

Raised as the focus of familial attention and material resources given their status as the first generation born under One Child policy,³ Post80s professionals experience pressures aligned with self- and other-expectations for return on investment and securing satisfactory (or better) incomes for current lifestyles and support of parents and grandparents (i.e., strong filial piety and intergenerational caregiving norms). They face these expectations in an economy where characteristics of good jobs are contested (Long, 2016). In addition, Post80s deal with increased competition because of limited jobs and global economy crisis (Long et al., 2015; Long, Buzzanell, & Kuang, 2016). China has witnessed significant increase of the number of university graduates annually since 2001, with 7.49 million graduating in 2017 (Chinese Education Online, 2017). Although their material well-being and living conditions are much better than those of their parents at this point in their lives, the cost of living also is higher (Sabet, 2011). Other difficulties faced by Chinese Post80s professionals include gloomy employment prospects and employment markets increasingly skewed to the well-born and exceptionally well-connected (Long et al., 2016). Examining how Post80s generational cohort members communicatively constitute resilience amid profound societal disruptions, unmet work and career expectations by self and others, and extensive future obligations offers important implications for how they interact to build a new normal in Chinese society and workforce. To understand Post80s’ resilience enactment, we ask: How do Chinese Post80s professionals communicatively constitute resilience guided by chengyu?

Method

Participants

Participants were 33 professionals working in urban areas across China. Slightly more women (54.5%) participated in our study. Participants were born during the 1980s and averaged 26 years old (range: 24-30 years). They worked in entry- (82%) to middle-level positions or above (18%) in public (36%) and private sectors (64%) in various industries, including health, media, arts, communications, and business. All earned at least college degrees and were only children and native speakers of Mandarin.

Procedures

Guanxi-Based Data Collection

Participants were recruited through convenience sampling by the authors who were Post80s generational members.⁴ Using their guanxi or social capital and network connections (Barbalet, 2015; Kriz, Gummesson, & Quazi, 2014), these authors not only had access to the stories of their peers but also were familiar with participants’ experiences, values, and language. Data were collected through semistructured interviews to capture the participants’ own words and career sense making. Questions requested reflections and stories about their work, career trajectories, goals and motivations, positive and negative experiences, as well as aspirations and hopes. Rather than asking Post80s to define resilience or chengyu, we were more interested in how resilience manifested itself communicatively and how Post80s workers reportedly enacted resilience, consciously or unconsciously, in their day-to-day negotiation of workplace tensions. All interviews were audio-recorded for transcription with participants’ permission. Interviews lasted 60 minutes on average (range: 30-90 minutes), resulting in 288 single-spaced pages of transcription in Mandarin. Pseudonyms were used in the transcripts.

Data Analysis

During the interviews and transcriptions, the two bilingual (Mandarin-English) authors jotted notes about emerging patterns. After transcription, all researchers engaged in discussion by following Charmaz’s (2000) social constructionist approach that considers meanings and knowledge to reside both in and between people and/or data depending on researchers’ and participants’ positionalities. Data analyses were conducted in two phases—initial thematic analysis, then focused analysis for linguistic-narrative resources. First, guided by criteria of recurrence, repetition, and forcefulness (Owen, 1984), the first author (re)read interview transcripts in Mandarin repeatedly and developed themes. To situate the findings in Chinese culture and socioeconomic conditions, the non-Chinese speaking author with expertise in organizational communication, and the other authors discussed participants’ linguistic choices and contextual aspects of Chinese workplace. The Mandarin transcripts were analyzed in its original form and summarized and partially translated into English during discussions. After initial analysis, we focused on linguistic markers of resilience, moving between and within broad semantic patterns and colloquial phrasings. These processes consolidate interpretations of generational experiences and offer insight into how generational cohort members construct realities, capture memories, live out their values, and manage everyday disappointments as well as traumatic experiences (Aden et al., 2009; Hansen & Leuty, 2012). Through sharing stories and shorthand phrases, generational cohort members not only made sense of their own and others’ experiences but also crafted normalcy, adapting to and transforming themselves and the contexts in which they live (Buzzanell, 2010; Doerfel & Harris, 2017). As such, we looked for natural sites to explore generational meanings of work and linguistic-narrative resources for constructing resilience, much as sisu characterized grit and determination among iron ore miners even when they did not invoke the phrase explicitly (Lucas & Buzzanell, 2004).

