Into the World:
The Random Thoughts in My Mind

The media has a set narrative for China's tang ping (躺平, "lying flat") phenomenon: in the face of a dire labor market and intense work hours for little return, the Chinese youths are reevaluating what makes life worth living. The result, for many, is to simply stop competing, minimize living costs, and curtail personal ambitions. This narrative is underpinned by China's economic failings. The failure to provide an increasing number of highly educated youths with employment that is both gainful and lucrative results in a negative spiral of lower consumption and animal spirits that, in turn, kills off more productive jobs.

Looking through social media, I started to see the next iteration of Chinamaxxing: going off the beaten path. The travelers have already seen the headline sights. The Great Wall, the cyberpunk skylines, the Avatar mountains, the old towns...too many people already post polished videos and photos. Too many, in fact, that for the younger generations that mainly share their trips with others in visual forms, their own content would no longer suffice. The goal is now one-upping each other to find the most obscure villages and urban corners, where they can brag about being the first foreigner ever to set foot in.

Young people make mistakes, sometimes egregiously. But even when the mistakes lead to people being deeply hurt, do the perpetrators deserve at least some discretion when it comes to negative publicity? The recent saga of several Cornell students being indicted for raping a female peer at a fraternity house left me with this question. There is no doubt that the seven young men deserved the legal penalties that the relevant court meted out. But while the female victim remained anonymous, and rightly so, the seven young men have had their names and pictures posted all over the internet.

Recently, I came across a review of a restaurant that opened in New York City. The luxury eatery, described as serving borderless, innovative cuisine, was praised above all for its environmental consciousness. To drive the point home, the reviewer raved about a lineup of dishes that use offal from organic animals the restaurant slaughters ethically in-house, which the review termed a clear motivation to let no part of the animal go to waste in the true spirit of a circular economy. I couldn't help but grimace at the glowing words.

When I saw fresh cucumbers at my local SPAR at 4 euros per kilogram and watermelon at 2 euros per kilogram, I couldn’t help but recall residents' and travelers’ YouTube videos about the cost of living in China. Some lamented the lack of job opportunities, and others marveled at the ubiquity of technology. But what I noticed was more trivial: a vegetarian all-you-can-eat buffet for 2 US dollars per person, with cucumber-based dishes galore, and streetside stalls peddling watermelons off the back of a truck, at the equivalent of less than 20 euro cents per kilogram.

When people speak of the various reasons that the world is increasingly seeing a widespread dearth of marriages and babies, unsurprisingly, cultural factors feature prominently. But those cultural conversations often revolve around changes in social values. The rise of individualism has made youths question the value of sacrificing their own preferences and interests in exchange for negotiating with a lifelong partner. The prevalence of the nuclear family has made it burdensome to raise a child. The increase in female labor participation has led women to prioritize career advancement over family responsibilities.