CRI听力:College Grad's Dream to Become Schoolmaster Comes True

Ji Zaibing chose to work at a consultancy firm after graduating with a degree in Information Management and Information Systems at Renmin University. But as a result of his love for dancing, he quit his job and set up his own dance training school two years ago. Ji spoke about why he chose to set up his "Qianye Dance School".

"For one thing, when I was working as a consultant, I was too busy to practice dancing, which is my hobby. And secondly, I knew many dance professionals after becoming a fan of dance in 2007. So I believed that I would be successful."

However, difficulties cropped up when Ji embarked on his new career. He faced great pressure from his parents, who persuaded him to become a public servant in order to ensure a stable living.

Aside from this, the process of actually founding a school proved to be much tougher than Ji Zaibing initially thought.

"The poor quality of teaching staff struck me at first. Many teachers were good dancers themselves, but inexperienced in teaching, and failed to capture the students' imagination. The number of students dropped dramatically."

Instead of giving up, Ji constantly tried to seek new teaching methods in order to satisfy his students' needs. Within two years, as many as 4,000 dancing enthusiasts enrolled at the Qianye Dance School. In fact, the so-called school started out as a training class with no more than 30 students at the very beginning. As a result of the growing, Ji has managed to double his monthly earnings from the school's revenue.

Apart from dance training, Ji and his team have cooperated with a number of large companies to put on performances at their year-end celebrations. To further expand his business, Ji is planning to open an online store in order to sell dancing goods, such as clothes and shoes.

Ji believes that his decision to join an intercollegiate entrepreneurial contest to sell bottled water benefited him greatly in his own entrepreneurial pursuits. His persistence helped him to succeed in signing the biggest contract with Jingdong Mall, China's No.1 online retailer, which helped him bag a prize of 50,000 yuan with his six-person team.

With a reported 6.99 million record number of students graduating from vocational colleges and universities this year, the employment pressure amongst China's youth is mounting.

Dong Qingchun, head of the self-employment training school at Beihang University, says that the country has enforced policies to help self-employed students since March of this year.

"Firstly, students starting their own business can effectively solve the unemployment problem; secondly, it helps speed up the country's economic transformation, and boosts the development of small and micro enterprises."

Though Ji has made many achievements, he says he is still far from being successful. His ambition lies beyond working as a schoolmaster within this promising industry.

"My next aim is to build Qianye into a model for dance training, just like the well-known New Oriental School for English training in China. I'm really satisfied with providing a healthy lifestyle for busy people nowadays."

For CRI, I'm Zhang Ru.