We noted that the participants often utilize and transform meanings of phrases, slogans, and ancient proverbs to frame action, reflect upon ways of managing change, and find comfort in difficult times. We found that their narratives coalesced around three chengyu. Chengyu was both a linguistic device used by participants to talk about their workplace experiences, and an analytical device used by researchers to tease out the essence of Post80s’ constitution of resilience in this study. Although there were other colloquial expressions used by participants, the three chengyu were present within and across many interviews, serving as implicit guides for participants and offering conceptual schemes/structures to tease out different facets of participants’ resilience. After delving into the data, researchers built theoretical insights and looked for alternative interpretations. Inductive-deductive data-grounded and theory-building processes continued until all authors agreed upon findings.

Member Reflections

The authors conducted “member reflections” (Tracy, 2010) to validate data interpretation after initial analysis completion. These reflections allowed participants and researchers to talk about, critique, and offer feedback about the findings. We conducted member reflections through informal individual and group conversations with Post80s professionals in and outside of this project. Whereas these professionals expressed that they might use other chengyu, they confirmed that our findings captured the essence of enacting resilience in the current Chinese workplace and that the three chengyu covered comprehensively different aspects of resilience despite idiosyncrasies in the Post80s group.

Results

Our analysis revealed that chengyu not only served as discursive resources for resilience in response to work difficulties but also as guides for professionals’ proactive cultivation of resilience. By using chengyu, Post80s professionals transcend the present and constitute resilience through enactment of key decision premises grounded in their heritage yet implemented in their lives. Analysis revealed three chengyu that underlie participants’ communicative constitution of resilience: (a) hou ji bo fa (厚积薄发)—accumulate intensively for long-term release of energy; (b) shun shi er wei (顺势而为)—engage in action that situates oneself along with broader trends and momentums; and (c) de xin ying shou (得心应手)—align work with what the heart wishes and what the hands accomplish. The three chengyu animate Post80s workplace resilience as temporal, relational, and embodied processes.

Hou Ji Bo Fa

Post80s participants animated chengyu, hou ji bo fa (accumulate intensively for long-term release of energy) to deal with current work frustrations. Highlighting traditional values of persistence, long-term thinking, and “hard work will pay off,” this chengyu guides Post80s to continue learning and developing themselves for China’s competitive and volatile workplace. Hou ji bo fa has two components: hou (thick, extensive) ji (accumulation), to learn or accumulate resources/experiences extensively; and bo (thin, gradual) fa (release), which means to release energy gradually to achieve success or sustainable development. Post80s professionals talked about choosing work that allows them to “hou ji” (accumulate extensively), laying out foundations for “bo fa” (achieve future success). As Zhu, a media professional, said, “We believe employees are human, not screws to a big corporate machine [reference of their parents’ generation’s perceptions of employment]. I not only care about my title and salary, but also about my opportunities to develop as a professional.”

Guided by hou ji bo fa, many Post80s choose to work in big cities such as Beijing, Shanghai, and Guangzhou where more professional development opportunities are available, even though they have to deal with high costs of city living and “unstable” employment due to fierce competitions. The professionals who live away from their hometowns and work in foreign cities are called “the piao group” (which translates into “drifters in the city”).⁵ They face great financial pressure and many belong to the “yue guang zu”—the spend-all-your-salary clan—who often need their parents’ financial support to sustain their living in the city. Yan, an accountant working in Beijing, earned an average monthly income of US$500 and allocated $200 (40%) to her rent. She explained the differences in living expenses between the piao group and those working in their hometowns,

If you are living in a foreign city by yourself, you will spend much more money on rent, food, and you are all by yourself. If you just work in your hometown, you can live with your parents, your mother can cook for you and when you are married, your parents can take care of your kids. So you will have a lower level of financial pressure.

