‘It’s an Endless Cycle’: China’s Lost Generation

天天活在过去

https://www.bloomberg.com/news/features/2026-11-09/china-s-economic-boom-also-gave-birth-to-a-lost-generation

Spirited lads and spirited girls are an emerging class of poor young people who see little hope for advancement through hard work.
Illustration: Huanhuan Wang for Bloomberg Businessweek
By Bloomberg Businessweek
November 9, 2026 at 8:00 PM GMT+8

On a breezy September evening in Shenyang, a city of 9.3 million people in China’s northeastern rust belt, 19-year-old Bai Yongguang is keeping still while a tattoo artist goes to work. As the electric needle begins etching the red face of a Japanese hannya mask on his left forearm, the first part of a full-body piece that will include a Chinese dragon and a tiger, Bai is using his free hand to chain-smoke Lucky Strikes. To Bai, ink and tobacco are two nonnegotiable expenses. The stinging pain and hum of the needle ground him, and smoking offers a brief escape from the precarity that awaits him beyond the walls of the shop.
Bai grew up in a small village two hours away by high-speed rail, where his mother raises cattle and his father drives trucks selling animal feed, dreaming of a simple life close to nature. After dropping out of high school (he says he couldn’t take the full-time, military-style dorm life), he drifted through factory gigs in a series of Chinese manufacturing hubs until an overdose of cough medicine left him with permanent nerve damage. When he clenches his fists, his arms shake uncontrollably, ruling out any more heavy manual labor. At Mixue, a well-known bubble tea chain, he serves as many as 1,000 cups of iced tea per shift for 3,800 yuan ($569) a month. To stretch his paycheck, he eats a single meal each day. “When I run out of money, my girlfriend and I just share one slice of bread,” he says. “We just live for today. Who can predict tomorrow?”
Another client getting a tattoo at the shop where Bai got his.Photographer: Gilles Sabrie for Bloomberg BusinessweekBai is part of an emerging subculture in China called jingshen xiaohuo (精神小伙, spirited lads) and jingshen xiaomei (精神小妹, spirited girls), 1 who feel that the country’s transformation into an economic superpower has left them behind. These young men and women are struggling to pay their bills and see few paths for advancement as the economy cools, dragged down by a prolonged property downturn, sluggish household consumption and swelling local government debt. Their ranks include small-town dropouts, migrant youth on urban fringes and marginalized teens estranged from their parents. Many are living without steady work or are caught in cycles of substance abuse.
Although it’s difficult to say how many people identify as spirited lads or girls, the nationwide urban unemployment rate for 16- to 24-year-olds surged to a one-year high of 19% in August, and posts tagged “jingshen xiaohuo” have racked up 17 billion views on Kuaishou, a popular TikTok look-alike. These posts often feature tales of quiet desperation: spirited lads begging WeChat contacts for a little cash, sniffing hot-pot gas canisters, shoplifting unattended takeout meals.
In Shenyang, a faded industrial powerhouse that’s still a regional magnet for some 1.6 million migrants, the spirited have come to favor certain aesthetics. Spirited lads have embraced full-body tattoos, golden-dyed bowl cuts with straight bangs, and skintight shirts and cropped trousers plastered with knockoff luxury logos. Spirited girls gravitate toward leg tattoos, heavy bangs, exaggerated eyelashes and slip-on shoes. With relatively few opportunities for financial security through workaholism, some try to project a different kind of bravado. “I only go for guys with money,” spirited girl Xia Xinqi tells her 100,000 followers on Kuaishou in one viral clip. “If they’re broke, I won’t date them.” But swagger can also fade quickly on streets like Shenyang’s. This is the view from what’s starting to look like China’s lost generation.
Spirited lads hanging out at a cafe.Photographer: Gilles Sabrie for Bloomberg BusinessweekLike America’s Midwestern Rust Belt, China’s industrial heartland has suffered from the downsides of deindustrialization for decades. Starting in the late 1990s, state enterprise reforms dismantled the region’s hidebound arms and infrastructure manufacturers and, with them, the government-run system of guaranteed housing, healthcare and lifetime employment known as the “iron rice bowl.” Mass layoffs followed, and the local safety net disintegrated. These days, Shenyang is home to a smattering of biomedical firms, a remarkably fancy luxury mall and the BMW Group’s largest global plant, but the city’s gross domestic product grew just 2% last year, well below the nationwide target of 5%. Here and there, aging apartment blocks have been halfway demolished. At busy intersections, many of Shenyang’s iconic bathhouses, symbols of local social culture, sit shuttered.
