Connecting teachers' professional well-being and managerialism, this study explored how teachers experience their professional well-being in navigating challenging working conditions. Supported by the well-being theory, document analyses were carried out and open-ended questionnaires and semi-structured interviews were conducted with teachers at Chinese HEIs. The findings portray a landscape of tensions, conflicts, and challenges, where teachers' professional well-being is dramatically confronted and even systematically overlooked. In a managerial culture in favor of performance and competence, teachers' engagement, their perception towards the meaning of education, and their understanding of self-actualization were consistently informed, controlled, and rewarded against a reducible list of skills and outcomes. In this way, the meaning of being a teacher is narrowly focused but broadly standardized. The findings deepen understandings of teachers' professional well-being, enable more critical examinations of managerialism in higher education, and allow promotion of teachers' professional well-being for sustainable development.