The pressures in communist China are taking their toll on a generation.
In a large shopping mall in China’s Inner Mongolia, hundreds of people recently met for a live-streamed contest. The rules were straightforward: lay on a mattress for as long as one can without sitting up—and no bathroom breaks.
Many wore pajamas, wrapping themselves in blankets and pillows. Some brought plush toys. A stream of delivery drivers fetched takeout as the contestants ate or killed time on their phones.
Some 33 hours later, a 23-year-old man took the first prize. His answer to the toilet problem? Diapers.
As a mattress marketing schtick, the event was a wild success with more than 10 million online watchers. More than a few lamented their missed opportunity to win; they said they practically spent their days in bed anyway.
The attention then turned to the name of the contest: “Tangping,” a popular Chinese slang term that means “lying flat.”
“Finally, lying flat has become the way to win,” one person commented.
Lying flat emerged four years ago as a counterculture movement to the Chinese regime’s draconian pandemic lockdowns. Chinese youth, rejecting the grueling rat race, sought a different lifestyle: doing the bare minimum.
They have since taken it to another level. Ignoring the urging from Chinese authorities to work hard, they call themselves “rat people” and spend their days “rotting” in bed.
The days they document on Chinese social media go something like this: crawling out of bed around noon or later, showering, cooking or ordering takeout, eating while scrolling their phones, more bedtime, then more food and doomscrolling—or gaming—until the wee hours.
Such is how 25-year-old Sherry Yang has lived her life the past three years while rooming with relatives and friends.
“I don’t have any plans for the future,” she told The Epoch Times. “There’s not much to look forward to.”
In interviews with The Epoch Times and in posts across the Chinese internet, a sense of gloom has been infecting China’s youth, once synonymous with hope and promise. It marks a drastic shift from a decade ago, when young people brimmed with energy, said James Wang, who graduated from college in 2017.
Fresh out of school, Wang said he and his friends chatted daily about their jobs and dreams. They traded career tips and were impatient to start businesses of their own.
“Now everything is different,” he told The Epoch Times. Gone is the talk of high aspirations; all one asks for is a regular job, and to be able to keep it, he said.
The “lying flat” trend, at odds with Chinese leader Xi Jinping’s refrain to “tell China’s story well,” has become a headache for Beijing.
A day after Christmas, the country’s top internet regulator, the Cyberspace Administration of China, issued a 13-bullet directive, banning internet celebrities from promoting the “lying flat” culture. It branded the lifestyle as among “unhealthy ideas” that “violate core socialist values.”
By Eva Fu
