LESS THAN three years ago Ms Jiang was tidying away toys and singing rhymes as a teacher at a nursery in Beijing. She remembers parents knocking on the door in an effort to sign their children up. That gradually became rarer, until last year Ms Jiang found herself distributing promotional leaflets for the nursery in her lunchbreaks. She realised that the alphabetical writing was on the wall. Last May Ms Jiang decided to move into a sector with better growth prospects: care homes. “Caring for the elderly is easier than caring for young children,” she reckons. And Ms Jiang’s abilities to teach handicrafts and play games come in useful.