Once I knew a young English gentleman. He's a writer with considerable talent, an amicable man well liked by his bosses and colleagues at the newspaper he worked for. Like many young Europeans and Americans, he came to China on his own expense to look for adventure. He was seen to be luckier than many because he landed a job that offered him a ring-side seat to watch the unfolding drama of China's economic development. To journalists around the world, this is one of the biggest stories on earth.

Then one day, he quit not because he had got a better offer from some other publication, but because he just wanted some time to himself. He later confided to me that he was going to join his girlfriend, who is living in France somewhere on the channel coast.

I believed him, and that's why I found the whole thing so inexplicable. Idling for months in the windy chill of winter in northern France, or anywhere else under any weather condition for that matter, is not something to which we Hong Kong people normally look forward.

Despite our Western education and long and unfettered exposure to Western culture, our values have apparently remained distinctly different from that of a typical Westerner. The young Hong Kong people I know would never consider quitting their jobs if they had not already secured a better offer.

I didn't have a chance to talk with my English friend about his choice. To me, loitering on the beaches of Normandy even in the finest of weather is never a substitute for gainful employment in journalism, one of the greatest professions for men and, of course, women. (I didn't say anything like that to my English friend. I remain respectful of his personal choice.)

On reflection, I couldn't help but question if that's something we all wanted to do at one time or another in our lifetime. We Hong Kong people have become too uptight about work. After a few years at work, most young people are conditioned to think of nothing but their respective careers.

I once had dinner with a senior executive of a large Japanese department store in Hong Kong. She was very proud of the fact that she'd never had a day off on weekends or public holidays, when the store is busiest. She takes one day off every week, and it is always on a weekday when her husband is at work and her children at school.

Every one of us at the party expressed our deep admiration for her dedication to work. In the ensuing conversation, we all agreed that such single-minded pursuit of career advancement was the right thing to do. Holidays, we believed wrongly, of course are for wimps.

In most newspapers in Hong Kong, reporters on the fast track routinely work 12 hours a day, six days a week. They are used to living on the edge. Any reporter knows that losing a story to a competitor would immediately put his job on the line and his reputation in jeopardy. Understandably, having an ulcer is a badge of honour for every hot-blooded Hong Kong reporter.

I have never worked in any other profession. But from what I read, I think that most Hong Kong people are working under tremendous stress. That is not the problem.

The real problem is that finding relief from stress by taking a break at some point in one's career is often seen by employers as a self-indulgence that has no place in the prim and proper corporate world of Hong Kong. Blank years in a candidate's resume would almost always raise the suspicions of human resources people in any company.

My English friend's "indulgence" has prompted me to question the widely accepted social norm that seems to have made us all slaves to our careers. Like the department-store executive who never takes a break on public holidays, we have learned to accept that any diversion from our career path must be avoided at all cost.

Perhaps my English friend was right after all. We have got to hang loose once in a while, or we may not even know what we have lost.

Email: jamesleung@chinadaily.com.cn

(China Daily 09/26/2006 page4)