45-year-old Chen Lutong used to work in the real estate industry for more than ten years, with a highest monthly salary of 45,000 yuan. She used to be the chief decorator of a real estate company. Now, she rides a tricycle to set up a stall near the Tianjin subway station every day, selling fruits, baked sweet potatoes, and corn.
On September 22, under Sohu’s “Jizhao,” it documented Chen Lutong’s journey from losing her high-paying job in the real estate industry, to multiple attempts at finding employment with reduced wages, eventually resorting to running a stall to make a living.
Chen Lutong narrated in 2004, she graduated from college and worked as a drafter in a design company in Tianjin. Three years later, she went to a private school in Paris to study interior design. After studying for over a year, she did not obtain a degree.
In 2010, she returned to China from France and joined Huayuan Real Estate as a decoration supervisor, earning over 7,000 yuan.
After that, she participated in various real estate projects, with her salary gradually increasing. She later served as the chief decorator of another real estate company, with a monthly salary reaching up to 45,000 yuan.
In places like Guomao, Sanlitun, partners and construction units referred to her as “Manager Chen.” She mentioned that she mainly handled a high-end apartment project in Sanlitun, Beijing, where some units exceeded 600 square meters, with individual unit prices reaching up to tens of millions of yuan.
In 2019, nearing 40, she bought a 110-square-meter house in Tianjin for about 2.96 million yuan. According to her, she paid the down payment mostly by herself, with additional support from colleagues and relatives, and took out a loan of over 2 million yuan.
Chen Lutong explained that around 2022, the real estate industry began to decline, companies downsized, and she was laid off.
After leaving her job, she tried working as a self-media operator for about a year but did not achieve significant results. By 2024, she started looking for jobs again.
At that time, she sent out over a hundred resumes, not only in Tianjin but also in cities like Shenzhen, Suzhou, Chengdu, and Zhuhai, with expected salaries decreasing from her original 45,000 yuan.
“If I can’t get 45,000, there should be 30,000, right? And if not, even 20,000 should be considered,” she said.
During this period, she worked at a real estate company in Zhuhai, agreeing on a monthly salary of 30,000 yuan with accommodation and meals included. However, after just three months, the company couldn’t pay salaries due to funding issues, and the project stalled.
Later, she found a job in old house renovation with a monthly salary of 15,000 yuan, responsible for room measurement, design, quoting, and soft decoration, but she left eventually as the company increased performance demands.
In January of this year, she found a job with a monthly salary of 28,000 yuan, but the project ended after just one month.
At 45, she said, “Many companies explicitly do not want people of this age.”
Chen Lutong mentioned that she needs to pay around 8,000 yuan per month for the Tianjin house mortgage. As her savings depleted, her parents started helping her with repayments.
She said her parents, both in their 70s, with her father even taking up a cleaning job again to assist in sharing the mortgage burden.
She considered selling the Tianjin house but decided against it since the house price had dropped over 1 million yuan from the purchase price. She invested about 900,000 yuan over the years into the house, and her parents also love the property.
After facing repeated setbacks in job hunting, Chen Lutong started trying her hand at running a stall. She has sold skewers, baked sweet potatoes, freshly squeezed orange juice, and mainly fruits since May this year. She restocks around 5 am daily and sets up her stall near the subway station.
She realized after opening the stall that the costs of purchasing fruits, losses, packaging, etc., all need to be calculated meticulously. For instance, she buys watermelon at 2.4 yuan per jin and sells it for 3.5 yuan, which seems like a profit of over 1 yuan per jin, but after deducting other costs, the actual profit may be just a few cents.
She hopes to reach a daily turnover of 1,000 yuan to repay her mortgage. However, she mentioned that she only managed to exceed 1,000 yuan in sales two or three times. On slow business days, the nightly turnover could be as low as 33 yuan.
Currently, she continues to run the stall while looking for a job.
In a previous interview with Hongxing News, Chen Lutong mentioned that she only earns a few thousand yuan a month from running her stall.