After Her Master's, She Chose to Raise Horses in Ireland First | At 22, What Is She Thinking? (21)

"It wasn't until I got there that I realized this was a massive industry."

Editor's note: On June 20 we launched "The QDaily Survey: College Student Series." Over the coming weeks, dozens of articles will look at how college students spend money, fall in love, work and lose their bearings, and what they make of the virtual world. A large part of the series is the individual stories of the 50 students we interviewed. This is the twenty-first: a woman who, after finishing her master's degree, flew to Ireland to raise horses.

By the time Lin En's busy day was over, it was nearly ten at night. But when she picked up my call, her voice still had plenty of energy in it.

This young woman from Hunan now does work that looks nothing like what she studied. "What I do now is business-to-business sales — selling software to companies," she told me.

Lin En graduated from the University of Hong Kong. After her bachelor's in English, she stayed on for a master's in comparative literature, the subject she loved. That year, she remembers, was a very happy one: she got on well with classmates and professors alike, the coursework interested her, and the idea of a PhD followed naturally.

In the end, though, she decided it wasn't for her. "My brain just doesn't seem up to writing papers," she said with a laugh.

Lin En doesn't consider herself a rational person; she goes on instinct for a lot of things. After her master's she didn't want to go straight to work in Hong Kong — she wanted to see more of the world while she was still young. Then she came across a notice on her school's website about Dubai's international thoroughbred training program, and she was sold on the spot. As a child she had read Heidi, Girl of the Alps so often that she had always longed for that kind of life.

She puts the impulse down to "a naive girl's whim." She grabbed the chance, got through the application, and flew off to distant Ireland to spend a year raising horses.

We've set down Lin En's story in her own words, so you can get to know her more directly:

The moment I saw the notice on the school website, I was sold. I'd read Heidi, Girl of the Alps so much as a kid that I'd always longed for that kind of life — I'd probably romanticized it in my head — and seeing this got me really excited.

It really was just a naive girl's whim. I'd only just graduated and wanted to see more while I still had the time and was still young. My parents didn't restrict me much; my mother especially wanted me to go out and see things. Back then I simply felt there was no reason to box myself in — that just because I'd studied in Hong Kong, I had to start working in Hong Kong right away.

The program is sponsored by the Sheikh of Dubai. He loves horse racing, and he's very bullish on China's prospects, so every year he recruits a group of young Chinese people to get a taste of the racing industry. He has stud farms in the United States, Australia, Japan, Ireland and the UK, and takes 20 people a year, three or four to each place.

A relevant background — veterinary medicine, equine science — helps your application. Those applicants really are headed that way, in their education and their plans, so it's a natural fit for them. But they also want people with, say, good English, some interest and enthusiasm for the industry, and a willingness to step into a brand-new field.

I went in wanting to experience a new industry and a new way of living, so I didn't overthink it, and I hadn't decided I would definitely go into racing afterward.

I'd watched horse racing in Hong Kong, but I thought it was just jockeys and a field of horses. It wasn't until I got there that I realized this was a massive industry. In places where the training business is very mature — the United States, Australia, Britain and the rest of Europe — the chain has many links, and every link involves countless employees and enormous amounts of money and manpower.

We started with three weeks of training at an equestrian center in Shanghai, learning some basic practice and theory. Then on August 1 we flew to our assigned sites; I went to Ireland with three other interns.

Over there we got up around seven each day and started work at eight. Ours was a breeding farm, and the job was to get the horses to mate and have foals, and then look after the foals until they turned one.

Thoroughbreds are a particular breed, originally bred from Arabian and British horses for speed — the fastest and most prized horses in the world. Working with them means doing different things in different seasons of the year, and the horses themselves pass through different stages of life.

The earliest stage in preparing a racing champion is getting it used to the human world at one year old, when it's only just meeting the world at all, getting it used to being around people. Every day you add a little more on its back so it slowly gets used to a saddle. All of that has to be taught. You learn a lot in that period, and you learn how to handle a horse and read its temper.

At around two it's sent to a trainer to prepare for racing. After their racing days some of the males retire and become breeding stallions, which is a whole different life. A mare that retires may become a broodmare, looked after the whole way through until she gives birth, and then a new round of mating starts. The thing we joked about most, honestly, was the mating — it was just too funny.

Mating itself takes only a few minutes, but there's a great deal of preparation. With a mare, you have to know that there's a stretch of time when she's willing to mate and another when she can't stand stallions, so at the start you take her out every day and record how she reacts, which lets you work out her cycle. Once that's settled, when you see she's in the willing phase, you can lead her over to a stallion, then bring her back and keep testing for changes in her behavior. Say she's conceived — after a while you have to watch how the pregnancy is coming along. It's a long process. We call it the breeding season, because it runs from around January or February to May or June.

What I took away from the whole program is: don't be in a hurry for quick results, because this is a start from zero. If what you want is to graduate, join a big company, hold one title after a year and another the next, this program will pull you a little off that road. Part of the work is manual labor, which to someone in a hurry may look like wasted time.