Taiyuan Street, the neighborhood where Bai is getting his latest tattoo, used to be a bustling shopping district. Nowadays, its budget hostels, pool halls and e-sports lounges offer affordable sanctuaries for spirited lads who’d otherwise be sleeping on the street. Across the three 31-story commercial buildings that define the area, business is bad. Ma Panpan, who runs a hostel in one of the towers, says things feel worse than they did during the Covid-19 lockdowns. Ma is renting weekend rooms that once fetched 150 yuan for about 100 yuan, or as little as 40 yuan on weekdays after booking platforms such as Meituan take their cut — meaning she’s losing money on the deal. She’s downsized from 10 rooms to 5 and is looking to get out of the business entirely.
Shenyang.Photographer: Gilles Sabrie for Bloomberg BusinessweekOn a day that Ma ends with one room to spare, 17-year-old Wang Bairan expects to end his night, per usual, at a 24-hour billiard parlor. Wang is the tallest among a group of nine teens wandering aimlessly through an underground shopping plaza on Taiyuan Street, periodically shouting, play-shoving one another and drawing a fair bit of side-eye. He’s wearing an all-black outfit: baseball cap, hoodie and sweatpants, all emblazoned with what appear to be knockoff Adidas logos. He says he’s penniless, having recently spent eight months in juvenile detention for fighting on the street, and hasn’t eaten in three days. His sole belongings are an iPhone X and a power bank.
Wang says his parents live in Tongliao in neighboring Inner Mongolia, rarely stay in touch and provide no financial support. He doesn’t blame them. “If I had a son like this, I’d regret it completely,” he says. “What a total waste of effort.”
Of the nine spirited teens, Wang Sisi (no relation) is one of two girls in the group, and the only one who still has homework to worry about. She studies makeup at a vocational school, hoping it leads to work after graduation. She says that her boyfriend paid for her 1,000-yuan braces and that she scavenged her pink hoodie from a recycling station.
When his iPhone X is charged, Wang Bairan occasionally makes some money from viewers on Kuaishou, where he livestreams himself performing the signature spirited lad dances called “social shakes.” And tiny measures of online fame can help spirited lads support themselves, for a while at least. Many with a knack for self-deprecating humor seek a boost from the cabaret scene that’s long shaped the nightlife of Shenyang and its environs. At Super Red, an old-school disco hall a 20-minute drive from Taiyuan Street, an emcee banters with the evening’s entertainers, who range from balladeers to acrobats. Early in the evening, affluent older patrons sit at reserved tables that come with a 500-yuan minimum. After 11 p.m., the atmosphere shifts as performers in tight outfits take the stage to dance to Western electronic music.
The scene at the tattoo shop.Photographer: Gilles Sabrie for Bloomberg BusinessweekXiao Wen, 21, is among those waiting for the late-night crowd. He and six other spirited lads strip off their T-shirts, revealing full-body tattoos, and pack onto a narrow runway between tables to do some social shakes of their own, hoping to go viral on Kuaishou. Before the music had changed, Xiao didn’t have the cash to book a table, so he loitered near the restrooms. He has no steady job and says he burns through whatever cash lands in his pocket from Kuaishou stunts, selling vape cartridges laced with veterinary anesthetics or extorting people on Blued, a gay dating app. On Blued, he says, he uses fake profiles to meet up with other men, then flashes a fake underage ID and threatens to call the police. Usually, he says, this scam nets him 1,000 yuan to 2,000 yuan.
“It’s an endless cycle between feeling flush and being totally broke,” Xiao says. “Once you’re in it, trying to get out and settle down is pretty hard.”
Tattoo artist Li Jinyang at work.Photographer: Gilles Sabrie for Bloomberg BusinessweekChina has yet to see mass layoffs driven by artificial intelligence, and its enormous gig economy can help cushion job-hunters for a time. (Most notably, there’s DiDi’s ride-hailing network and Meituan’s delivery service.) But for China’s working poor more broadly, long-term prospects seem dim. The upward mobility promised by the country’s top colleges is waning along with the job postings, and the idea of breaking through simply by working harder has grown less persuasive.

