China’s Slacker City

Remember how a bunch of young Chinese just decided to give up and let it rot? Recently, a whole bunch of them have decided to make Dali in Yunnan Province their own slacker city.

Takeaways:

  • “Recently a city has become popular because it has been occupied by young people who want to lie flat. It’s Dali, a historical and cultural city in Yunnan province, southwest China, with a population of about 650,000. It has few factories in the area, and tourism accounts for a large share of the municipality’s revenue.”
  • It’s built around a large lake.
  • “A few video bloggers who are secondary landlords in Dali city claim that an army of 100,000 people lying flat have gathered and have occupied the city.”
  • “Here 350 yuan a room per month.” That’s a bit over $50.
  • “The cost of living in Dali is 8,000 Yuan a year. That is $1,162.”
  • “Young people [in China] see no hope for their future and choose to lie down. Their motto is no buying a home, no car, no marriage, no baby, no consumption.”
  • Chinese woman: “It isn’t that I don’t want to have children. I can’t afford it. Housing is so stressful! Without a home, I’m afraid to get married. The cost of having a baby is high. There’s no money or time to raise them, and women’s work is easily affected by childbirth.” All things that help contribute to China’s disasterous demographics.
  • “I’m a leek. I resigned myself to my fate, but I won’t drag a child down to this mess.” “Leek” was a buzzword five or six years ago for someone the Chinese government regarded as a disposable worker/consumer. Sort of like “cog in the machine.”
  • “Before the lying flat people converged on the city of Dali, it had already become a gathering place for digital nomads,” i.e. people who can work remote jobs from anywhere with a decent Internet connection.
  • For the past 20 years, the professional software engineer has been synonymous with young and rich in China. They’re the 996th Generation, who work from 9 AM to 9 PM, 6 days a week, sacrificing their health, but also enjoying the dividends of China’s dotcom boom over the last 20 years. But now China’s Internet industry has entered an era with State-Owned Enterprises (SOEs) in, private companies out, where even big tech companies are being nationalized. The overall economy is slowing down, regulatory bans are proliferating, and the epidemic is exacerbating this trend. Engineers are at increased risk of losing their jobs, and their income and benefits are reduced from time to time. Engineers who have lost their jobs will join the ranks of those who are lying flat. They usually have nothing to do, spending most of their time on the internet playing games and chatting, consuming two packs of instant noodles a day.

  • “The employment market in Shanghai is very bad right now…what is scary is that there are no jobs for you to work again. Private companies are closing their doors, going bankrupt.”
  • As always, it’s hard to determine just how widespread “lying flat” is among young Chinese. If the videos are anything to go by (a big “if”), they all seem considerably cleaner and better behaved that America’s ranks of tent-dwelling, drug-addicted transients. And many seem to be actually renting space for their tents.

    At 9:50 in, you see that cyberpunk dystopian scene of hundred of young video blogger “hosts” broadcasting from their own tiny spaces under a bridge. “Why are there so many young people in China working as online hosts? It’s not that it’s glamorous, it’s more of a helpless attempt under the current job hunting predicament.” Supposedly this happens in multiple Chinese cities, though evidently streaming locally in rich areas like Shanghai brings higher “tips.”

    What a life…

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    14 Responses to “China’s Slacker City”

    1. 370H55V I/me/mine says:

      I am puzzled by the complaint about lack of housing when I’ve seen all the pictures of Chinese ghost cities with thousands of unoccupied apartments. What’s going on?

    2. Kirk says:

      Most of the so-called “ghost cities” and similar projects are essentially uninhabitable, built to even lower than “tofu-dreg” standards.

      China has poured a hell of a lot of concrete in those projects, all of which is wasted. You can’t do that, and expect to have a working economy; the bills remain outstanding, and it’s only a collective willing suspension of disbelief that’s keeping the whole thing from caving in. Which it will, just as it will here in the US and elsewhere.

      I am honestly surprised that it’s gone on as long as it has. Either we don’t know a hell of a lot more about how economies work than we thought, or there’s something really weird going on, everywhere. I suspect we’re just running the slack out of the system, and when we hit the end of the rope, the short, sharp shock there at the end is gonna be amazing

    3. Yonason says:

      Here’s a video I found a while back on China’s “ghost cities.”
      https://m.youtube.com/watch?v=XopSDJq6w8E

      Not what you’d call responsible public works.

    4. Yonason says:

      China’s “slackers” – a conditioned response?

      Another video more to the point of the above article.

      https://m.youtube.com/watch?v=IfgFNRnXCMc

      If everything you work for isn’t yours (as all under communism), and your hard work is harnessed for the benefit of boors who punish you if you jave any personal success, is it any wonder they don’t care?

