Mark Lin had always dreamed of a career in the arts. As he finished his fine arts degree at a top London university in 2020, he began applying for dozens of roles at galleries, agencies and dealers across the capital.<\/p>\n
But the British economy was still reeling after months of pandemic lockdowns, and Lin hit a brick wall. After weeks of effort, he had an inbox full of rejection emails but not a single callback \u2013 and he was rapidly running out of money.<\/p>\n
That is when Lin decided to take a leap of faith: if no one would give him a job, he would create one for himself.<\/p>\n
Lin, then 25, began posting on Chinese-language social platforms, offering to run errands for other Chinese residents in the United Kingdom \u2013 airport pickups, Ikea assembly jobs, or anything else that would earn him a bit of cash.<\/p>\n
To his surprise, the response was overwhelming. After just a few posts, Lin was inundated with requests, and he was soon rushing around the city collecting government documents, walking dogs, and even clocking in at university campuses on behalf of his swelling client base.<\/p>\n
Before long, the side-hustle had grown into a thriving business. Lin registered a company in 2021, transferred to a skilled worker visa, and began hiring other young Chinese to handle an ever-growing flow of orders. Some months, his income reaches as high as \u00a38,000 (US$10,900).<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"Mark Lin had always dreamed of a career in the arts. As he finished his fine arts degree…\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":204552,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[3092],"tags":[3070,51,1395,36593,82437,82435,10391,82436,82434,668,897,257,82439,82440,70149,16,15,82438],"class_list":{"0":"post-204551","1":"post","2":"type-post","3":"status-publish","4":"format-standard","5":"has-post-thumbnail","7":"category-jobs","8":"tag-british-economy","9":"tag-business","10":"tag-china","11":"tag-chinese-graduates","12":"tag-chinese-residents","13":"tag-chinese-language-gig-economy","14":"tag-east-london","15":"tag-eddie-wang","16":"tag-emily-zhang","17":"tag-ikea","18":"tag-jobs","19":"tag-london","20":"tag-mark-lin","21":"tag-psw","22":"tag-rednote","23":"tag-uk","24":"tag-united-kingdom","25":"tag-university-of-warwick"},"share_on_mastodon":{"url":"https:\/\/pubeurope.com\/@uk\/114725809270078796","error":""},"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/204551","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=204551"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/204551\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/204552"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=204551"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=204551"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=204551"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}