“In the inertia of society, the life of a white-collar worker in an office is always more desirable than the life of a worker mowing the lawn. Therefore, for many years, people have been busy, setting the purpose of reading as a job that is envied…”
“However, there are more and more unhappy people, and anxiety and depression are becoming more and more common. People are busier, but it seems that they don’t know what they are busy for.”
“In fact, life is so short, isn’t the ultimate goal of life happiness?”
“Sometimes, seeing the smiles of gardeners, hairdressers, travel photographers, security guards, repair workers, and domestic workers, it is from the heart, and I will also envy them…”
This is an excerpt from the introduction of the group “Light Physical Labor Exploration Alliance” on “Douban”. The purpose of the group’s establishment is to allow everyone to share “happy life cases based on light physical labor”. As of the time of publication, the group has more than 66,000 members. On another platform, searching for “light physical work” on “Xiaohongshu”, there are many stories of young people sharing light physical labor, from delivery riders, cleaners, gardeners, theater staff, and even shop assistants of various stores.
The 2020 census shows that about 75% of young employees are employed in the service industry. In the past, many service industry jobs created in China in the past decade, such as delivery personnel, restaurant waiters, and shop assistants, were considered grassroots positions by society. Nowadays, more and more young people who have studied in various majors and creative industries are choosing to enter “light physical work” positions, which has become an increasingly popular trend in recent years. Is doing light physical work a helpless choice forced by the times, or a beautiful work vision of young people’s own choice? We talked with these young people.
Office workers’ machines and screws
Alpaca (pseudonym) from the Department of Fine Arts graduated in 2021 and encountered the rampant epidemic, and the road to employment was full of thorns. She downloaded three recruitment software and applied for all white-collar and art-related jobs, but there was no response for a month. She finally found a design job at a company that designed emoticons, but she was fired in less than a week because the download traffic did not meet the standards. She finally returned to work at the comic company where she interned during her university years, but the more she worked, the more depressed she became.
“Everyone thinks that in the work of fine arts and comics, the author can conceive a worldview and write the stories they want to write. In fact, the text, the style of painting, and even the appearance of the protagonist are all determined by the customers and the boss, and then you follow the painting, which is completely just a tool for painting for them, which is actually no different from AI.” Because she still had to make a living, Alpaca also worked at the comic company for more than a year. Although her basic salary was less than 4,000 yuan, when the company was doing well, she could still earn an extra 1,000 yuan by working overtime and getting more pay for more work. Until the company’s comic projects were successively terminated, the workload was insufficient, and the colleagues also began to “compete for work”, which made her want to resign.
Sandy (pseudonym), who majored in environmental science, left school in the middle of this year. Most of her classmates went to work in large companies, took qualifications, went to graduate school, or took the civil service examination. She had experienced depression and was not accustomed to the “rules and regulations” of life. At first, she went to work for a company related to ecological research and study, but she was assigned to do social media editing work, which she was not good at. The content of the work was very different from what she imagined. “I would be very painful, but I had to complete it, and then the boss was not satisfied, and made you keep changing, and you always felt denied, very tired, and very annoying.” The unsympathetic boss even asked her to work overtime when she was sick, making her feel “treated as a work machine”. She worked at the company for four months, and she didn’t even pass the probation period, so she made up her mind to resign.
The unpleasant experiences of office work made Alpaca and Sandy tired of white-collar work and decided to seek another way out. These are the portrayals of many young Chinese people. On “Xiaohongshu”, more and more young Chinese people share their experiences of light physical work, and many people in the comments below the posts express their envy.
One day, Alpaca saw a post shared by a shop assistant on Xiaohongshu. “They all said it was very hard, but they all got 6,000 yuan. I was shocked. A shop assistant sat there for so long every day and worked overtime to watch the store, and the salary was so much more than mine.” She then had the idea of entering the service industry and decided to quit her comic drawing job that she had done for a year.
