Chinese doctor, 48, quits 20-year medical career to run steamed bun shop: 'I'm so happy'

A Chinese woman in her 40s who spent more than two decades as a doctor has abruptly quit medicine to open a steamed bun shop — and says she has never been happier. "I'm so happy I can't stop working," she said.

Dong Min, 48, opened the shop in Wuhan, Hubei Province, in 2023 and quickly drew widespread attention, according to the South China Morning Post and the Chinese newspaper Changjiang Daily on Tuesday (local time). The reason: she had walked away from a 20-year medical career to do it.

Dong graduated from Wuhan University's medical school in 1999 and worked as an OB-GYN in Shenzhen before returning to Wuhan to join her mother's private clinic. When her mother retired, the two moved back to their hometown of Tianmen in Hubei Province, where Dong opened a small local hospital and continued working as both its director and a practicing physician.

The psychological toll of the job, however, proved to be considerable.

"Beyond treating patients, I had to spend a great deal of energy on non-medical tasks — like dealing with frequent inspections by various government agencies," Dong said. "As everyone knows, the doctor-patient relationship in China is often tense, and whenever a medical dispute arose, I, as the hospital's legal representative, had to bear full responsibility."

Her interest in the steamed bun business began in 2023, when a friend's family was running a similar shop. She initially put in money as an investor, but when the cook suddenly quit, she stepped in to run the place herself.

As she learned the craft of making steamed buns, Dong discovered a passion and a sense of joy she had not felt before.

She ultimately decided to give up her medical license to devote herself fully to the business.

Her family initially pushed back against the idea of abandoning what they saw as a respectable and prestigious profession.

Dong told them: "I'm almost 50 and I've had many experiences. I don't care what others think of me. I just want to live a life I love — a life for myself." Her mother and siblings gradually came around and now occasionally help out at the shop.

Dong said she now works more than 10 hours a day but feels none of the psychological pressure that weighed on her during her years in medicine.

"There are no fixed answers in life, and it's never too late to try something new," she said. "I want to keep running this shop for as long as my body allows."

Dong's story reflects a broader trend in China, where growing numbers of doctors, worn down by excessive patient loads and heavy administrative burdens, are leaving medicine for lower-status jobs.

In 2024, a doctor who had spent 13 years in the clinical pathology department of a large hospital in Yiwu, Zhejiang Province, resigned to set up a street food stall — a move that drew widespread surprise when he revealed the stall earned him far more than his previous monthly salary of under 10,000 yuan ($1,500).

Meanwhile, the popularity of medical schools in China has been declining as engineering fields such as AI and robotics capture students' attention.

Medical graduates must complete a three-year residency, and competition for residency positions has grown so fierce that a master's degree has in effect become a baseline requirement. Completing the full training path takes at least 11 years.

Even after clearing those hurdles, residents who perform clinical duties comparable to those of full-time medical staff receive little pay in return.

A 2020 investigation by Dingxiangyuan, a Chinese medical information platform, found that about 28 percent of residents earned less than 1,000 yuan per month and 8 percent received no income at all. Only 32 percent earned more than 3,000 yuan a month.