Thread: Some Chinese shun grueling careers for low-desire life

BEIJING (AP) — Fed up with work stress, Guo Jianlong quit a newspaper job in Beijing and moved to China’s mountain southwest to “lie flat.”


Guo joined a small but visible handful of Chinese urban professionals who are rattling the ruling Communist Party by rejecting grueling careers for a “low-desire life.” That is clashing with the party’s message of success and consumerism as its celebrates the 100th anniversary of its founding.


Guo, 44, became a freelance writer in Dali, a town in Yunnan province known for its traditional architecture and picturesque scenery. He married a woman he met there.


“Work was OK, but I didn’t like it much,” Guo said. “What is wrong with doing your own thing, not just looking at the money?”


“Lying flat” is a “resistance movement” to a “cycle of horror” from high-pressure Chinese schools to jobs with seemingly endless work hours, novelist Liao Zenghu wrote in Caixin, the country’s most prominent business magazine.


“In today’s society, our every move is monitored and every action criticized,” Liao wrote. “Is there any more rebellious act than to simply ‘lie flat?’”


It isn’t clear how many people have gone so far as to quit their jobs or move out of major cities. Judging by packed rush hour subways in Beijing and Shanghai, most young Chinese slog away at the best jobs they can get.


Still, the ruling party is trying to discourage the trend. Beijing needs skilled professionals to develop technology and other industries. China’s population is getting older and the pool of working-age people has shrunk by about 5% from its 2011 peak.


“Struggle itself is a kind of happiness,” the newspaper Southern Daily, published by the party, said in a commentary. “Choosing to ‘lie flat’ in the face of pressure is not only unjust but also shameful.”


The trend echoes similar ones in Japan and other countries where young people have embraced anti-materialist lifestyles in response to bleak job prospects and bruising competition for shrinking economic rewards.


Official data show China’s economic output per person doubled over the past decade, but many complain the gains went mostly to a handful of tycoons and state-owned companies. Professionals say their incomes are failing to keep up with soaring housing, child care and other costs.


In a sign of the issue’s political sensitivity, four professors who were quoted by the Chinese press talking about “lying flat” declined to discuss it with a foreign reporter.


Another possible sign of official displeasure: T-shirts, mobile phone cases and other “Lie Flat”-themed products are disappearing from online sales platforms.


Urban employees complain that work hours have swelled to “9 9 6,” or 9 a.m. to 9 p.m., six days a week.


“We generally believe slavery has died away. In fact, it has only adapted to the new economic era,” a woman who writes under the name Xia Bingbao, or Summer Hailstones, said on the Douban social media service.


Some elite graduates in their 20s who should have the best job prospects say they are worn out from the “exam hell” of high school and university. They see no point in making more sacrifices.


“Chasing fame and fortune does not attract me. I am so tired,” said Zhai Xiangyu, a 25-year-old graduate student.


Some professionals are cutting short their careers, which removes their experience from the job pool.


Xu Zhunjiong, a human resources manager in Shanghai, said she is quitting at 45, a decade before the legal minimum retirement age for women, to move with her Croatian-born husband to his homeland.


“I want to retire early. I don’t want to fight any more,” Xu said. “I’m going to other places.”


Thousands vented frustration online after the Communist Party’s announcement in May that official birth limits would be eased to allow all couples to have three children instead of two. The party has enforced birth restrictions since 1980 to restrain population growth but worries China, with economic output per person still below the global average, needs more young workers.


Minutes after the announcement, websites were flooded with complaints that the move did nothing to help parents cope with child care costs, long work hours, cramped housing, job discrimination against mothers and a need to look after elderly parents.


Xia writes that she moved to a valley in Zhejiang province, south of Shanghai, for a “low-desire life” after working in Hong Kong. She said despite a high-status job as an English-language reporter, her rent devoured 60% of her income and she had no money at the end of each month.


She rejects the argument that young people who “lie flat” are giving up economic success when that’s already is out of reach for many in an economy with a growing gulf between a wealthy elite and the majority.


“When resources are focused more and more on the few people at the head and their relatives, the workforce is cheap and replaceable,” she wrote on Douban. “Is it sensible to entrust your destiny to small handouts from others?”


Xia declined an interview request.


Guo, the writer in Dali, said he puts in more hours as a freelancer than he did at a newspaper. But he is happier, and life is more comfortable: He and his wife eat breakfast on their breezy sixth-floor apartment balcony with a view of trees.


“As long as I can keep writing, I’m very satisfied,” Guo said. “I don’t feel stifled.”


A handful who can afford it withdraw from work almost entirely.


A 27-year-old architect in Beijing said she started saving as a teenager to achieve financial freedom.


“From last September, when I saw all my savings had reached 2 million (yuan) ($300,000), I lay down,” said the woman, who would give only the name Nana, in an interview over her social media account.


Nana said she turned down a job that paid 20,000 yuan ($3,000) per month due to the long hours and what she saw as limited opportunities for creativity.


“I want to be free from inflexible rules,” said Nana. “I want to travel and make myself happy.”


Some Chinese shun grueling careers for '''low-desire life'''

Some Chinese don't even like rice. Others are gay. Who would have thought a nation of 1.2 billion might offer some diversity?

Originally Posted by sabang

Who would have thought a nation of 1.2 billion might offer some diversity?

Not the China leadership for sure.

Originally Posted by misskit

The trend echoes similar ones in Japan and other countries where young people have embraced anti-materialist lifestyles in response to bleak job prospects and bruising competition for shrinking economic rewards.


Official data show China’s economic output per person doubled over the past decade, but many complain the gains went mostly to a handful of tycoons and state-owned companies. Professionals say their incomes are failing to keep up with soaring housing, child care and other costs.

All that happened in the US starting about 15 years ago. Same story, Same complaints, same reaction.

I remember my SZ travel days back in 1998 or so. It was rice fields and a few factories. Now most cant afford a car, housing. Salaries for Engineers have risen making the area undesirable for low cost manufacturing.

Growth and success come at a price and people start to get sick of the hamster wheel life where they can barely make ends meet.

Originally Posted by JPPR2

Growth and success come at a price and people start to get sick of the hamster wheel life where they can barely make ends meet.

Eh?

I might be reading this wrong, but are you, the seppo capitalist, really trying to tell us that you actually make these lives better because you give them enough to eat a bowl of rice every month?

It's called exploitation no matter how you dress it up.

Originally Posted by hallelujah

Eh?

I might be reading this wrong, but are you, the seppo capitalist, really trying to tell us that you actually make these lives better because you give them enough to eat a bowl of rice every month?

It's called exploitation no matter how you dress it up.

I am saying they have grown to the point that their population is complaining like Americans did and still do. Funny to read Chinese people sick of work and wanting out. It will only get worse for the middle class.

Btw, wasn't talking about exploiting anyone. Just an observation of the comments in the OP.

It's called exploitation no matter how you dress it up.

I never knew you were a Marxist.

Originally Posted by JPPR2

I am saying they have grown to the point that their population is complaining like Americans did and still do. Funny to read Chinese people sick of work and wanting out.

Perhaps some will get also sick from their own country, cannot wait to get to Thailand? (where did I read that lately?)

Originally Posted by Klondyke

Perhaps some will get also sick from their own country, cannot wait to get to Thailand? (where did I read that lately?)

They are already buying up Condo's at a very high rate.

People exit their birth country for their own personal reasons.