discussion keeps the world turning.
You share a room, you share the space and probably share some of the chores.
But what if your roommate also runs a business from their top bunk?
Across China, students are launching side hustles right from their dorm rooms manicures, barber shops, cleaning services.
They are creative, yes, and they are ambitious, but it's also a bit messy.
When does a side gig cross a line?
Coming to you live from our studios in Beijing, this is Roundtable.
I'm Steve Hatherly.
Thank you very much for being with us today.
And for the show, I'm with Xinyu and Yushan.
First up.
A manicure studio beside a bunk bed, a student barber shop set up on a dormitory balcony even students offering on-demand dorm cleaning services.
Across Chinese universities, ordinary dorm rooms are becoming students' first startup spaces.
What begins as a side hustle to earn a little extra living cash is increasingly turning into a real entrepreneurial experience.
But as dorm businesses become more common, so do the debates surrounding them.
Are these small businesses a valuable form of social practice and innovation, or are they crossing important boundaries in shared campus living?
Xinyu and Yusheng, good afternoon.
I'm thinking it's a little bit of A and a little bit of B meaning yes, great valuable experience for the young people, but also perhaps crossing a line of privacy, I would think.
The way I see it is that these young Gen Z students, they're so creative.
Back in the days I used to be the only person required in my dorm to put on the transparent film on the surface of your eyes.
Your phone, yeah, yeah.
Well, whatever.
Oh, that was your job?
That was my job because they say I have a steady hand.
I didn't know until they told me.
So I was providing these services for my dorm mates and nobody even bothered to buy me a milk tea.
Oh, see now, that's interesting because I in my university days, on my floor in my dorm, I was the English literature paper editor.
I lived with students who were, I was also a business major at the time.
So my roommates were business full on business majors, but I was also studying English literature and poetry and that stuff.
And they had no interest in that kind of stuff, but they had to take those classes.
And prepare for exams.
Yeah, so I was helping them with their editing and things like that.
But just like you and your phone film covering skills, I never received any form of payment for my services.
So sad.
If I look back on my college days, I think it's around the 2010s, before the popularization of the online ordering and delivery platforms.
There were already in the campus students were making money from like picking up meals and fruits and delivering to your dorm rooms.
Yeah, like, hey, I'll go pick it up for you ordered it.
I'll go pick it up at the gate and you give me like a few yuan.
Yeah, that's exactly smart.
That is smart.
So dorm room entrepreneurship.
What does it look like on a Chinese university campus these days?
I gave a few examples already, didn't I?
Yeah like, for example, there are beauty related services, which are really among the most common business types nowadays in the university dorms.
Some students.
They have turned their dorm desks into small manicure stations doing nail art and nail care services at a much lower price than outside salons.
And others have started dorm barber service.
That's pointed out to one student's case from Hezhou University who became known among classmates for doing haircut directly inside dormitories after teaching himself styling through online tutorials.
So he self-learned it himself.
And he's able to charge others by performing the service to his friends and classmates inside the dorm.
And also there has been a very popular service required, that's the cleaning service.
And that's following one example of a student blogger known online as Mimi.
So he gained attention for offering professional-style dorm cleaning service including well, he equipped himself with all necessary cleaning tools at the beginning.
And then he just helped organize other students' cluttered rooms.
So declutter for other dormitories, scrub sinks and deep clean the shared spaces inside the dorms.
That's earning money for Mimi.
That's a really kind of Well.
All of the ideas that you mentioned are very smart because they are things that students want when they are on campus.
They want and need a haircut, they want to have their nails done and they want to have their apartments cleaned or at least have some help cleaning their apartment or organizing their apartment.
All of these are great ideas.
And the ones that you mentioned, those are not the only successful story.
Considering other businesses or compared to other businesses, there are some advantages of setting up a business idea in a university dorm.
And one of those is that there's a very, very low barrier to entry.
The cost of getting started is pretty close to zero.
Zero, not far above it.
One of the examples of the nail salon.
That one happened in China's Zhejiang province, by the way, in eastern China.
