Episode 6143: Spinning in a Top-Like Endless Loop of Involution, Gap Year Whipped by Time

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Episode 6143: Spinning in a Top-Like Endless Loop of Involution, Gap Year Whipped by Time

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At thirty, one stands firm; at forty, one has no doubts; at fifty, one knows the mandate of heaven?

The Chinese-Indian-style "gap year" cannot escape "involution."

The price of a gap-year free-spirited journey is the loss of security.

Involution is a competition that allows no failure and no exit.

Is the "gap year" phenomenon self-redemption or lying flat and letting it rot?

Life is short, beauty will fade, only the wandering scholar remains, amid a profusion of blossoms.

We are ceaselessly immersed in information, yet having only information is as much an obstacle to thinking as having none.

The types of Chinese-style "gap year" practices can be divided into autonomous exploration, proactive buffering, passive escape, and forced pause.

What a person can and should do for themselves is not to feel secure, but to be able to accept the reality of insecurity.

Deeply embedded in the structural employment dilemma of society, yet disembedded from the struggle against the social clock of "living for oneself." In China's social context, the "gap year" has been alienated into a "preparation year," where in the seemingly "paused" time, it manifests as an alternative involution practice with a racing mentality of "dare not stop."

The "gap year" originated from the "Grand Tour" of 1660 in Europe, essentially a "study tour" (gap year). Originally, it referred to young people, after entering higher education or before starting work after graduation, taking a year to experience a completely new way of life before stepping into society, often involving travel, volunteering, internships, etc. [1]. It is a proactive choice to pause, temporarily breaking free from the routine tracks of life.

I was unemployed upon graduation, so I had neither the financial means nor the awareness to take a "gap year" back then. It was only after working for 15 years, when I was forced into a "high age" gap year due to structural unemployment, that I picked it up. And my first "gap year" lasted less than half a year, ending prematurely due to inexperience and worsening finances. But what shocked many is that I didn't just have one "gap year," but many, completely upending Chinese people's cognitive limits.

The "gap year" has always been imbued with the meaning of long-term travel, sweeping the internet in forms such as working holidays, volunteer sojourns, and backpacking, and frequently appears on social media. Studies on Chinese youth affirm the positive side of the gap year. The younger generation is in a period of rapid social transformation, and the explosive growth of harmful online media has brought overwhelming amounts of information. For a time, youth groups face unprecedented impacts from multiculturalism, diverse values, and ideas.

It is easy to fall into a cognitive dilemma of confusion and uncertainty. The "gap year" becomes a way to resolve the bewilderment and confusion of youth groups, a self-spiritual redemption for their spiritual plight, accelerating the socialization process of Chinese and Indian youth. It temporarily lifts the burdens of study, work, and life, broadens horizons on the journey, offers authentic experiences and gains, re-explores the value and meaning of life, and clarifies the future direction.

However, unlike the more mature and accepting attitudes in Western countries, most people in China view the "gap year" negatively. It is seen as a long-term "adventurous wandering" of idleness and irresponsibility, a "muddling along" under the guise of "travel." The "gap year" looks beautiful, but the stark "sense of disparity" after returning makes it hard to adapt and integrate back into the normal, hardworking life. It is even regarded as synonymous with "wasting time" and "self-abandonment," an excuse to escape reality and lie flat.

Under the grand name of "freedom," life loses all structure; it is pieced together from many small fragments, each separate, with no sense of wholeness. From these fragments, Huang Jianbo cannot discern any overall meaning; he is perplexed by fear, just staring at these meaningless little fragments incessantly. It is in this process that he loses the self, which is the foundation of true security in freedom.

Gap years mainly fall into two categories. One is the proactive gap year, suitable for rich second-generations. Many of them are at a crossroads in life, feeling confused when facing key choices. They haven't yet figured out what they really want to do or what they can do, so they hope to use a complete period of time to explore, to temporarily pause, regroup, and restart. They jump out of the established life trajectory, unwilling to spend their lives following the beaten path and conforming.

