Narratives and values

The Spring Festival holiday has ended, but the New Year celebrations are not over. Today is the tenth day of the first lunar month. People used to call the end of the year a difficult pass: getting through it meant facing danger. The old expression for earning money, ku qian, also implied suffering. Money came through hardship, and a year was something to struggle through. After a year of hard work, one could be grateful not to have fallen ill or gone hungry, and hope for another year of health and safety. I often heard older people use that expression as a child. In recent years, I have hardly heard it. People now live in ways that once seemed impossible. Over the last twenty years, there has been more meat on the table and more cars on the road. Yet uncertainty about life has not diminished: "I do not know who I am, what I should do, or where to direct my effort."

People once found their value in a story about diligence. Work hard, earn your money through effort, and you could support yourself, keep a stable job, marry, and settle into life. Economic change has challenged that belief. Since COVID-19, employment and the economy have become increasingly difficult. In 2024, young people lived with uncertainty. Youth unemployment remained high. A delivery worker could work all day and earn only 100 yuan. High housing prices discouraged young workers arriving in cities. Their old story no longer held: studying hard enough to enter university did not guarantee a reasonably good job. Stable employment seemed like a memory. A month's income could not buy one square meter of a local apartment. Overtime was normal, and work and life were in disorder. Some people became unemployed as soon as they graduated and, without connections, could only deliver food. Frustration and distress found no release.

This is also an age of tense international relations and confrontation. Young people without the means to escape class pressures may retreat into grand narratives. Their own lives will supposedly improve only when distant enemies they have never met are defeated. Young full-time students are especially vulnerable to emotional appeals. People easily develop hostility toward other countries, groups, genders, or even brands. Ideas of meritocracy and survival of the strongest direct immense pressure into new collective stories. But these stories are fragmented and outside our control. Reality does not change to fit our imagination. Once trapped by such beliefs, people repeatedly face events they cannot control. The resulting wounds make it difficult to deal calmly with family, friends, and daily life. Do distant enemies really matter so much to our lives? Is taking responsibility for our own lives a more practical way forward?

Anxiety and hatred are distinctive social emotions of this period. The information revolution has reduced physical distance while widening gaps in wealth and material life. The conflicts of globalization and the pain of economic change eventually fall on young people who have not benefited from them. Faced with a reality beyond our control, we keep looking for answers. Helplessness leads us to doubt our value and belittle ourselves. Income and savings fail to grow, and beliefs formed before graduation are repeatedly challenged. Beneath restlessness, distress, anxiety, and repression are persistent questions: Who am I? Where did I come from? Where am I going? I was supposed to fulfill responsibilities to my parents and society, buy a home and a car, and have a stable job and family. Why is everything so difficult?

Beyond our own thoughts and actions, little is entirely under our control. We compare ourselves with strangers across the ocean, with neighbors, and with relatives and friends. These automatic comparisons come from particular values and stories taught to us since childhood. Difficulties with work and friendships are only parts of our lives. Anxiety about not owning a home or car, or not having a family, comes from the established story of hard-earned success. Hatred of distant enemies comes from larger stories about allies and enemies that others have given us. Searching for ourselves only within these stories is a way of avoiding life. Becoming absorbed in them binds our sense of worth to comparison. Comparison with the outside world inevitably lets us down.

Solve specific problems and live a concrete life. Take care of your own life. Make reasonable plans for your time and for what you want to do. Read, exercise, rest, and recover your sense of value. All of this calls for patience and a calm mind, rather than a demand for quick results. Let go of inherited systems of value and the obligations attached to them. Build and improve your own values, form a renewed identity, and accept yourself. Recognize more kinds of value: reading makes thought more sensitive and helps us notice what others miss; exercise makes us healthier and stronger; rest makes life sustainable. Life does not exist to serve only a few goals. Rest is not merely preparation for more work, and learning is not merely a means to an end.

Modern life offers more choices than the past, but not enough to free us from duties and obligations. For many people, securing a living remains essential. If life is difficult, first take care of your immediate surroundings and improve what you can. I hope everyone who is struggling can find a path of their own.