    5. Kirk says:

      The WEF and the Communists both fantasize that the people they consider “cattle” to be herded are creatures without agency. Both philosophies are basically inhuman; they think that only their own kind, the wealthy billionaires or the Communist Party leaders are in possession of agency or even a right to their own aspirations.

      Which becomes problematical when their policies and actions reach the real world, and start to work out over the course of generations. What happened to the Soviet Union will happen to Communist China, as it will happen to the WEF fantasy-land if it is ever brought to life. People without incentive inevitably cease to strive, or even act. Why should they? If they’re going to be kept like cattle, they’ll behave like cattle. Many of them won’t even bother breeding.

      There will be an inevitable failure point where all of the contradictions and self-destructive trendlines meet up. For the Soviet Union, that was 1989. For Russia, as a nation? Well, wait and see… China and the WEF? Hasn’t happened yet, but it will.

      All of these philosophies and “world systems” are based on false premises, fallacious conceptions of human nature. Watch what happens as those premises and conceptions prove themselves out as manifest error.

    6. jabrwok says:

      The Middle Kingdom sounds like it’s setting itself up for a religious revival. Some kind of zealot with a stirring message has a fertile field waiting to be plowed and harvested if he can avoid being killed by the CCP. The Mandate of Heaven should be passing fairly soon.

    7. Kirk says:

      It ain’t just China that’s set itself up for some nutbar (or, not… More likely “nutbar”, tho…) religious sect to come to power. We’ve done the same thing here in the West, and I’ve long said that the way they’re marginalizing and devaluing young males is playing with fire. If a smart and culturally savvy Islamic type (or, some other religion…) were to come in with a program and ideology that picked all these sidelined young males and offered them something instead of their current societal cuck status? LOL… Yeah. Watch what happens to all the feminism and other bullshit.

      I’m actually sort of surprised that someone hasn’t started working on it. You can see the outlines with the Tate brothers, and the reaction to them from all directions. The potential is there; the energy is building up. You can’t go demonizing an entire majority swath of your society and expect them not to react, and react badly. It’s a testament to just how much “civilizing conditioning” we’ve yet to work through with your average white male that things haven’t already gone seriously south for the idiots running everything.

      If they’d just left it at “Let’s make room for the formerly marginalized…”, that would have been one thing. This current drive to turn every white male into the devil incarnate? Mark my words; you term them devils, then devils they will be.

      I think there’s a pretty solid chance that things are going to “turn around”, go in the other direction… And, go way, way too far. As in “ethnic cleansing” too far, and a whole lot of other bad, bad things.

      And, in the final analysis? The luvvie-duvvie oh-so-sensitive types will be the ones actually responsible for what happens. I don’t think there’s ever been a case, historically speaking, wherein a minority actually pulled off something like they’re trying to put over on majority America. 13% of the population ain’t winning no damn race war… Nor are they going to win by allying themselves with their little brown brothers from south of the border; Mexicans and Central Americans have met blacks already, and they don’t like them one damn bit. Note the paucity of black faces everywhere down there outside Belize; there are reasons.

      All of us are in for some interesting times, over the next few decades. All I can say is “Morons… All of them, morons…”

    8. Paul from Canada says:

      Taiping Rebellion 2.0?

    9. Paul from Canada says:

      Perhaps the CCP is right to suppress Falun-Gong then, at least from their point of view ;-).

    10. Paul from Canada says:

      The Taiping Rebellion caused by some estimates, 20 million dead.

      China has terrible geography. Lots of mountains, desserts, cyclical droughts and floods, earthquakes, and so on. This results in poor internal communications, frequent famine and all sorts of other problems.

      The default is a fragmented place full of city-states, bandit and warlord fiefs etc. Multi-side civil war for survival, in other words. One bandit chief, warlord or other leader, either though luck, skill, cunning, a better helping of resources, or other reason, wins against his nearest opponent, and absorbs his lands, troops and resources. He either builds on this success, or his enemies band together and destroy him, but eventually someone wins enough to be able to form an imperial rule.

      Then we get part two. At first, the empire prospers, but entropy is the strongest force in the universe. The mandarin bureaucracy gets sclerotic, complacent, corrupt, or all three. Outlying provinces get neglected, and start to slip from central control. The latest emperor is not the man his ancestors were. Then a triggering event happens..It could be a Mongol invasion, major flood or earthquake, but whatever it is triggers the collapse, and the process starts over.

      China has been following this pattern for probably thousands of years, and we are likely just somewhere near the end of the latest round of centralizing…..

      When it happens, the southern cities will try and keep in with the wider world. Trying to become smaller less successful versions of Singapore. Hong Kong will try, and possibly succeed in regaining its old place. The remainder of China will fragment into warlord fiefs, probably based around the various provinces, relative strength depending on the share of resources/military bases etc. Tibet and others might regain some of their independence, but the rule will be chaos, anarchy, dogs and cats living together, famine and war, as the cycle begins yet again

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