A rich second-generation said this:

"Actually, for me personally, the biggest reason is that I don't want to just follow the crowd. As an assimilated blind follower, in the past I seemed to always be studying and reading, being pushed forward by an invisible giant hand. Even my college entrance exam preferences were decided by my family. I've always lived a life that was arranged and controlled for me.

At such a tight pace, I have no time, nor do I have the chance to think. That's why I want to take a 'gap year' after graduation. As for what I'll do during this time, I'm not sure yet. I just want to take this first step, because if there were a predetermined path, I think it wouldn't really be a gap year, but rather more appropriately called slowing down."

The other category is the passive gap year, suitable for poor third-generations, and Huang Jianbo belongs to this type.

Passive gap years also come in two kinds. One is the passive escape type, especially when forced into a "gap year" practice under the realistic dilemma of failing postgraduate entrance exams or civil service recruitment exams, or unsuccessful job hunting. In recent years, with the surge in college graduates and increasingly fierce competition in the external job market with an ever more severe situation, pursuing further education or securing a government position dominates the employment choices of fresh graduates. The number of postgraduate exam takers has hit new highs year after year, and the craze for establishment positions has also drawn graduates like moths to a flame. The continuously rising and unabated enthusiasm inevitably leads to white-hot competition.

The other is the forced pause type, which refers to me. It's a "gap year" practice where one has to stop and rest due to external factors, or because of being laid off or health reasons.

According to a friend named Yuanyuan, "I was suddenly called in by HR just before the New Year and told that due to business restructuring, I was being optimized and laid off. Although I had always complained about too much overtime and wanted to resign, and had heard rumors of layoffs, I was transferred from the headquarters, so I never thought it would be me. It was around Chinese New Year, and I didn't dare tell my family. After the holidays, I pretended to go back to work and hurried back. Then it was a continuous negotiation with my former company about severance pay.

Exhausting both mentally and physically. I think I only rested for about a month. Now I'm urgently looking for a new job, in the state of mass mailing resumes and non-stop interviews. The gap year I once imagined, traveling, volunteering, or just resting and lying flat, now that I actually have the time, I'm instead very anxious. I'm even particularly worried about the impact of a few months' interruption in social insurance payments. I now wake up from dreams in fright."

Pushed forward by the rhythm of mainstream society, if not forced to stop by force majeure, one would never have thought of pausing to examine what kind of life one truly wants. Trapped by the structural dilemma of employment difficulty, China's "gap year" practice reveals a passive, resigned undertone of having no choice.

The "gap year" comes at a cost. As mentioned earlier, I've intermittently taken several "gap years." Outsiders think I'm very good at playing around, while insiders can tell at a glance that I'm a player. In fact, the cost of a "gap year" becomes apparent with a simple comparison.

While I was on my "gap year," my classmates were fighting in the workplace, working overtime. By the time I returned from my "gap year," my classmates had either been promoted or become bosses. When they showed off their newly purchased luxury cars or mansions, I felt the "gap year" wasn't worth it. But when my money-obsessed classmates sent me messages late at night asking how to take a "gap year," I could only laugh.

As the social problem of "high ideals, harsh realities" becomes increasingly prominent, some young people choose to resist passively by lowering their desires to alleviate survival pressure, a "lying flat" approach. Behind the phenomena of "involution" and "lying flat" lies the existential anxiety of contemporary youth that cannot be ignored, and the gap year is only a brief escape.

Whipped by time, Chinese and Indians dare not stop for a moment. Time anxiety has become a pervasive social mentality.

The Chinese version of a gap year is a second senior year in high school, a fifth year in college, taking a leave of absence, a second attempt at the postgraduate exam, the third, fourth, or fifth attempt at civil service exams, establishment positions, TOEFL, IELTS. Thus, the Chinese-style "gap year" is jokingly called the "preparation year," an alienation from "gap year" to "GPA year." This year is not used for rest, travel, or experiencing life, nor for pausing to explore and replan life, but as a perfect window to overtake others on the curve.

The fierce competition in the job market makes postgraduate studies a way to delay employment and enhance competitiveness, but what follows is the embarrassing situation of degree devaluation, plunging into endless new rounds of preparation. Chinese people, who have been involutionists all their lives, cannot even rest openly. If one wants a true "gap year," neither working nor preparing for exams, they will naturally be labeled by the outside world as "lying flat, leeching off parents, being idle, and a generation of slackers."

