He Wenjie decided to leave Hangzhou, a busy city in east China's Zhejiang Province. The city is home to many of China's most famous universities, such as Zhejiang University, and the Alibaba Group, the world's largest online business-to-business trading platform for small businesses.

Every day, young college graduates move in and out of this hostel in Hangzhou. [Photo/Cyol.net]

The 25-year-old had failed to find a job or get into any graduate program in the two years since she left college. She had spent all her money and was living with seven strange girls in a room at a hostel that charged 28 yuan (US$4.50) per day for a bed.

There were many young people like her at Xiezhi College Students Youth Hostel. They all wanted to realize their dreams in the metropolis. Some of them left the hostel after a couple of days to start a new life, while some stayed for more than a year without achieving anything. Some even had to return to the hostel again and again after failing in their work or studies.

He Wenjie had an opportunity to work in a Pizza Hut restaurant after graduating from a mediocre college, but she thought that dealing with potatoes and tomatoes every day was not good enough. She had always dreamt of being an auditor, so she turned down the offer. Over the following two years, she failed to gain a place in the graduate school of a famous university in Shanghai, and she couldn't find a job related to auditing in Hangzhou due to her lack of work experience. The only time a company offered her a job related to auditing, she refused because the base salary was 2,000 yuan, which she thought it was "not enough for basic life."　

With no means to support herself in Hangzhou, He Wenjie couldn't turn to her family for help because her mother was seriously ill, and it cost the family a lot of money to get treatment for her. After staying in the hostel for a whole week, He Wenjie felt hopeless and helpless, so despite her unwillingness to submit to defeat, she decided to go back home and find a job in a small private business. "I don't want to leave, but I really have no way out," she said.

While He Wenjie felt her hope had faded away, Shi Songting, a girl three years younger, felt a bright future was ahead of her.

Shi Songting studied media production in a college in southwest China's Chongqing. She came to Hangzhou immediately after graduation and got two job opportunities within a few days. The two companies offered similar salaries, but the smaller one promised that she could start work immediately, while the larger one – Wasu Digital TV Media Group – hadn't informed her of its final decision. Shi preferred the larger company, but she didn't want to give up the opportunity to work in the smaller one, so she moved into the hostel, working as an intern in the smaller company while waiting for good news from Wasu. She had already passed several rounds of interviews at Wasu, so she felt confident that she would get the job.

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