For five years, Alice Zheng, a former bank loan reviewer, followed the path expected of many young Chinese: securing a stable job and striving for middle-class comfort in the megacity Shenzhen.
But after years of long hours, rigid corporate hierarchies and mounting stress left her physically and emotionally exhausted, she quit in 2021.
Since then, the 36-year-old has lived in Yunnan province and the Yangtze river city of Jiujiang, taking advantage of low costs in smaller cities and sluggish nationwide inflation to embrace a slower lifestyle.
She relies on savings and occasional freelance work such as teaching English to rural children.
Zheng belongs to what domestic media outlets call a self-driven wave of young Chinese people seeking slower, easier lives – an extension of the six-year-old “lying flat” trend associated with rejecting excessive job competition and consumerism.