While this extended family support seems ideal, the majority of Post80s professionals interviewed do not have such material and relational support networks as resilience resources. When speaking about early career financial pressures, Post80s invoked the logics and philosophies encapsulated in the chengyu of hou ji bo fa. Drawing from the present-future dimensions of hou ji bo fa, many participants framed the beginning years of their working lives as times to accumulate, to “expand guanxi network,” “learn to do the job,” “make mistakes,” “find my passion,” and “try different challenges” so as to switch to more meaningful work that best match their interests and talents in the future. As explained by Zhu,

Now it is not a time to use work in exchange for money or prestige, it’s the time to work in exchange for experiences. . . . I want to be able to feel that I am absorbing new experiences and new ideas so I can reap the benefits later.

Zhu tapped into the logic embedded in hou ji bo fa in cultivating resilience in his career—accumulation without release is aimless, while release without proper accumulation results in burnout. Here, a new normal of work and career is enacted—while they acknowledge the need to make ends meet and be financially independent, Post80s believe that early career learning is more important than earning as work experiences would expedite later success.

In addition to high living costs, Post80s workers faced fierce competition in the labor market. Many started their career by “da hei gong” (working in the dark, or informally), that is, working as invisible workers with no labor contract and very little or no salary, to secure employment. These Post80s professionals usually held temporary unofficial employment in large organizations such as state-owned enterprises or the government. Different from unpaid internships, their names and work were not recognized openly, and they did not receive employment benefits. “Da hei gong” is not uncommon. According to China’s White Paper on Human Resources Service Industry, while 1.3% of graduates were willing to accept job offers with “zero salary” in 2009, statistics skyrocketed to 18% in 2010 (Xiao, 2011).

Despite the disadvantages of da hei gong, Post80s professionals emphasized that they could accumulate experience and search for internal job opportunities. Jiao, an invisible worker in a state-owned radio station in Beijing, shared: “I just keep a low profile and focus on accumulating experiences . . . you will learn from the culture there and learn about how things should be done by working for renowned and well-established organizations.” Similarly, Ping, who held an informal intern position for a government owned nonprofit organization, viewed her current low-paying job as highly valuable because it offered her “a platform to interact and make connections with people from higher social status and different backgrounds,” setting a good foundation for her future career. Guided by hou ji bo fa, both Jiao and Ping framed their experiences as learning processes essential for success. This frame ascribes purpose and meaningfulness to their experience, enhances esteem of their work, and foregrounds positive emotions to balance stressors in precarious employment.

In sum, resilience drawn from hou ji bo fa offers Post80s professionals a philosophy of learning and meaningfulness to make sense of past-present-future. The chengyu surfaces past-present connections and interdependent processes of accumulation and release, important to the constitution of resilience for Chinese Post80s professionals. “Hou ji bo fa” guides Post80s professionals in taking long-term views as they actively design careers.

Shun Shi Er Wei

Post80s participants also invoked chengyu, shun shi er wei—to engage in action that situates oneself along with broader trends and momentums—to construct workplace resilience. Emphasizing on relationships of self-other and individual-collective, this chengyu provides decision-making premises and guidelines in handling self-other relationships and positioning oneself in organization/labor markets. It suggests that individuals should recognize the interconnectivity of self and other and seek harmonious⁶ relationships of individual and collective, which can enable cultivation of resilience at multiple levels. Shun shi er wei reinforces Chinese notions of the self, that is the self is constantly in dialogic relationship with others and the broader community/society whereby concern and benefit for both self and others are intertwined (Long et al., 2016). In this four-word idiom, shun means follow/utilize, shi means momentum/existing state/cultural networks/broader discourse, and er wei means to do things/make decisions. Guided by this chengyu, Post80s actively constructed resilience by integrating into existing networks and aligning with larger societal resilience processes.