So one student, she started this whole business of doing nail art with just 500 yuan.
That's less than 70 US dollars.
That would be for like the basic tools, I guess.
Yeah, and you know how much it costs for doing nails outside in the salons?
Over $100, $200.
Yeah, sometimes it gets to $1,000.
What?
Yeah, in major cities if the rent is high enough for the salon to run.
So maybe for these students, they can actually have their nails done at a pretty much lower price.
Mm-hmm. by, you know, these nails are done by his fellow students or her fellow students.
I mean, for these entrepreneurs, they learn their skills by themselves.
They taught themselves to, you know, the hair cutting or hair styling skills.
Yeah, he watched online videos.
Online videos.
And so that makes it how... how low the cost is, and there is very low overhead as well.
And if we look at the campuses, the surrounding, the environment here, it's very densely populated.
There are a lot of students there, so the demand can be really high.
So like I mentioned the food delivery services as well, because students, every single day they have to eat lunch and dinner.
And sometimes when you go to the third or the fourth year of the whole campus college years and you may find that canteens can be really boring and you want to eat something else, then these delivery services come very handy.
So we talked on Roundtable not that long ago about the final 100 meter delivery challenge and how major delivery platforms now were having staffed members pardon me inside apartment complexes.
So the delivery rider would deliver to the front gate of the apartment complex.
Then someone inside the complex would take it to the front door of whoever ordered the food.
I guess that's the way it works on a university campus.
Similarly, yes, but not as organized or supported like the one under the major delivery platforms.
But also that is a very good point.
We have the market for these young entrepreneurs to get creative and get innovative.
And also in the meantime, I think yeah, modern day students can easily promote their services, not only through online platforms like sending promotions on WeChat or in the groups, but also through highly effective offline campus network building.
Because you help one customer and then this quote-unquote customer is from another dorm and then the whole other dorm.
Learn about okay, this.
Word of mouth is the most effective form.
Right, this person at this dorm is capable of doing all different kinds of services.
So yeah, indeed, this is easier and cheaper promotion that these young entrepreneurs can get.
There is an expression in English.
They say the most three most important things in business are location, location, location.
So if your location is in the middle of a densely populated market with a lot of demand, it's kind of the perfect business setup, isn't it?
And a lot of these students, too, you know, they want to make their own money.
They want to pay their own bills, want to pay for their own food and they want to reduce the financial burden on their family.
Should they be getting assistance from their family?
So you know, getting this little tiny business off the ground is.
There's a lot of motivation there for these students.
So the dorm entrepreneurship concept – and, by the way, we're going over all the positive things so far and we're going to get to the quote-unquote controversy in a little while –
But yeah, it can help cover their living expenses.
It can have other benefits too.
I mean, I think one of the obvious things beyond just making money, is that you can learn from a very young age about how to actually run a business, how a business actually functions.
Because you start with one customer, one becomes two, two becomes four, four becomes eight, and then your responsibilities grow along with it.
That's the best part that I think that will most benefit these young students.
That is, you don't need to go to a what is it called MBA in order to learn everything before you actually start on with an actual business.
But you actually have the experience first.
And then you can decide if you want an MBA afterwards or not.
Sure, yeah.
So this is really the best part to teach you about all different kinds of things required for building a business the interpersonal communication, how to run a business that can satisfy your customer.
Yeah, customer service.
Yeah, deal with customers of all different types.
People can make complaints and be really hard to deal with.
Sometimes that's for one.
And also this is practical business literacy, meaning that yeah, from practice, without all those theories, you already get a very solid quote-unquote training of what commercial thinking should be like, like market analyzing.
How can I better map out this little business?
I'm starting from ground zero.
And also how can I maximize my financial literacy and how can I learn to get more customers as time go by,
This is all self-learning curve.
Sure.
Calculating costs, profit margins, managing procurement, understanding technical value adds.
All of this business lingo would be applied to what they are doing at that particular time.
Yeah, Steve asked us, have you ever thought about starting a business when you were young?