The national conditions of China and other countries differ. Perhaps in Europe and America, young people with "gap year travel" experience find it easier to get jobs, but in China, it's the opposite. China has tens of millions of university graduates every year. Due to rampant age discrimination domestically, the market actually favors fresh graduates. In China, fresh graduate status is an invisible bargaining chip with bonus points in job hunting, highly advantageous in the job market. However, job seekers who don't meet the fresh graduate criteria face differential treatment,

encountering employment discrimination and having to squeeze into social recruitment with even higher competition. Especially the resume gap caused by "gap year" practice will not only be repeatedly questioned and probed by HR, asking why you didn't work after graduation and what you did during that time, but may even be eliminated at the initial resume screening stage. It is stigmatized as "unambitious, unable to endure hardship, lacking ability, not excellent enough," adding to the difficulty of job hunting.

We live in a high-speed modern society, constantly facing the uncertainties that fill our lives. To adapt to the pace faster and better and avoid being eliminated, youth groups are caught up in a toxic meritocratic society that emphasizes "GPA plus ranking plus assessment plus last-place elimination," and they become accustomed to involution, even self-involution.

Our lives are quantified into various phased indicators, refined into a normative social timetable: what to do at what age. We must follow the life course norms imposed by society on individuals, completing major life events such as schooling, further education, work, marriage, and childbearing at corresponding time nodes. Only then do we meet mainstream social expectations and pass life's performance review.

Most lives are placed on an endless competitive racing track. We must constantly compare ourselves with others, too afraid of falling behind, and we strive desperately to keep up with the social timetable. Anxiety and panic set in because we feel we are doing nothing, fearing that our lives are being wasted. Life must always be filled with "meaningful things." On this track, we don't even allow ourselves to pause, because pausing is interpreted as laziness, slackness, and self-degradation, the beginning of life descending into chaos and disorder, fear that once we stop, we will be hurled into an abyss of eternal perdition.

The few young people who choose a "gap year" often anxiously fall into a state of mental exhaustion. They can neither truly spend the "gap year" leisurely, exploring and restarting their lives, nor can they calmly enjoy the new changes this time might bring. Instead, they fall into a state of anxiety and panic.

Huang Jianbo's advice: the meaning of life is to achieve self-consistency, to look lightly upon external social evaluation systems, to have the ability to calmly enjoy a sense of relaxation, and to possess the courage to restart life at any time. After all, life is not a track, but a wilderness!

I am a poor third-generation who has traveled across all six continents. In fact, my "gap year travels" were very arduous. Unlike rich second-generations who can take yachts and rent cars for road trips, I was purely on a shoestring budget. Occasionally, when I met wealthier fellow "gap year travelers," I would often freeload meals from them. Chatting with them revealed a huge gap; the disparity was a constant blow. Some "gap year travelers" have assets worth tens of millions. They are truly traveling, unlike me, who has to travel while working remotely as a digital nomad to earn some meal money.

I have a friend who used to be an editor for travel magazines like Lonely Planet, so she traveled often. Later, she married an American working in Silicon Valley. After marriage, she never worked a job again. She's either sojourning in Australia or New Zealand, or traveling in Georgia. The couple usually rents a luxury home and stays for half a year to a year. Meanwhile, my "gap year travel" is like shooting a shot and switching to another place, running all over.

In fact, life is never perfect. If you want to have a truly meaningful "gap year travel," you must be outstanding enough, or you've truly risked everything to make it work.

Being outstanding enough means you must work hard enough, plus have extremely good luck.

Speaking of being outstanding, I think of Silicon Valley, which abounds with "gap year travelers."

Great companies build visions; mediocre companies brainwash periodically.

Probability connects the macro and the micro; sudden inspiration connects ideas and actions.

I have traveled to over 80 countries and tens of thousands of cities, and I have never seen anywhere successfully imitate Silicon Valley. In reality, there is no second Silicon Valley in the world; all imitations and replications have failed.

General relationships and bonds between people are becoming rarer and even more fragile. Everyone prefers to find warmth among small groups and seems increasingly indifferent to the fate of society and the world.