Sandy, who had just graduated, picked up a newspaper to look for other job opportunities, hoping to get out of her first job as soon as possible. She happened to see that a community bakery was looking for someone. The bakery had morning and evening shifts, so she didn’t have to sit all day in the office, and the salary was 4,000 yuan. “After the bakery decided to hire me, I applied for resignation from the office.”
For Jiu Jiu (pseudonym), who graduated with a degree in philosophy, she has been thinking about the meaning of work. “Those white-collar workers, that is, selling their labor, and then selling it until retirement, I don’t think this is a very promising thing, I don’t want to do it.” By chance, she found a job as a bookstore clerk as her first light physical work after graduation.
The beauty and sorrow of light physical work
Should I continue?
The bookstore where Jiu Jiu works has more than 10,000 books in stock. She describes herself as “in charge of a free library”. When she has nothing to do, she reads books herself, and arranging the bookshelves is very healing for her. In simple work, she finds her own fun. “For example, we sometimes publish book lists. In fact, how you arrange the books is also a process of playing your own imagination. I don’t think it’s a pity that I can’t use what I have learned. First of all, you have to spend time to understand something, and don’t look too far ahead. Since you have chosen it, just do it well.”
Sandy, who works in the bakery, is mainly responsible for cashiering and arranging bread. She feels very happy to be surrounded by warm and fragrant bread every day. “It will be relatively idle when it rains, and there is a big tree at the door of the store. When I am particularly idle, I will sit outside on a chair to read a book and enjoy the breeze. Sometimes I will read a book and listen to a blog in the store. After work, I will also explore the cafes nearby.”
As for Alpaca’s first light physical work, she went to a bookstore run by a state-owned enterprise to be a cashier. She was fired by the supervisor in the first week on the grounds that “she couldn’t see the screen clearly because of her myopia”. Later, she went to look for positions in foreign companies, and finally chose to be a shop assistant at Muji. In the past six months, she passed the probation period very smoothly and was also transferred to a “formal shop assistant”, and even promoted to a “general shop assistant”, and her salary also increased with the promotion. “After going in and understanding, I found that the promotion system of the shop assistant is still relatively standardized.”
In addition to the increase in salary, Alpaca said that her mood has also improved: “I used to face the computer every day, working for ten hours a day, and I was also rushing to work at noon just to earn a little more money, and I would be very anxious. Now I don’t have to, and sometimes because everyone is in the service industry, and their personalities are also very good, I will joke around in the store.”
Faced with the fact that highly educated children are going to be shop assistants, will the parents who provide education advise them? At first, Alpaca’s family also held the impression of “cheap labor”, “unpresentable”, and “no prospects” for the service industry, but they also knew that the economic environment was not ideal, and it was indeed not easy for their children to find a job. “Their idea at the time was that it was enough to support themselves.” The National Bureau of Statistics of China last announced the youth unemployment rate in July 2023 data, and the unemployment rate reached 21.3% at that time, which is equivalent to one out of every five young Chinese people being trapped in unemployment.
However, the trend of light physical work has appeared for several years, and some people on Xiaohongshu have also begun to share the hardships of light physical work everywhere, admitting that this kind of work still requires a certain amount of physical strength in the long run, and some people have begun to post that they feel that light physical work can only be experienced and cannot be done for a long time, and even quit soon.
Sandy, who worked in the bakery, also quit after less than three months. She said that the store is actually only relatively idle when it rains. Every time the bakery reaches the busy time after work, the online takeaway orders from the store and the offline physical store customers are also endless. She is the only one in the front desk responsible for sales, and she will definitely be too busy. Sandy said that when she is busy, she will be anxious and tired. “The delivery riders are all those middle-aged men, and they will scold you. They don’t treat you as a shop assistant, but treat you as the boss. Anyway, they just shout there and say you should hurry up, and they are afraid of being deducted money, so they are very fierce.”
