Posts Tagged ‘Dali’

China’s Slacker City

Saturday, May 6th, 2023

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…