First, shun shi from Post80s’ account can refer to building on existing social network structures within organizations. In this context, shi referred to the Chinese cultural environment in which guanxi was pervasive and critical to professional development and life quality. All Post80s interviewees mentioned building and expanding their guanxi as important to workplace resilience. Ling, an HR professional, articulated:

What I want to get out of work is not money, but more personal connections to expand my guanxi wang. You were too limited in your immediate network. You need to expand your network by working, as you can interact with all walks of people. You never know when you will use them.

Jia, a sales manager, emphasized the importance of maintaining guanxi at work for his own subjective well-being to stay resilient, “Human beings are social animals and you need to interact with people.” Others expressed more utilitarian perspectives of guanxi building, as illustrated by Bin, a journalist for a foreign press,

For my job, the more people I know, the more information I receive and more business opportunities I can get. Let’s admit that China is a society based on personal connections. No matter what you do . . . it could be as small as parking your car. If you could handle the guanxi well, you will enjoy much more convenience in your life. If not, you will meet a lot of barriers.

Here, shun shi was expressed as to “fit in” the guanxi-based society and establish extensive guanxi webs for resilience. Post80s internalized the importance of guanxi and actively engaged in creation and maintenance of communication networks to utilize social capital (Buzzanell, 2010; Doerfel & Harris, 2017) in anticipation of future workplace difficulties.

In addition, shun shi, as discussed by participants, referred to situating themselves within the larger Chinese political and socioeconomic environment and to seeking opportunities and policies to their advantage. Shi in this case was considered as broader trends and opportunities that offer positive prospects. With the State’s push for entrepreneurship and various incentives (e.g., free risk assessments and reduced taxes) to encourage college graduates to become self-employed, about a quarter of the Post80s indicated that they were preparing to launch their own businesses through accumulating knowledge and social capital from work. Illustrated by Ting,

The reality TV industry is booming. . . . I want to have a TV program of my own, I want to produce it and integrate ideas I learned along the way. I am now at the beginning stage, the learning stage.

Following the entrepreneurial momentum, Post80s professionals like Ting embraced neoliberal instrumentalist thinking, that is, professionals accumulating knowledge to establish their own business by working for others (Ong, 2006). Ting’s entrepreneurial aspiration was grounded in current experience accumulation and in line with the broader Chinese strategic development for resilience in the current global market. The discursive positioning of one’s career trajectory in the national plan was evident across interviews. Shi talked about dropping out of U.S. graduate school to work for China’s newly launched English News channel, a strategic move to improve soft power and global influence. Shi shared his career decision: “the work has great prospects—it is one of the national strategic projects with high starting point and immense capital. It is also a brand new project, with huge potential.” We found that Post80s professionals actively align their personal values and goals with national strategic initiatives, industry development, and the well-being of the local community. In so doing, they reframe the personal and collective goals/interests dichotomy to be aligned and connected. Guided by this chengyu, Post80s workers are aware of local through global trends and opportunities, or shi (flow), and engage in active and strategic use of them to achieve personal and collective goals.

It is worth noting that in Post80s’ positioning in the shi of the guanxi-based society and the broader national strategy, many Post80s professionals follow the traditional Chinese Zhong Yong (the golden mean) philosophy (or the Doctrine of the Mean) to set their life and career goals and expectations in a volatile workplace. Zhong Yong literally means “right in the middle” or “neither right nor left” and “normal” or “average,” respectively. Adhering to Zhong Yong was to stick to the middle way and never go to extremes. Tao, a consultant, stated, “I don’t want to own a big company, be too aggressive at work or be a big boss. I just want myself, my families and friends to be happy and peaceful. That’s good enough for me.” Despite media portrayals of the Post80s generation as aggressive, career-minded, and thirsty for success, they have embodied traditional Zhong Yong philosophy in shun shi er wei—situating themselves in the golden mean position of societal trends and social strata.