Sandy once reported the problem of insufficient manpower to the boss, but the boss also stated that there were no resources to hire another person. She felt unreasonable, so she decided to leave.
Jiu Jiu persisted in working in the bookstore for two years, but there were also things she couldn’t stand. Many bookstores in China are struggling to operate, and many people come to read books but don’t buy them, only enjoying the services of the venue. In order to change this situation, some bookstores have gradually launched other consumption models. If customers want to stay in the bookstore for a longer time, they need to order drinks and buy books, so her work in the bookstore requires her to organize the bookshelves and also make coffee.
“Not many people may care about whether your coffee is delicious, but during the process of taking orders and delivering coffee to them, the customers really hope that you are gentle and smiling. If you do these things, but your coffee is not delicious, they may still think that your service is in place.” Jiu Jiu will try her best to meet the customers’ requirements, but sometimes she will also feel that the customers’ behavior is not understandable. “They don’t say anything if they are not satisfied, and they will write a bad review when they go back. What do you think they want to do?”
“In fact, the service industry depends very much on the leaders of each store. If the store manager is different, the environment of each store is also very different.” Alpaca said.
The meaning of work in the “new era” Why do young people work?
In March of this year, People’s Daily reprinted an article, calling on society to get rid of the “long gown”, any high education makes people’s fixed thinking of their own career positioning, which is the career prejudice hidden in traditional educational concepts, and it is also the “soft kidnapping” of high-educated talents by public opinion, which will make people think that manual laborers are inferior, and that vocational education is inferior. People’s Daily also published an article in July, with the title “Establishing a Correct Employment View”. The article pointed out that as long as there is a positive employment view, young people “can be the vanguards and main forces in various fields such as rural revitalization, green development, social services, and defending the country and the border areas, and they can also realize the value of youth and lay the foundation for a lifetime of struggle”. After the article was published, it triggered discussions on social media, and some people also expressed doubts and even ridiculed, “If young people don’t carry the burden, they won’t be able to live a good life.”
Among the three people, only Alpaca will continue to be a shop assistant. She knows that if she wants to engage in office technology and “brain work” in the future, her knowledge may not be able to keep up. But she believes that even if the economic environment is not good now, most people in society still look down on the work of the service industry, and the employees who join the company will also leave in two or three months, choosing the service industry as a transition period. “Isn’t it also said that shop assistants are easily replaceable? But if no one completely replaces you, then you don’t have to worry.”
Sandy went to an art store to work as a shop assistant, but she also had the opportunity to participate in some exhibition activities, and she also hopes to do more art design-related jobs in the future. She enjoys working in the art store because the atmosphere between the team is good and there is also a human touch. “I don’t want to say that I am just a working machine. So my idea is, either to be a freelancer, or to stay in a team with a very good atmosphere.” She believes that the times are different, and young people will not follow the fixed path like the older generation. “I think the sense of self is relatively strong now, and they are also relatively familiar with this kind of capitalist model, and they know what their current situation is. If their body can’t bear it, they will be willing to make some changes.”
Jiu Jiu believes that the emergence of light physical work is “lying flat” under “involution”. In addition, it is often difficult to create valuable and meaningful positions in larger companies, and people’s self-initiative will be lower, and they will feel meaningless and tired.
She, who resigned a month ago, has no idea of looking for a job yet, and wants to rest for a while before starting again. She will definitely not go back to the service industry, feeling that “after experiencing it, I found that I am not suitable”, but she will not go to the office either. She thought about it and said that she wanted to do work related to carving wood and assembling Lego, anyway, it is an industry that she will enjoy and be comfortable with.
“Education in mainland China doesn’t tell you what the meaning of life is, nor does it tell you what happiness is. When I chat with my friends, I feel that everyone is not aware of whether they are happy or not. They are told a set of templates from birth, and they follow this template, such as going to the best school, finding the best job, and also, for example, girls must marry a good family, but no one has told us why we have to do this, and is it definitely right to do this? People are so different, why is there only one way to go?”
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