Why China’s Young People are Quitting their Jobs and Throwing ‘Resignation Parties’
On the day Liang resigned from his banking job in China’s Zhejiang province, his friends threw a party and congratulated him by beating gongs and drums, in an echo of traditional marriage rituals.
His friends, who had also quit their jobs, pinned a flower on Liang’s chest under a scarlet banner that read: “We’re done with this bullsh*t job!”
Around them hung lanterns, banners and “double happiness” signs typically seen during weddings, while tables overflowed with food.
It may seem strange to celebrate leaving a stable job with an enviable salary, especially amid China’s gloomy economic prospects and record high youth unemployment rate, when such positions are in short supply.
But Liang, 27, who has since become a content creator while running a café, said he has become happier since quitting in May, a sentiment shared online by many others in similar circumstances.
“I fell into mechanized, repetitive work. It consumed a lot of my energy,” he told CNN, adding that he felt stifled creatively at a bank’s public relations department. “Your innovative ideas would have been dismissed and vanish eventually.”
CNN is identifying Liang with a pseudonym for privacy reasons.
Hundreds of posts about resignation parties have spread on Chinese social media this year, as the country slowly emerges from its Covid-19 cocoon of isolation and grapples with the economic and social fallout. Most of the people participating in the trend are in their 20s, citing various reasons for quitting ranging from low wages to burnout.
Read more on CNN
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