Learning couple chinese characters do no mean much. Most young Chinese do not HAVE SKILL SETS. They just have some agile hands and grind through the hours.
If you position yourself as laborer, you will never get anything meaningful. Just a large pool of coolies. Unfortunately that is where most Chinese are right now.
If you have visited Chinatown, it is the same. All they know is being manual labor in some restaurants and some gift shops. That is all their un-educated minds can comprehend.