Free Republic

Rebellion takes many forms. Counterculture movements tend to try to go against social norms and household values that teens especially might see as restrictive. But in China, a new type of rebellion is taking place. People are simply giving up and embracing a low-pressure lifestyle. This is part of the “lie flat” movement, where young people are refusing to compete, refusing to push themselves, and oftentimes refusing to work or study. And for the Chinese Communist Party, this represents a type of quiet rebellion against the high-pressure system that is nearly impossible to quell. We’ll discuss in this episode of...

Chinese authorities on Sunday violently dispersed a peaceful protest by hundreds of depositors, who sought in vain to demand their life savings back from banks that have run into a deepening cash crisis. Four rural banks in China's central Henan province have frozen millions of dollars worth of deposits, threatening the livelihoods of hundreds of thousands of customers in an economy already battered by draconian Covid lockdowns. Anguished depositors have staged several demonstrations in the city of Zhengzhou, the provincial capital of Henan, over the past two months, but their demands have invariably fallen on deaf ears. On Sunday, more...

Anyone looking to break the chains of 9-to-5 drone life will find no shortage of inspiration online — tiny homes, side gigs, you name it. Millions of people across the world searching for meaning and work-life balance were inspired by two radical movements in particular — “Lying Flat” and “FIRE.” One took root in China, the other in the United States, but both were born from the same fears, anxieties and hopes. Lying Flat 13 minin docLink

Fed up with work stress, Guo Jianlong quit a newspaper job in Beijing and moved to China’s mountain southwest to “lie flat.” Guo joined a small but visible handful of Chinese urban professionals who are rattling the ruling Communist Party by rejecting grueling careers for a “low-desire life.” That is clashing with the party’s message of success and consumerism as its celebrates the 100th anniversary of its founding. Guo, 44, became a freelance writer in Dali, a town in Yunnan province known for its traditional architecture and picturesque scenery. He married a woman he met there. “Work was OK, but...

Young people in China have set off a nascent counterculture movement that involves lying down and doing as little as possible. Five years ago, Luo Huazhong discovered that he enjoyed doing nothing. He quit his job as a factory worker in China, biked 1,300 miles from Sichuan Province to Tibet and decided he could get by on odd jobs and $60 a month from his savings. He called his new lifestyle “lying flat.” “I have been chilling,” Mr. Luo, 31, wrote in a blog post in April, describing his way of life. “I don’t feel like there’s anything wrong.” He...