My Take | ‘Lying flat’ is sign of a burnout society

One in four young Hongkongers from low-income families have apparently taken to “lying flat”, or doing the bare minimum to get by, if a June survey conducted by the Society for Community Organisation was correct.

But the phenomenon of the “great quit” was first noticed in mainland China. The Chinese Gen Z and the youngest millennials are finding solace in lying flat. Called “tang ping” in Chinese, it has been, in moderate doses, interpreted as taking things easy but more radically, as a direct challenge to President Xi Jinping’s “Chinese dream” and societal expectations and norms.

Still, it’s a valid question: Why bother working yourself to the bone under the so-called 996 system under which employees are expected to work from 9am to 9pm, six days per week?

But perhaps it’s not confined to China. Across North America, you have something called “the great resignation” after the job market picked up and a large number of people leaving their jobs following the lifting of most Covid-19 pandemic restrictions. It is strangely in contrast to the fear and uncertainty of people facing job losses and wage cuts at the start of the pandemic.

But whatever you want to call it, many people of my generation, notably old friends from my Hong Kong secondary school and those from my Canadian and American university years, find it incomprehensible. Some of us put it down to laziness.

Certainly, when my friends and I first started seriously looking for work back in the 1980s and 1990s, we were happy to find one. We didn’t quit until there was a higher-paid job or one with a better career prospect. We didn’t expect job satisfaction because you weren’t supposed to like work; you just had to tough it out and suck it up. Your boss was terrible? Well, too bad, there was no such thing as workplace harassment or a hostile work environment. It was supposed to be tough!