I was eating a piece of corn at that moment, I remember, and then I just gave up on the corn and I replied without hesitation no,
Yeah, very short conversation.
Because I know from the bottom of my heart all of these above thoughts and idea and training that is required for doing business.
I do not have it.
Yeah, same here.
When I was in high school, my mom owned a cafe bistro type thing, small restaurant.
And so I worked there after school and on the weekends, waiting tables and stuff like that.
Then in one particular summer, she opened a second location and she forced me to run it.
Forced.
I said, no, I'm not interested in this.
She said no, you're going to do it because I want you to find out if this is your thing, if this is for you or not.
If you enjoy business, if you enjoy customer service, if you enjoy doing the books and stuff like that.
I want you to learn all of that.
So I did it, and I didn't like it.
I was right, and I never did it again.
But I think it was a great learning experience for me because I learned from that age.
I was, what, 19, 20 years old that I'm not really a business person.
Mm-hmm.
That got solidified later in my university years, but at least I got that little taste of it early on.
So I think the side maybe benefit to these young people starting these businesses in their dorm rooms is that maybe the haircut guy, the barber guy,
Maybe he won't go on to be a professional barber who opens multiple shops.
That's okay.
Maybe the girl who's doing nail art doesn't matter if this is her only time doing nail art.
Maybe she'll realize that she doesn't like it.
The point I'm trying to make here is that it's extra experience outside of your typical dorm.
Go to class, come back study, go to sleep.
Wake up, go to class, come home study, go to sleep like that type of lifestyle.
Yes, definitely.
If I look back at my college years, I definitely did some side gigs as well.
On one way, it helps me to make some extra money, but also now I feel like I have learned how to communicate with different people.
And during that process, I got to learn. except from the textbooks and other like academic subjects.
May I ask what kind of things you did during that time?
I taught English.
Still, you know, I had to communicate with the students.
I had to communicate how to educate or teach English to a different customer base.
So yeah, that somehow became a valuable experience for me as well.
Yeah, a lot of English teachers or second language teachers will say dealing with the parents can be the most difficult part.
Yeah, definitely.
Difficult part of the job.
It can be really mean.
All right.
So as I said before, we've gone over all the pluses, if you will.
Now let's get to the controversy.
And I think this is pretty easy to understand because...
Dorm rooms are shared spaces and that means that the people person, people who are not involved in this blooming business, might not like it that much.
Yeah, because really this creates a tension between individual innovation and the collective rules of student life.
And the dorms, at the end of the day, are not meant for doing business.
It's a collective way of having the students to...
Yeah, at the most of it's beneficial to rest after learning that's his priorities.
And, in the meantime, dorm entrepreneurship happens directly inside these shared living spaces.
So, no matter what kinds of benefits it may bring to the students, it cannot avoid conflicting with campus regulations in so many schools.
And well, already there are many universities explicitly prohibiting commercial activities within dormitories.
And also legal expert There's one named Guan Xiaoli from China University of Political Science and Law noted that while students helping each other for a fee is one thing, establishing a long-term stable, paid service clearly exceeds the intended function of a dormitory, which is meant for living and studying, not as a storefront.
Yeah, not as a storefront.
Yeah.
In that sense, dormitories are not really charging any rent for these business starters in the first place.
It's not what they're for.
Yeah.
Yeah, sure.
That's one issue going against the commercial activities that are prohibited within the university or within the dorm rooms themselves.
Right.
You'd have to consider safety risks or even fire hazards because we'll take the nail art.
Actually, I don't know what I'm talking about here, because I've never gotten nail art before, but I've seen it.
I've seen it.
There's like hot lamps or something.
Right.
So that has to be taken into consideration here, too, I would think.
Lems as well, and also for barber services, there's hair dryers involved.
I don't know if Yushan back in the days for the storm rooms.
Schools have clear prohibitions of using these high-power appliances in the dorm room to prevent the fire hazards.
So for these professional hair dryers and lamps and heating equipment.
They can cause fire issues or concerns.
That's another key issue here.
And also for the dormitories.
There are six to eight people living together and sometimes you have your customers coming into the dorm room.
