Young people in China are giving up high-paying jobs to become baristas and waiters, and they're talking about it online
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- China's youth is giving up white-collar work for blue-collar work, and they're talking about it online.
- They're part of a larger trend in China known as "taking off Kong Yiji's long gown."
- They write online about how they find a better sense of fulfillment in their new blue-collar jobs.
Over the past year, young people across China have been ditching white-collar jobs and taking on blue-collar roles as baristas and cashiers. They've been sharing photos and videos of their new roles en masse on Xiaohongshu, China's answer to Instagram. The hashtag "my first physical work experience" has over 30.4 million views as of June 12.
"From fast food restaurant owners, cleaners, waiters, to pet grooming, young people try to regain control of their lives and inner order through these 'mindless' manual tasks," reads a description of the hashtag.
In the captions, many of these people explain the decision they've made to ditch white-collar jobs, and there's a clear thread between many of them: Despite having attained the highly coveted opportunity of an office job, they are ditching it for "mindless" menial work — all for a better sense of fulfillment.
"I can only say that I'm so happy after leaving the company," reads a post by a woman whose profile states that she lives in Guangdong province and that she previously worked at ByteDance, the China-based parent company of TikTok. Insider was not able to verify her claim.
In her post, the woman went on to say she no longer has to worry about reports and KPIs, only working on tasks like cooking at a fast-food restaurant which she owns and runs by herself.
In the post's comments, she explains that she earns an average of $140 a day at her one-man restaurant.
And she's not the only one making this kind of change.
"I gave up my high-paying consulting job, escaped endless emails, interviews, and PPTs, and started from scratch as a barista with a monthly salary of only a fraction at that time," another woman, a 25-year-old based in Liaoning, wrote on Xiaohongshu.
The author, who said she holds a graduate degree, went on to say she couldn't derive a sense of fulfillment from her white-collar job.
"That emptiness came from how I'm devoting my life to an outcome that doesn't really have much to do with me, that I'm just a replaceable screw," the post read.
"I realized this kind of physical work with a sense of participation actually provides nourishment for creation. Because doing these things is fun, my spirit is always lifted," she continued.
China's youth is opting into 'no-brainer' unskilled labor
A common refrain among those using this hashtag is how much happier they are ditching their "Kong Yiji long gowns" for "no-brainer" unskilled labor.
Kong Yiji is a fictional character from a story written by Lu Xun, a leading figure in modern Chinese literature. Kong is an impoverished scholar whose long gown symbolizes his academic qualifications. Despite failing to succeed as an intellectual, he refuses to take off his long gown due to its embedded status symbol.
The story was written in 1919, but it has recently started gaining popularity again as people in China began comparing themselves to the character, per Chinese news outlet Sohu.
"Kong Yiji literature" has also been turned into a meme. It embodies the resentment millions of graduates have for their bleak future, per BBC.
Amid record-high youth unemployment rates and a generation of people who are overqualified for the job market, the story of Kong Yiji proves apt as China's highly educated population is forced to give up its pursuit of "glamorous" white-collar jobs.
But the "physical work experience" posts are different.
That's because the young people posting on Xiaohongshu aren't locked out of the white-collar job market. Instead, they've been a part of it — and they're choosing to make a "voluntary withdrawal" from skilled work, experts told CNBC.
"A lot of young people might feel disappointed about their jobs because companies are not hiring them for a job, but they're hiring you to operate a computer on a desk," assistant sociology professor Jia Miao told CNBC. Miao works at New York University Shanghai. Her research centers on the effects of urban life and neighborhoods on health inequality and aging in Asia.
To be sure, social media provides a very filtered, and often not very honest, view of people's lives. But based on the bulk of comments Insider viewed under the "first physical work experience" hashtag, those who are opting into blue-collar work are finding a new sense of fulfillment from it.
"Although the body is tired, the mind is very happy," the author who claimed to be a former ByteDance employee wrote online.