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An account of the daily life of a man making ends meet
Li Hueng is just an ordinary person living an ordinary life in an ordinary industrial Chinese city of ShenYang. Hi father Wei worked many years for the communist government working his life away in an automobile parts factory for what amounts to 50 cents per day in US Dollars. Things have changed in China since Wei's days. Today, Li works for a small company on the outskirts of town that sells MMORPG currencey to people all over the world in games such as World of Warcraft, Final Fantasy and Everquest, but the bulk of their customers are in the Asian market, particularly Korea.
Each day at 4 a.m., Li gets on his moped and drives the twenty five minute ride though bustling city traffic, dodging cars, pedestrians and cattle along the way. Li is considered wealthy by Chinese standards. His job at the software company earns him nearly $50 USD per week, enough to maintain his lavish urban lifestyle of a 15th floor single room apartment that he shares with his wife Ling and daughter Ping, named after her great grandmother.
When Li arrives at the 1,200 square foot office of 85 employees at 4:30 am, he punches his time card and goes to his cuble which measures only three feet across, but is stocked with a brand new computer and high speed internet connection, loaded with all of the latest and hottest MMORPG games. When Li logs in, the service system assigns him a ticket order from a customer.
Today's ticket reads "World of Warcraft : Boulderfist Server : US : Account : Power Level - $100USD". Li knows he must quickly get to work on this order because he does not get paid by the hour, he gets paid a percentage of the order when the order is complete. His share of the order is usually just under 10%, which means he will earn about $10 to level this account from level 10 to 40, a process which could take nearly two to three days, which means he will have to share the earnings with the night shift employee once his day is done.
For the next 12 hours, Li works feverishly leveling the character until about 7:00 PM when he reaches level 30 and the night shift starts trickling in. For today, Li has earned $8 and is a happy man. He is happy because at the young age of 22, he has a high paying job and the foundation of a prestigous career in computers, at least by Chinese standards.
It's all in a day's work for Li and he doesn't mind. Things could be worse. His parents live in countryside about two hours from the city. They work on a state run farm as they have been doing for the past thirty years. His brother also works on the farm, lacking the opportunity to better himself. When the children were young, Li excelled in scholastic activities, allowing for him to participate in higher level state run eduction programs. His brother, "Henry", was good at soccer, playing for the regional state teams until an injury sidelined him and he was sent back down to the farm with little formal education.
In America, the Chinese gold farmer is demonized, but Li is just an ordinary guy, making an ordinary living, trying to support his wife and child and take advantages of new opportunities in a new China. He doesn't quite understand why Americans are so annoyed at what he does. In his eyes, he is simply providing services that are in high demand from overseas and is extremely appreciative and humble about what the game industry has done for him.
This article is a user submitted fan fiction work.
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Source / Author / Credit:
Anonymous
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