Zhang Yuan, a 27-year-old ad smith, parked his Buick beside a cinema in a commercial district in western Beijing at around 7:00 p.m. Deftly taking out bundles of folding hangers and T-shirts out of the car, he set up his roadside stand.
The young moonlighter has been worked for four years with a local ads company and earns a monthly salary of approximately 6,000 yuan (878.5 billion U.S. dollars). He became a part-time peddler in March.
"I simply felt it's interesting to set up a stall on a street," Zhang said.
"Every day I drove here and saw so many roadside stands. I was tempted to try to set up my own stall."
At the beginning, he relied on his friends to replenish his stock, then he made orders through an e-commerce website, and now he purchases goods from distributors directly. In the process, he shows the same professionalism as in his primary job.
"To tell you the truth, I earn a little. The only purpose is to have fun," Zhang says.
He considers it's a pleasure to earn extra money to cover the fuel cost for his car and at the same time, to communicate with many different people. This has more fun than hooking himself up to the Internet after finishing daytime work or drinking out and going to a karaoke bar with friends in his leisure time, he said.
Private cars queue along the road near Zhang's stand. Beside every car there is a stand selling stuff ranging from garments, shoes and hats to jewellery, cosmetics and stationery.
Similar scene can also be seen in downtown Chengdu, capital of the southwestern province of Sichuan.
Cheng Jia, 24, displays socks, earrings, bracelets and lipstick neatly on a red cloth and then, leans on a wall silently and waits for buyers.
Working with the marketing department of a local company, Cheng earns approximately 3,000 yuan a month. Running a roadside stand is a "fashionable lifestyle" for her, she said.
She almost spends 15 days every month in running her roadside stand and earns about 100 yuan for each of the days.
"It not only increases my income but also helps enrich my experience," Cheng said.
White-collar-run roadside stands constitute new landscapes in other major cities, such as Shanghai, Fuzhou, Qingdao and Hangzhou. They are run by corporate employees, school teachers, civil servants and some returnees who speak at least one foreign language fluently.
Through the Internet, they talk about how to find an appropriate place to set up a roadside stand, from where to replenish their stocks and how to communicate with potential buyers.
A netizen named Linxiaoyang posts an online diary on running roadside stands on Internet. It says, "Differing from trading stocks on the web, running a roadside stand helps you taste the real life."
According to a survey of 1,463 white collar workers conducted by Chinahr.com, a prestigious job-hunting website based in Beijing, more than 60 percent of the respondents say they moonlight to increase their income, because as newcomers in the white-collar arena, they earn not so much but spend a lot. About 18.3 percent of those polled said they set up roadside stands to learn how to start up businesses, and 14 percent said they wanted to try to live new lives.
Prof. Yan Jirong with Beijing University considers running roadside stands by white collars a new lifestyle for China's middle class, which may allow them to feel content and help them acquire happiness.
At around 11:00 p.m., Zhang Yuan is ready to knock off and go to a midnight cinema.
He sold two T-shirts for 60 yuan for the day. "It's a quite handsome daily extra income for me," he said.
"I'm lucky not to encounter city management personnel," he said.
If bad luck strikes, city management personnel, who police the cities markets, will probably confiscate the merchandises of the white collars, who have no permits for their part-time business, according to Zhang. But most of the time, they only ask the white-collar peddlers to pack up their stalls.
In line with local regulations in major Chinese cities, unlicensed roadside stands should be criticized or fined or have their goods confiscated.
Hu Guangwei, a sociologist with the provincial Academy of Social Sciences of Sichuan, called for tolerance for the white-collar-run roadside stands from city management authorities.
Prof. Yan Jirong thinks the business will possibly become a trend, for which extreme restrictions and intervention are not necessary.
"It would be better to imitate Western-style 'flea markets' to demarcate special places for the 'white collars' to set up their stands," he suggests.
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