In the mornings we did the physical work: feeding and watering the horses, cleaning the containers they drank and ate from on a schedule, cleaning their stalls on a schedule. Our stalls were bedded with straw, and after a horse relieved itself you'd have to throw out nearly all of it and lay down fresh straw. So the program was about half manual labor and half study.

We visited all kinds of bodies in the industry — regulators, auctions, other horse-related organizations. We also had assignments: every month they'd set us a big one, essentially a report, for which you had to research the local horse business. The point, overall, was to give us a full view of the industry.

But life there was simple, and happiness became simple too, because there wasn't much to be anxious about. The four of us interns in Ireland worked with the horses every day. Everyone worked together on the farm and broke a little sweat. At half past ten there was tea and biscuits; people chatted a bit, laughed a bit, and went back to work.

By the time work ended it was more or less lunchtime, and eating was a big event in our day. We'd spend a long time gathered in the kitchen cooking, then eat slowly, talking as we ate, then wash up with music on. In the afternoon I mostly stayed in our office and studied on my own, so there was plenty of time for very simple things.

In Hong Kong, even with no real pressure on you, the pressure from everything around you was enormous. You'd be standing still while everyone else was charging ahead, and you'd feel it, invisible. You'd want to make yourself busy — a pressure to force your own life to look full. Every summer you had to find an internship, had to make your résumé look better. But in Ireland I found that having nothing to do was the normal state of things.

Because there wasn't much competitive pressure there, the people I worked with were the sort who rest once the work is done, and who cheer up the moment they clock off. One girl in particular showed me something: the way she truly enjoyed life, opened her heart to everyone, got to know everyone. I found that inspiring.

Some of the managers at our stud farm were very good people too, with the kind of enthusiasm that catches you just by being near it. The thoroughbred business is fairly conservative; new media and certain kinds of technology haven't spread widely in it. But they'd come up with new ideas and try new things — inviting well-known trainers to give talks, for instance — small efforts to make the place around them better, so that everyone working there could become a better version of themselves.

We interns in Ireland got two weeks to visit Britain, and the interns in Britain got two weeks in Ireland. I was especially lucky with my trip to Britain, because the weather those two weeks was glorious, the sun bright and clear. The Sheikh of Dubai's stud farm was immense — rolling hills, and everything you could see belonged to him. That was the moment I finally felt what those English novels describe, an aristocrat looking out over his own land.

On March 26 this year we all went to Dubai, because the Dubai World Cup, the biggest race meeting in Dubai, was on, so we spent three weeks there. The best part of all was riding in the Dubai desert — it really did feel like the line, 'you are the wind, I am the sand.'

After the program ended, everyone went their own way. Some, like me, moved on to things unrelated to racing; others stayed in the industry. We flew back to Shanghai together around April 16 for the graduation ceremony, and then I started looking for a job.

Because China's racing industry is only getting started, a lot of people who've been in it a long time told us this was a great moment to get in: join now and later you'd collect a big dividend from its golden age. But I don't think I'm someone who likes to gamble; I'm fairly conservative about my career, so in the end I didn't stay.

Ever since I went into literature I've been torn — my expectations for my own future kept changing. Part of it is my personality and part of it is the field: there's so much room to choose that I never quite dared to settle on anything, or didn't want to, and I feel like I've walked a zigzag.

When I was job hunting I didn't do much analysis of industries, because I'm not a very rational person; I decide on instinct. Back at the stud farm, work felt like training for character, so what I care about is what kind of person I become when I deal with people in whatever I'm doing — whether my colleagues or the company around me can inspire me the way the stud farm did.

Right now it feels like the start of a new stage. I basically don't have to work late these days — occasionally when a client asks for something — so otherwise my time is fairly free. Whenever I look back on the past year, it's easy to find the motivation to hold on to that state of mind: even when Hong Kong is crowded and hectic, I still want that sense of enjoyment.

These past few months I've felt inspired — to put it grandly, I understand better now how to be good to myself and how to express love. My father used to say I had low emotional intelligence: when he took me out drinking, I really hated having to toast people, and now I'm willing to. Now I'm quite willing to put in the effort to make myself happy and other people happy too, and that effort doesn't feel forced.

If you like someone, say so; that kind of expression makes both sides happy. One of the interns I worked with would sometimes bake cookies, and she really enjoyed the baking itself. When they were done she'd hand them around to everyone working there, and people would laugh and talk about her baking.

On the other hand, I think that if you don't do anything with your own life — if you just go to work and clock off, day after day — your life won't be very exciting. Stir something up and it gets more interesting. My own enthusiasm still isn't enough: I like this a little, that a little, but I don't yet have the passion and drive to get really good at any one hobby.

I think now that being lost doesn't get you anywhere; better to settle on something. Back in college I used to tell myself: set a goal, walk toward it, see how far you can get, and if it really doesn't work, switch to another goal.

(At the interviewee's request, the name in this article is a pseudonym.)