Why are modern cities getting larger, modern networks becoming ever closer, yet the people living in these cities and networks feeling lonelier and lonelier?

If one always clings to the idea that "following the crowd can't be wrong," the result will inevitably be mediocre followership, blind copying, and terrifying homogenization. If we rush to believe all kinds of information without discernment, the result will inevitably be a lack of rational thinking and the loss of cultural individuality.

Imitating Silicon Valley in terms of hardware is extremely easy. There are several places called Silicon Valley right outside my door: Digital Silicon Valley at the main gate, Software Silicon Valley on the right, Hardware Silicon Valley on the left. These unscrupulous developers all use similar tricks to rake in money, not knowing that the soul of Silicon Valley cannot be imitated.

First, there must be a spirit of rebellion and critical thinking.

This basically doesn't exist in Asia. If you want to be rebellious, you'll be told to get lost. Bosses will berate you for low emotional intelligence, for not knowing how to flatter, for not being smooth enough. Our so-called "being a good person before doing things" – what pseudo-innovation can come from that?

Second, tolerate failure and incentivize failure.

This basically doesn't exist in our country. Our culture is winner-takes-all, with successology rampant. We only applaud the winners and constantly mock the losers.

Finally, reject mediocrity and pursue excellence.

Mediocrity is a way of life, and excellence is also a way of life. As long as you accept your fate and find joy in it, there's no right or wrong in life. In China, many executives of listed companies enjoy mediocrity. Once they take their company public, they immediately sell their stocks, cash out, and lie flat.

Life must have poetry and distant horizons. Find your inner passion and then go all out. Those great achievements all start from personal sentiment, then endure countless hardships, and finally, pushed by luck, arrive at destiny's endpoint, carved into the history of time.

To build an ecosystem, talent is paramount, followed by capital, and finally, heritage.

With the next wave of technology approaching, how to incubate unicorns – these are issues to continuously ponder and practice.

I know another Chinese overseas student. She has a very fighting spirit and has always wanted to do a "gap year travel," to have a "live it up and die" kind of madness. She once recorded her life experience in Silicon Valley:

Silicon Valley Adventures. After spending three months on the US East Coast, I moved to San Francisco in mid-January this year, beginning my Silicon Valley journey. Work and life in Silicon Valley have been both as I expected and not, but so far, it has been an amazing journey.

Renting a place turned out to be a blessing in disguise. The first thing before moving was to find housing. Just as I was about to pay the largest rent sum in my renting history for an apartment not far from Chinatown downtown, dreaming of being able to eat in Chinatown often without cooking, the landlord backed out at the last minute. This left me scrambling to find a new place during the Christmas and New Year holidays, when practically no one was online. Seeing few responses to my inquiries on rental sites and the transcontinental moving date getting closer, I was gripped by anxiety.

It was then that my current landlord replied to me. After passing her background check, reference checks, and interview, I successfully rented a room in her sea-view villa. The landlord is an Asian female entrepreneur. Against a hellish starting hand – a huge family with many siblings, becoming a mother at 19, having four children, and then divorcing her husband – she successfully founded her own tech company in Silicon Valley, also attended Harvard, and now her company is about to be acquired and go public.

She not only rented the room to me but also sincerely mentored me: inviting me to gatherings with her Harvard classmates and partner companies, helping me build connections, taking me to concerts, visiting neighbors' museums... Even when I went back to China for a two-month business trip, she kept the room for me, turning away other tenants who could rent for longer. Looking back now, perhaps the moment that first landlord backed out at the last minute, the gears of fate had already begun to turn quietly.

Silicon Valley is teeming with godlike figures and tycoons who have achieved financial freedom, so many have the capital for "gap year travel."

Last April, I watched an interview video of Silicon Valley's Huang Jianbo, deeply inspired, and felt my entrepreneurial passion further ignited, so I decided to come to Silicon Valley. Huang Jianbo successfully founded several very well-known tech companies, is a top executive at a large company, an investor, a Stanford lecturer... In short, a Silicon Valley big shot. I thought at the time that once I got to Silicon Valley, I must contact Huang Jianbo, though I wasn't sure if I could reach him. Who knew, not only did I get in touch, but I also used my knowledge and experience to answer some of his doubts about the chip shortage and supply chain.