In short, as early career professionals in China, Post80s’ discourse of resilience was found in their strategic response to adverse circumstances—shun shi er wei. This chengyu highlights individual-environment relationships and offers guidelines for Post80s to situate their work and careers in the discursive and material contexts of their workplaces. Post80s participants are aware that dynamic stabilities of their employment, promotions, pay raises, and developmental opportunities would rely on how integrated they are in existing guanxi networks (Long et al., 2016). Additionally, alignment with organizational needs, industry trends, broader societal imperatives, and the zhong yong or golden mean positioning further guide Post80s in navigating the beginning years of their careers and cultivating resilience in response to workplace turbulence and uncertainties.

De Xin Ying Shou

Finally, the Post80s constructed resilience by adhering to de xin ying shou, aligning work with what the heart wishes and what the hands accomplish. This chengyu guides resilience constitution as it provides affirmation for work, generates positive social identity, and builds strong generational work cultures. Following de xin ying shou, workplace resilience can be achieved if one feels passion (hearts, enjoy the work process) and have the potential (hands, utilize one’s skills) at work. The constitution of resilience, guided by de xin ying shou, is an introspective heart-body process whereby individuals experience meaningfulness.

De xin ying shou has two components important to generating resilience: what the heart wishes, as in de (wish) xin (heart, passion); what the hands can accomplish, as in ying (respond, match) shou (hand, competency). First, Post80s felt that work needs to be one’s passion (de xin) to be sustainable. Market-driven labor policies and employment laws freed them from state-assigned and lifelong employment, thus allowing them to choose meaningful work (Long et al., 2016). Xue, a small online business owner and fashion designer, noted,

Our parents, they may live their life doing things they do not like. Many of them do not know what they want to do and what they are capable of in their whole life. That’s pretty sad. I think we are lucky in this respect. . . . If I don’t like it], I will definitely quit the job even it is a job in the national government. . . . I can’t stand wasting my youth.

Similarly, Chao expressed his fear that one day he would lose his passion for work and the only meaning of work for him would be to make ends meet,

I want to do what I like and I want to have a successful career. I am still young and I am not afraid of failure. But I really fear that one day the meaning of work would only be earning money. Some of my married colleagues told me, they did not want to work but they looked at their children, and they knew they did not have a choice. They had to work their heads off to get the money to support the family. I don’t want it happen to me. I do not want to be a money-making machine.

Post80s’ craving for authenticity and work about which one feels passionate was evident in Xue’s and Chao’s words. This is different from collectivist notions of the self that aligned with communal interests (Liu, 2003) and is part of the Post80s generational work ethics and culture.

In addition, Post80s articulated that work needs to tap into their competency and talents (ying shou). Yan expressed that the fit between job and talent made her work meaningful and enhanced her resilience in the face of workplace challenges, “If I do the job really well, I don’t have to worry about being laid off.” Compared to the Protestant work ethics about working hard to be successful (Bernstein, 1997), the Post80s prefer to work right, namely, engage in work that aligned passion and competency. Shi, emphasized the importance of working right rather than working for larger pay checks:

China is developing very rapidly. . . . The society has become quite materialistic, people are fickle-minded, and money talks. People are competing with each other and money has almost become the only standard to evaluate one’s success at work. It really stresses people out. . . . Some people are just happy on the day they receive their paycheck, but I need to feel happy when I am at work.

In prioritizing the fit between work and their personal interests and enjoyment, Post80s distanced their work meanings from past work ideologies as well as from more instrumental/materialistic work orientations, which they phrased as dominant in today’s transitional Chinese society.

Participants said their feelings of achievement and personal worth were the most important processes for enabling their workplace resilience. Dong, a news editor, talked about how his passion for media helped him make it through frustrating times at work,

Work can show and realize my worth. I live to work. I can play, eat, hang out with friends, but that’s not the meaning of my life. My eternal goal is to realize my worth. I want people to be talking about what I’ve done after I die. That is something that kept me going.

