The Lala Phenomenon

By staff reporter ZHANG XUEYING

DU Lala’s Promotion has become a legend in Chinese publishing. For two years the novel topped the bestseller lists of the two leading online booksellers dangdang.com and amazon.cn, and the movie adaptation Go Lala Go! has performed well at the box office, fetching in excess of RMB 100 million within two weeks of its first screening this April. Similarly, there is hot competition for the rights to make stage play, TV drama, radio, and audio book versions. “No novel in China has ever sold so many adaptation copyrights,” declares Wang Yong, executive vice general manager of Beijing Book Publishing Inc, the publisher. “There’s never been an industrial chain as long and complete for any cultural product…Lala alone has hauled in over RMB 300 million.”

So, who is this Lala? Why is she such a hot property?

A still from Go Lala Go!, a movie adaption of Du Lala's Promotion, a novel dubbed a "career bible" for female whitecollar workers.

An Ordinary Girl Makes the Big Time

“It touches the hearts of young people hungry for success.” These words of praise for the novel come from Hao Jiangang, a human resource expert with Zhaopin.com, one of China’s largest executive search firms.

The trilogy Du Lala’s Promotion follows eight years in the career of a young woman, who, well educated but not beautiful, rises from a junior position to become a senior manager of a Global Top 500 company.

“Lala’s story is about the success of an ordinary person. She has no special family background or wide connections, but she reaches the top of the corporate hierarchy through her wisdom and persistence,” says the author Li Ke. “People new to the world of work recognize their own shortcomings in Lala’s career experience, and find their next right move. And for those who have made it rich, Lala’s joys and woes will remind them of their own stories.”

Apparently half of the readers were motivated to buy the book because of the heroine’s “spirit of independent endeavor.”

The novel beats the drum for personal endeavor in such lines as “Discover where you want to be in life, then campaign silently for your future,” and “Hard work won’t invariably lead to success, but without it you won’t stand a chance.”

Seeing a good number of rags-to-riches examples around them, young Chinese today are convinced that personal endeavor is the key to wealth. Since China opened to the world in 1979, the Chinese as a whole are getting wealthier, and many have amassed considerable fortunes in one way or another. A shared assumption is that they live in an age of unprecedented opportunities – golden opportunities that should be seized right now and not missed. According to the Taiwan-based 30 Magazine, 43 percent of young mainland Chinese dream of becoming entrepreneurs, and 20 percent aspire to earn over RMB 10 million a year.

Though only the minority can reach such goals, all are eager to try their luck.

The Way to Success

“A recipe for career success” is the book’s marketing hook.

“Who is more important to the boss?” “Do you know who calls the shots?” “Ensure respect for yourself and your role.” “Forget relaxing if you want to be a manager”… from these content headings alone, it looks more like a career handbook. The juicy workplace tips it offers include “For rapid promotion, stay close to the core business,” “Emotional intelligence grows fastest in a competitive context,” “Changing your job for better opportunities is a smart career move; simple dissatisfaction isn’t.” These sentences home in on crucial workplace issues.

Li Ke has over a decade of workplace experience and is now a successful manager in business. “My novel aims to impart some basic awareness, knowledge and experience for others to draw on.” In her opinion, people have only limited energy and resources, so it’s vital to understand and master right and effective ways of working, and to avoid being sidetracked.

“The must-read novel for Chinese whitecollars,” read the advertising slogan when the book first came out, and the promotion drew much support from career trainers. In China, career training is extremely popular with ambitious office workers. “Now that workplace philosophy is a subject in its own right, Du Lala’s Promotion is more than a novel – it’s an essential work of reference,” comments Wang Yong.

In fact, the heroine Lala provides a tip for how to survive at work, namely, understanding how your boss’s mind works. “ The boss may not appreciate you working your fingers to the bone. Adapting your work style to that of the boss is the key to success.”

Working for a Foreign Company

For most people in China, the working life of Chinese staff in foreign companies is a closed book, and they would like to know more about the managerial tier. The novel satisfies the curiosity of readers by taking a detailed and realistic look at the daily life of this group.

The term “whitecollar employee” became familiar in the mid-1990s when foreign companies began to stream into China, attracted by preferential investment policies. Young jobseekers flocked to join them, lured by the prospect of an international work environment, better conditions and a salary about ten times the average.

However, for some years now, frictions between Chinese employees and foreign managers have become more frequent. These, plus a rise in the incidence of suicides by Chinese workers, have put foreign companies in the spotlight.

In the opinion of Fang Wen, an associate professor of sociology with Peking University and a research specialist on the culture of foreign companies in China, “The competition for money and status often comes with a certain loss of self-esteem and individuality, and huge pressure that others can hardly understand… After the dream job has been landed and one is part of that environment, people soon find it difficult to balance the demands of income and health, promotion and self-esteem.”

In the novel, Lala habitually works late, her working day often exceeding 10 hours. She constantly worries that she’s getting older but has little to show for it. In her search for the ideal job, she doesn’t dare get romantically involved. She is always on the alert to the rivals around her, and her American bosses change with bewildering and exhausting frequency, adding to her anxiety.

“From the novel, it’s easy to spot the differences between foreign and Chinese corporate cultures,” commented Fang Wen. “According to foreign management concepts, a company should observe fixed procedures and policies – operating like a production line. Communication between managers and ordinary staff is confined to work matters. As far as Chinese staff members are concerned, moving up the pay scale and to a higher position is the only way to a sense of achievement and progress. Chinese companies, on the other hand, emphasize relationships, including emotional connections between superiors, subordinates and peer colleagues. The sense of achievement comes from many sources...perhaps in such small gestures as an encouraging pat on the back. So, one’s earning power might be less in a Chinese company, but staff loyalty is higher than in foreign companies, and there are fewer conflicts with management,” says Fang Wen.

Perhaps the novel will serve as a cautionary tale for young people desperate to join a foreign company – they are not as perfect as you imagine.