Yeah, privacy.
Yeah, the privacy is another issue here, and security as well.
Not to mention that there will be a lot of noise of you know doing, providing services and discussing and talking and laughing and stuff like that.
Yeah, so there's a lot of also pressure and clutter going on.
There was one particular university student this story was online that said that she eventually completely fell out with her roommate.
The relationship ended after the roommate started offering makeup services inside the dorm.
Now, at first, it seemed harmless enough and she was even interested in what was going on.
But as the customer base grew, grew from just a few people here and there throughout the week to several customers every day.
Well, that's when the situation became disruptive, and she recalled being repeatedly woken up by loud knocking on the dorm door, customers arriving early in the morning.
That's not okay. waiting for their appointment.
And then one night it just finally exploded.
She went to bed early.
She wasn't feeling well.
And then she was disturbed by some customers who were discussing different makeup styles or something inside the dorm room.
And she had had enough.
She said, this is a dorm.
This is not a space for you two to have your chat.
Which is a totally fair point.
Yeah, she's kind enough to just tell them that.
If it was me, I probably would have reported them long ago.
Yeah, exactly.
So this is kind of where, I mean, what do you think?
Is it crossing a line?
Because to me, it's pretty clear that it is.
Yes, it is.
If you're disturbing the rest of other roommates, then it is.
And it's not good for the long-term relationship between you and your roommates, you know, because for four yes, usually it's four years together you're going to live inside the same dorm.
Oh, do students often stay with each other for the same group for four years, which we did back in the day?
So you have to think about how other people are feeling about this.
It's not just you making money on your own.
You have to have this shared responsibility because it's a shared space.
Or make some efforts.
Like I read about one comment who said that well, my dorm mate she is making this dorm entrepreneurship and she's earning money, but she doesn't even bother to gift us a little bit or anything realized the fact that she is also using the communal space that we're sharing.
We're really like apologizing.
We're making efforts to indicate that by any chances.
So really that speaks out loud of a lack of awareness among young entrepreneurs, and that's supported by some experts too, about shared resources and social responsibilities.
I mean, it's quite selfish if you think about it really.
It is, isn't it?
So there are people like the three of us, as I can tell, who is very much aware of all the environments around us, people in it and things going on.
And then there are others who dive deep into what they're doing and have deep belief in what they're doing, without caring about anything else.
Yeah.
Xinyu, do you disagree?
You have kind of like a, I don't know, face.
Maybe it's not just about doing business.
In a dorm room, you know, there would be some people that are making phone calls in a loud voice and sometimes playing games on a computer or watching videos out loud.
There are circumstances like this.
Is that the same though?
This seems like it's on another level compared to someone listening to music a little bit too loud.
But it's all about disturbing the communal space.
The way I see it is that if one of the roommates is playing video games too out loud, what you can do is hey, I'm trying to study.
Can you please lower it down?
And nine times out of ten, that person is going to cooperate.
But if you're trying to tell someone who is making money... that can you tone it down a little bit?
I'm not sure if it's always working.
Yeah, and if conflicts like this arise, thinking from the business point of view now, if conflicts like this are arising in your business, in your dorm room, that's not going to be good for your business either, because your customers might feel uncomfortable, they might feel awkward and they might think like oh yeah okay, i don't want to come back here again.
Yeah, the vibe isn't right.
Yeah, i feel pressurized.
Yeah, exactly so i think it's better if i just go outside and get this done now.
Yeah, it's very tricky.
But now back to the entrepreneurial spirit side of the coin.
I think it's fantastic.
I think it's fantastic that these young people have come up with the ideas.
They were able to identify a need within a market, recognize the potential for a business to grow and then not just talk about it but do it.
These are the qualities you need to become a successful business person later in life.
Doing it in a dorm room with your five or however many other roommates sitting next to you might not be the best option for you.
Should universities encourage this type of entrepreneurship or restrict it?
Universities, you said it, Yushan, already, a lot of them strictly prohibit this type of behavior.
But it seems to me that it would be good for the universities to encourage this type of behavior.