Cheng, echoed Dong, also talked about being able to realize one’s worth as highly motivating and resilience-generating as he tried to work his way up in a sports event company. Cheng described how his love for sports pushed him to work hard,

When I am at work, I am like a dual-CPU computer. I want to let my colleagues, my boss and my clients see that I am a very smart, hard-working individual, I am capable of many things and I can contribute greatly to the team.

Selecting work that brought enjoyment and foregrounding feelings of achievement, Post80s managed tensions between internal-external foci on work values in their everyday constructions of meaningfulness and resilience (Buzzanell, 2010).

To sum up, de xin ying shou offers guidance to cultivate resilience inwardly for Post80s professionals. Focusing on “heart” and “hands,” that is, the work one enjoys doing and that utilize one’s potential, Post80s workers foreground productive emotions and free themselves from dominant structures and external forces. The chengyu of de xin ying shou sustains Post80s professionals’ resilience by balancing what they are good at and what they want and hope for.

Discussion

The study contributes to the communication theory of resilience by exploring how Chinese Post80s professionals enact and cultivate resilience by engaging with cultural, sociolinguistic, and generational themes and linguistic choices. We display how chengyu functions as a discursive resilience resource on which Chinese Post80s rely as they struggle with their own and others’ unmet expectations about work, careers, and familial and societal roles. Post80s’ use of chengyu provides decision premises, affirms identity anchors, reinforces long-term community values, characterizes work as meaningful, and reconstructs goals and prospectives (Buzzanell, 2010; Lucas & Buzzanell, 2004; O’Connor & Raile, 2015).

Analysis of how participants constitute resilience through connections to generation-specific (re)interpretations of traditional meanings of chengyu showcases how cultural narratives residing in collective memories can be re-enacted in two interconnected ways—Post80s engage in reactive resilience labor⁷ to reframe adversity and adapt to unfavorable conditions; Post80s engage in proactive resilience labor to anticipate and cultivate resilience strategies. Post80s employed traditional Chinese philosophies encapsulated in chengyu (e.g., self-improvement, the doctrine of mean, and harmonious dynamic) to identify potential workplace disruptions (e.g., being laid off, denied promotions or raises). They engaged in cultivating the mind-set, ability, supporting network, and everyday choice processes to prepare for obstacles (e.g., they actively improve their skills, build guanxi networks/structures, and seek jobs that they enjoy doing). How these reactive-proactive processes interrelate within the Chinese political-economic and cultural contexts using philosophies to bridge individual-societal issues extends and nuances the communication theory of resilience.

Taking a cultural perspective, findings also extend communication resilience research by unpacking the multifaceted nature of workplace resilience in the Chinese context, which we label as longitudinal resilience connecting past-present-future, relational resilience aligning self-other-collective, and introspective resilience integrating passion-competency-workplace reality. Hou ji bo fa offered teachings of resilience by emphasizing that effortful accumulation will pay off and that long-term thinking to delay gratification can serve future goals, highlighting the temporal past-present-future dimensions of resilience cultivation. Facing challenges such as saturated labor markets, low incomes with job insecurities, and high costs of living, Post80s invoked hou ji bo fa to focus their attention on self-improvement, bearing in mind that positive and negative experiences lead to learning and growth, and to position careers as long-term processes of accumulation and release. In terms of relational aspects of resilience, shun shi er wei, when invoked, can be resilience-generating as it promotes a holistic worldview of self-other-society and its interconnectedness (i.e., individuals are more likely to engage in resilience processes when they are integrated into larger webs of connections and in sync with current trends and societal momentum). As exemplified by the individual-collective relationships suggested in shun shi er wei, Post80s constituted resilience by situating themselves in the larger community and broader trends of political-economic and social development of the nation. Furthermore, the introspective perspective to cultivate resilience, as embedded in de xin ying shou, highlights the importance of finding meaningfulness from work in navigating emotions and relations, and in resisting and transforming workplace constraints. Post80s adhered to teachings of de xin ying shou to stay true to their gifts and passion to resist negative influences. The chengyu teach the Post80s that resilience must come from within, where the heart and hand/mind and body connect in a harmonious state. Chengyu-invoked resilience coincides with and extends three tenets—self-cultivation, multiplicity, and holism—of Chinese-centered perspectives that challenge the hegemony of Euro-American–centric traditions (Kang et al., 2016).