寂静回声

虽然很难统计有多少人自认是精神小伙或精神小妹，但8月份全国16至24岁城镇青年失业率飙升至一年新高，达到19%；在和TikTok风格相近的热门平台快手上，带有“精神小伙”标签的相关内容播放量累计达到170亿次。这些内容常常诉说着无声的窘迫：精神小伙在微信上向好友讨要零钱、闻火锅燃气罐、顺手偷走无人看管的外卖。
沈阳这座曾经辉煌的工业重镇，至今仍吸引着约160万外来务工人员到此谋生。在这里，精神群体形成了独有的审美偏好。精神小伙偏爱通体纹身、染成金色的齐刘海锅盖头，还有印满仿冒奢侈品牌标识的紧身上衣与七分裤；精神小妹则青睐腿部纹身、厚重刘海、夸张假睫毛和一脚蹬便鞋。

和美国中西部锈带地区一样，中国的工业核心地带数十年来持续承受去工业化带来的负面冲击。上世纪90年代末起，国企改革拆解了当地体制僵化的军工与基建制造企业，随之一同消失的，还有由政府保障住房、医疗、终身就业，被称为“铁饭碗”的体系。大规模裁员接踵而至，当地的社会保障体系也随之瓦解。

如今，沈阳分布着少量生物医药企业、一家极为奢华的高端商场，还有宝马集团全球规模最大的工厂。但这座城市去年的国内生产总值增速仅为2%，远低于全国5%的增长目标。随处可见半截拆除、老旧破败的居民楼。在车流繁忙的路口，不少作为本地社交文化符号、沈阳标志性的洗浴中心大门紧闭，早已停业。

白永光正在纹新纹身的地方是太原街，这里曾经是一片热闹繁华的商圈。如今，街上的平价旅馆、台球厅和电竞馆，成了精神小伙们负担得起的落脚处，不然他们只能露宿街头。构成这片区域的三栋31层商业大楼里，生意都十分惨淡。在其中一栋楼经营旅馆的马盼盼说，现在的境况比新冠疫情封控期间还要糟糕。

曾经周末房间一晚能卖到150元，如今只能租到约100元；美团等预订平台抽成之后，工作日价格最低甚至只有40元，这意味着她每接一单都在亏钱。她已经把客房数量从10间缩减到5间，并且打算彻底退出这个行业。沈阳。摄影师：吉勒·萨布里，为《彭博商业周刊》拍摄。就在马盼盼这天最后还空余一间房的晚上，17岁的王柏然和往常一样，准备在一家24小时台球厅过夜。九个少年漫无目的地在太原街地下商场闲逛，王柏然是里面个子最高的一个，他们时不时大声叫嚷、互相嬉闹推搡，引来不少旁人侧目。他一身黑色穿搭：棒球帽、连帽卫衣、运动卫裤，上面印着看起来是仿冒阿迪达斯的标识。他说自己身无分文，不久前因为街头打架在少管所待了八个月，已经三天没吃东西了。他全部的家当只有一部苹果X手机和一个充电宝。

天天活在过去

In lieu of a 72-hour workweek, many young Chinese are choosing, as one popular meme puts it, “lying flat” — opting out of the endless grind. Wary of what this might mean for population growth and the economy, several Chinese provinces are offering vouchers for newlyweds and cash payouts for new parents.
Li Jinyang, the tattoo artist inking Bai’s forearm, says he’s proof that being a spirited lad isn’t a life sentence. After dropping out of high school, he moved to Shenyang with a single suitcase and wound up sleeping in a park storage shed. One morning at 4 a.m., as the first patrons of the day arrived at a nearby market, he and two friends staggered out of the shed, pretending to be drunk to hide their homelessness. “Spirited lads care deeply about saving face,” Li says. “That was the most humiliating moment of my life.” Now, at the advanced age of 21, he’s still spending a great deal of his time with spirited lads, but they’re his customers. He’s stopped bleaching his hair and says it’s been a while since his last street fight.
Li in his shop.Photographer: Gilles Sabrie for Bloomberg BusinessweekTo accommodate cash-strapped clients, Li charges a flexible daily rate of 400 yuan for seven hours of work, letting customers complete pieces step by step as their funds allow. He says his best-selling tattoos are the intimidating kind: hannya masks, Chinese dragons, gods of war. He tries to talk young couples out of inking each other’s names, but many ignore him. Bai did much the same at a different shop, having the last Chinese character of his girlfriend’s name, Han, tattooed near his heart. “I want to give her a sense of security,” he says. “She’s suffered too much with me.”
For Bai, the job at Mixue marks a step toward a measure of stability. His parents recently visited him and his girlfriend in Shenyang, where their one-bedroom apartment costs 1,400 yuan a month, making it tough for them to save money. Reassured by his steady work, his mom and dad bought him an e-bike, remembering how he used to love riding a dirt bike across his hometown desert, cruising for hours with nothing in sight. As Bai rides through city streets, his nerve-damaged hands trembling on the handlebars, he can appreciate the luxury. But the new bike doesn’t spark the same sense of freedom, or any particularly warm feelings about the future. —Charlie Zhu and Zheping Huang

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旅居、打工生存、学技能读书。

     会有一段怎么样的经历?

      A.无果而终。 无法实现。 意外因素，不测。

      B.   不断地试错，坚持，努力，改进，试错，改进。
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        生活得有趣，生活水平提升。
   
      C. 没变化。依然是在温饱线上挣扎，含辛茹苦。