With “general standards” Loretta Liu coped. A 2018 graduate from one of China’s top universities has rented an apartment in the city of Shenzhen after several companies hired her as a graphic designer, despite the country’s youth unemployment reaching record levels.

He retired last year. She now works for a pet supply chain for a fifth of her previous salary. She stands for hours and wears a uniform instead of carefully chosen clothes. And she is satisfied.

“I’m tired of living like this. I felt like I wasn’t getting anything from my work,” Liu says, adding that she had little creative freedom, often worked overtime, and felt her mental and physical health was deteriorating.

Liu is part of a phenomenon that is gaining more and more attention in China: young people are leaving prestigious jobs to do manual labor. The trend is hard to measure, but social media posts have documented cases ranging from a tech worker turned grocery store cashier to an accountant selling hot dogs on the street.

On Xiaohongshu, an Instagram-like app, the hashtag “My first handicraft experience” has gained more than 28 million views.

Many are already describing the joy of a fixed working day and a less competitive atmosphere. They acknowledge that change requires sacrifice – Liu said she saved about $15,000 before she left and cut her spending drastically – but they say it’s worth it.

Around the world, the pandemic has prompted people to re-evaluate the value of their jobs — like the Great Retirement in the US.

There are strong forces in China that feed the disillusionment of the youth. Irregular working hours and overbearing managers are commonplace. Three years of restrictions and “zero WITHovoid” in China made many realize how little control they have over their lives due to hard work.

“lying flat”

The trend of layoffs and turnover has reignited the debate about the future of work. Two years ago, the call to quit work and enjoy life, the so-called “lying on the floor”, was widely disseminated on the Internet. But his critics argued that those who did so “wasted their parents’ investments and abandoned the hard work that helped China become a superpower.”

Since then, competition for jobs has become increasingly fierce. Universities are expected to graduate a record number of students this year, even as companies cut hiring. The unemployment rate among youth aged 16 to 24 was nearly 20 percent last summer, according to official statistics, and the rate was higher among college graduates.

“The purpose of learning and building knowledge is not to have an impressive job, but to have the courage to take on more opportunities,” reads the description of an online forum that invited more than 39,000 participants to ask how exhausting street furnishing. stall, or describe the table setting experience.

“Well cooked latte”

When 25-year-old Eunice Yang was offered a consultant position in Beijing last year after completing her master’s degree, she immediately accepted. She was proud to stand out from so many competitors and wanted to see how far she could go. But China’s corporate culture is known for its demands, and the deaths of internet company employees raise questions about overwork and mental health.

Yang soon fell into a vicious circle: she was stressed out due to the heavy workload, but she was too busy to relax. She also had to see her parents for almost a year due to travel restrictions. COVID-19. He retired last fall. She now works in a coffee shop in her hometown in northeast China, earning one-fifth of her previous salary. She lives with her parents and works as a freelance illustration, a hobby she gave up in Beijing.

“Everyone thought that finding a client or closing a big deal was very important, and I wanted to force myself to believe the same,” he said. But she found she found a great deal of satisfaction in befriending a customer or being complimented on a well-made latte.

Minority

Those who have changed jobs are probably still in the minority. Some of those who have left their high-paying jobs admit they don’t know how long they’ll stay in their new profession – some say they’re spending more than they earn.

Critics have branded people changing jobs as naïve, implying that they are playing poverty or taking jobs from less educated people who need them. But the criticism also goes the other way: China’s state broadcaster has attributed the unemployment problem to the fact that young, educated Chinese are too reluctant to take on manual labor, implying that they are spoiled.

“The problem is that many young people saw that the work they were doing did not offer a real chance for a better life due to lower wages and constant discrimination,” said a researcher from the Shanghai Institute of Finance and Law. “Young people are pragmatic, not picky,” he added.