The current study also offers important practical applications. First, the findings suggest that language, such as idioms and cultural stories, carry values, strategies, and guidelines that can foster collective and intergenerational resilience. Community and organizational leaders can use these discursive resources for sensemaking and sensegiving of disruptions, can find inspirations to overcome challenges, and can mobilize community members to engage in collective actions for transformation. Educators can cultivate resilience by engaging youth and early career professionals with resilience-narrative constructions. Second, Post80s professionals’ anticipatory resilience building efforts revealed an aspect of traditional Chinese cultural understanding of resilience —ju an si wei (居安思危), be prepared for danger in times of peace. Acknowledging that individuals and broader contexts as always changing and influencing one another, it is important to actively build resilience in times of comforts and peace through maintaining realistic expectations, building guanxi networks, and saving for potential hardships (Lucas & Buzzanell, 2012). Additionally, this study offers chengyu-inspired strategies to enhance resilience for early-career professionals. Strategies include (a) anticipating and reframing failures, struggles, and difficulties as learning and accumulating processes to reach long-term goals; (b) considering the broader picture and finding one’s own niche to stay adaptive to changing individual-environment dynamics; (c) striving to find meaningful work while acknowledging that we as individuals are constantly changing and growing and that workplace constraints can transform into opportunities (and vice versa).

Our findings are limited by the fact that our participants live and work in Chinese urban areas, and that they are privileged in terms of education, family’s social-economic status, and Han majority ethnic group membership. Future research can expand on participant groupings and resilience-generating language structures to focus explicitly on the role of chengyu and other idiomatic structures. Themes of chengyu not only constituted and encapsulated resilience as multifaceted processes but also, we argue, form the cultural, generational, and linguistic bases for generating agile careers. In conclusion, chengyu implicitly guided how Post80s professionals construct responsive and anticipatory resilience processes situated in past-present-future, self-other-collective, and passion-talent-reality dynamics. We call for more research to understand and theorize resilience in non-Western settings. We encourage examination of how culturally generated narratives and contextually embedded interpretations help individuals and collectives enact resilience everyday.

Footnotes

Author Note

Patrice M. Buzzanell is also affiliated to University of South Florida, Tampa, FL, USA.

Declaration of Conflicting Interests

The author(s) declared no potential conflicts of interest with respect to the research, authorship, and/or publication of this article.

Funding

The author(s) received no financial support for the research, authorship, and/or publication of this article.

Notes

Author Biographies

Ziyu Long (Ph.D., Purdue University) is an Assistant Professor in the Department of Communication Studies at Colorado State University. Her research interests include career, entrepreneurship, mentoring, and gendered organizing in the globalized and digitalized workplace.

Patrice M. Buzzanell (Ph.D., Purdue University) is Chair and Professor of the Department of Communication at the University of South Florida. A Fellow of the International Communication Association (ICA) and Distinguished Scholar of the National Communication Association, she has served as President of ICA, the Council of Communication Associations, and the Organization for the Study of Communication, Language and Gender. Her research focuses on career, work-life policy, resilience, gender, and engineering design in micro-macro contexts.

Kai Kuang (Ph.D., Purdue University) is an Assistant Professor in the Department of Communication Studies at Bloomsburg University of Pennsylvania. Her research interests include uncertainty in illness, risk communication, and health information seeking behaviors.

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