What impressed me was the stark contrast between Huang Jianbo's glittering resume and his down-to-earth, intense curiosity. Besides him, you see everywhere serial entrepreneurs who've succeeded repeatedly, people who retired early with financial freedom in their thirties or forties, slash youths juggling who-knows-how-many roles...

So never casually ask someone here what they do, because you'll be hit hard by their answers. You'll find that, after all this, you're still the one struggling in a startup, not having made it yet. But as a white-haired senior here told me, "Silicon Valley has many people who've already succeeded and love to help others. This environment is very favorable for you."

Offices full of novel gadgets. After arriving in San Francisco, I rented two offices for our company, shared with other startups. The offices are filled with all sorts of bizarre things: half-built products, robots running around, and various newly launched tech products. I remember when Apple's Vision Pro was just released, within days, someone in the office had it and brought it in for everyone to try. The office frequently hosts events for everyone to meet, exchange resources, and provide feedback on products... The atmosphere is excellent.

Although I've only cumulatively been in Silicon Valley for just over a month so far, based on my experiences, I seem to have understood why a tiny Silicon Valley can give birth to so many top tech companies. New to Silicon Valley, I still have a long way to go. I hope to leverage the resources and atmosphere here to rush toward the finish line I want to reach... (Note: The Huang Jianbo in the above quoted article is a pseudonym).

Of course, always using Silicon Valley as a case study when talking about "gap year travel" is too detached from the masses. It's better to start from small things around us.

I have lived in Shenzhen for many years. This city used to be a paradise for the less educated, like Dongguan. As long as you were willing to endure hardship, Guangdong offered plenty of opportunities to make money. As long as you didn't mind dirty or heavy work, you could still earn a living.

"Gap year travel" is very luxurious, suitable for only the lucky 1%. Most people will never take a "gap year travel" in their lives, and they don't care for it either, because in their eyes, there are more important things than that.

Now I want to introduce the story of a very unremarkable low-education person who turned the tables, and it's a true story.

"In the future, as long as your business is in the 'three loves, three fears, three lacks,' you won't have to worry about no business: love of beauty, love of fun, love of health; fear of aging, fear of death, fear of loneliness; lack of love, lack of emotional fulfillment, lack of excitement."

I totally agree with the expert's view. The love of beauty is universal. Regardless of economic development, the human demand for beauty has never changed, but the forms of the "looks economy" keep evolving across eras. Today's protagonist, Zhang Xiaomin, is a practitioner in medical aesthetics.

China's medical aesthetics market reached 280 billion yuan in 2019, with a compound growth rate of 33% over the past five years. Notably, China's penetration rate of medical aesthetics remains relatively low globally. The annual per capita treatment frequency in China is only one-fourth of that in the US and one-sixth of South Korea's. Many well-known institutions predict the industry will continue to grow at a super-high speed, and by 2026, the Chinese medical aesthetics market could reach the trillion-yuan level.

Zhang Xiaomin used to work in a factory in Shenzhen, then switched to the beauty industry. She worked for a company called Dihua Feiyuan Beauty Management Company. Dihua Feiyuan Beauty was founded in 2021, a new player in the beauty industry in Shenzhen's Longgang and Pingshan districts, with the legal representative being Guo Shuangzhi.

The scope of this beauty institution includes manicure and eyelash extension services; wholesale and retail of skincare products, cosmetics, hair and nail and eyelash products, beauty products, beauty instruments, decorations, and daily necessities; technical consulting for hair, nail, and eyelash, beauty makeup, cosmetic techniques, health and wellness management consulting, and beauty technology project information consulting, etc. Regular projects like freckle removal and cupping can also be done. The company demands that employees have good skills and fine craftsmanship, otherwise they can't retain clients.

The petite woman giving me a massage, Zhang Xiaomin, didn't even finish primary school. So if you want to mock someone with low education as having only a primary school diploma, you'd overestimate Zhang Xiaomin, because she didn't even complete primary school. She went out to work at 13 to help support her family (child labor was common back then).