They just need to figure out how to do it properly, no?
Yeah, there are those who goes with a simple one-size-fits-all ban on this.
Or sometimes they just let it be total encouragement.
You can do as you wish.
But how about a middle ground where a balanced approach can be achieved inside the uni?
But first and foremost, the basics of all that should be safety.
So establishing clear red lines and restrictions should be the priority for all universities.
On the side of supporting, we're encouraging these type of dormitory entrepreneurships.
So it's up to the schools to restrict activities that cross specific safety and social boundaries, such as the fire hazards you mentioned Xinyu, and what kind of home appliances is allowed and what are not.
And also on the protecting of collective life.
There should be regulations that's very necessary to ensure that the commercialization of a dorm room does not infringe on roommates rights to privacy, to study and doing whatever they want in the dorm as a shared space.
So then, what can they do to in?
I mean, so those would be, yeah sure, making sure everybody's safe, but what can they do to encourage this type of spirit that exists in some of the students?
Maybe not just what we've talked about, like barber and nail art?
You can, based on your own major, do some of the entrepreneurial practices within the campus.
Some of the universities.
They are encouraged to guide students toward official incubators, innovation centers and entrepreneurial corners.
Like providing the space for them.
Yeah, provide space for them for you to conduct whatever kind of work.
Like entrepreneurial practices or projects without the risks of disturbing your roommates.
Also, schools can develop their own resources for students, such as allowing them to bid for campus cleaning projects.
That's a good idea.
Yes, for school libraries or school cafeteria, bathhouse.
There will be a lot of places for cleaning.
So if you like to do the cleaning jobs to make some extra money, there will be other opportunities for you as well.
I like this concept of the bid.
So we have this in Halifax, Nova Scotia, not at the universities, but downtown in front of the waterfront.
So downtown Halifax, it's a harbor city and it's next to the Atlantic Ocean.
In the summertime, it's really beautiful.
There's a lot of tourists.
And what they do for certain shop spaces in the summertime is they do a blind bid for businesses.
So businesses submit their business idea to the city for certain spaces in the downtown area.
And then if they get accepted, they do the whole business proposal.
They do what their expected income is and how it can benefit the downtown community.
And then if they win, they get the space for the summertime.
And then it's over.
So I think it's kind of like the same concept here.
If there's a cleaning project available and there are three or four different cleaning entrepreneurs well, they submit their own proposal and then the university would choose who wins the bid.
It's kind of a fun kind of a fun idea to to inspire that spirit further.
Yeah, and downgrading that just a little bit if you don't want to join any bidding or make things too complicated.
You're just one individual who is talented in some skills, then I think the experience to borrow from some of the universities that I've attended it's based in UK but I believe in China there are also similarities across different unis.
Is that Like for cafe baristas?
They actually have that part-time job open for students to apply?
And I found out about it by going to the same cafe inside the school and realizing the barista is often changing.
And then it came to me that, okay, these are actually my peers, my peers taking up the job.
And it's actually, it's all legal and it's under the management and jurisdiction of the school.
It's a further, better layer of protection for them too.
Yeah, it's more organized and that means it's safer for everybody.
What should the students do then in this case?
I mean, because this is happening.
This is happening right now.
Somebody's probably getting a haircut in a dorm room.
As we speak.
Yeah, but I would always suggest that safety first.
You should bear safety in mind, whatever you do, whatever side gig you want to do.
And also have open communication with your roommates.
Is it okay that we do some barber services here at this time or at another day that maybe you don't feel comfortable today?
Then we can reschedule, you know, to always have this open communications with your roommates.
Yeah, talk to them, like make things convenient for everybody.
That's always the golden rule.
Offer them a free haircut.
And bubble tea.
And a cup of milk tea.
I mean, it just seems obvious, but it's the mature thing to do.
It's the right thing to do.
And who knows?
Maybe they might be interested in helping you out in some way or some form should you go that route.
It's cool that it's happening, but it does indeed sound like it needs to be a little bit more organized, and that would be better for everyone involved, including the universities.