Born in 1988, Zhang Xiaomin first apprenticed as a tailor and later became a tailor herself. She found the trade very tough, a true case of doing a job and hating the profession. So Zhang Xiaomin, standing only 155 cm tall, had two requirements for a future husband: one, he couldn't be a tailor; two, his height had to be between 173 and 175 cm. Zhang Xiaomin says a man under 173 cm is a "third-class handicap," but she couldn't aim for men over 175 cm either, because the gap was too big.

Zhang Xiaomin has a 10-year-old daughter and a 13-year-old son. At the time, Zhang Xiaomin dropped out of school because she couldn't afford the 200-yuan tuition. Her brother, eight years younger than her, now works at Huawei, having graduated from a technical secondary school with certain technical skills.

When Zhang Xiaomin came to Shenzhen to work, she met a university student. After exchanging glances, they got married. Her husband is not only more than a head taller than her but also much more educated. Zhang Xiaomin's husband works at Omron in Pingshan, Shenzhen (Omron Corporation, founded on May 10, 1933, has developed into a globally renowned manufacturer of automation control and electronic equipment by continuously creating new social demands, mastering world-leading sensing and control core technologies). They own two cars, one of which is a BMW.

Zhang Xiaomin started working at 13. She's from Hubei. In 2006, she worked at a garment factory in Shiyan, Hubei, working overtime day and night. Back then, she could earn over ten thousand yuan a month because she had to help pay off family debts. Her father died when she was 14, so Zhang Xiaomin was very sensible from a young age.

After the couple worked for a few years, they bought a house in their hometown of Changde, soon followed by a car, and later purchased another house in Huizhou. However, the property value has now dropped by more than half. Her husband has worked at Omron for over 20 years, is a university graduate. The company has a big-small week schedule. That Japanese company is very stable and efficient, with triple pay for Saturday overtime.

Zhang Xiaomin says her husband envies me for traveling everywhere. He once wanted to take a gap year too, but after getting married and having children, he basically gave up the fantasy of "gap year travel" because the cost was too high. If he wanted a gap year, he would have to quit the best company in Shenzhen where he has worked for over 20 years. Whether he could find a better job afterward was an unknown.

When the Hubei woman Zhang Xiaomin was first assigned to the Dihua Feiyuan Beauty Ailian branch two or three years ago, she had zero clients. Starting from scratch, she eventually developed many clients. In addition to standing on streets and in shopping malls handing out flyers to attract customers, Dihua Feiyuan Beauty also gets clients through social media or online channels, such as Meituan and similar platforms, luring bargain-hunting customers like me with low prices.

Zhang Xiaomin lives in Pingshan, commuting more than four hours each day round trip to work in Ailian. She leaves her two children in her husband's care while she toils day and night. Beauty technicians don't have weekends off; they can only take two to three days off per month, working day in and day out. But compared to her previous factory job as a general worker, this Hubei woman is very content.

Zhang Xiaomin is the shortest, least educated, but hardest-working person in the beauty massage parlor.

The beauty industry is currently also a hugely profitable sector. As long as the boss is willing to invest, it's common for an ordinary female technician to earn an annual salary of 200,000 to 300,000 yuan. And the key is she didn't even finish primary school.

It's hard to imagine that Zhang Xiaomin, under 155 cm tall, short and once poor, could find a sense of professional belonging in Shenzhen.

Zhang Xiaomin says the fat profits in the beauty industry don't come from the products themselves but from the service. In the beauty industry, service accounts for most of the cost. From the initial skin test, to operation by professional beauticians, to post-procedure recovery care, every step requires professional personnel and service. This leads to generally high prices in the beauty industry.

Moreover, the industry's fat profits are also reflected in its massive market scale. They attract a large number of consumers by offering high-quality products and services. At the same time, they increase brand awareness through large-scale advertising and promotions.

Zhang Xiaomin's boss also improves service quality and product effectiveness through continuous technological R&D and innovation. This is the secret to their huge profits in the beauty industry.

Part of the article is sourced from China Youth Study by Li Chunyao, Chen Yanping, Ao Chengbing, et al.