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| By the usual measures, Loretta Liu had it made. She graduated in 2018 from one of China’s top universities, rented an apartment in the glamorous city of Shenzhen, and had been hired as a visual designer at a series of high-flying companies, even as youth unemployment in China was reaching record highs. | 按照通常的衡量标准，洛丽泰·刘（音）获得了成功。她于2018年从中国一所顶尖大学毕业后，在令人向往的深圳租了一套公寓，并先后被一系列十分成功的公司聘为视觉设计师，即使是在中国年轻人失业率创下历史新高之际。 |
| Then, last year, she quit. She now works as a groomer at a chain pet store, for one-fifth of her previous salary. She spends hours on her feet, wearing a uniform in place of her once carefully selected outfits. | 然后，她去年辞了职。她如今在一家连锁宠物店做美容师，薪水是以前的五分之一。新工作需要长时间站立，而且得穿制服，而不像过去身着精心挑选的衣服。 |
| And she is delighted. | 她很开心。 |
| “I was tired of living like that. I didn’t feel like I was getting anything from the work,” Ms. Liu said of her previous job, where she said she had little creative freedom, often worked overtime, and felt her mental and physical health deteriorating. “So I thought, there’s no need anymore.” | “就是厌倦吧。厌倦那样的生活。我没有从这个工作当中感受到我有在进步，我有什么累积，”刘女士谈到以前的工作时说，她说自己几乎没有创作自由，还要经常加班，她感觉自己的身心健康状况每况愈下。“所以我当时觉得，没有太大必要了。” |
| Ms. Liu is part of a phenomenon attracting growing attention in China: young people trading high-pressure, prestigious white-collar jobs for manual labor. The scale of the trend is hard to measure, but widely shared social media posts have documented a tech worker becoming a grocery store cashier; an accountant peddling street sausages; a content manager delivering takeout. On Xiaohongshu, an Instagram-like app, the hashtag “My first experience with physical labor” has more than 28 million views. | 一种现象正在中国引起越来越多的关注，刘女士正是其中的一员：年轻人辞掉压力大、地位高的白领工作，选择去干体力活。虽然这个趋势的规模难以衡量，但社交媒体上大量转发的帖子提到了一名技术人员转行去当杂货店收银员，一名会计师转行去街头叫卖香肠，还有一名网站内容管理员转行去送外卖。在类似于Instagram的手机应用小红书上，“#我的体力活初体验”标签的浏览量已超过2800万。 |
| Proponents describe the joy of predictable hours and a less competitive atmosphere. They acknowledge that the change requires sacrifices — Ms. Liu said she saved about $15,000 before quitting and has cut her spending dramatically — but say that they are worth escaping the spiritual draining of their former jobs. Ms. Liu said she much preferred the physical exhaustion of wrestling with uncooperative dogs to the mental toll of poring over design assignments she had not chosen. Many also say they are looking for light physical labor, not intensive work like construction or factory jobs. | 这个趋势的支持者提到有规律的工作时间和竞争不那么激烈的环境带给人的快乐。他们承认改行需要做出牺牲——刘女士说她存了大约10万元才辞职，并在辞职后大幅削减了日常开支——但他们说，转行让他们摆脱了以前工作带来的心力憔悴，所以是值得的。刘女士说，她宁愿照料不合作的狗导致的体力消耗，而不要费力地去弄那些不由她选择的设计任务带来的精神损害。许多人还说，他们正在寻找的是轻体力劳动，而不是像建筑工地或工厂工作那样的高强度劳动。 |
| Around the world, the coronavirus pandemic spurred people to reassess the value of their work — see the “Great Resignation” in the United States. But in China, the forces fueling the disillusionment of young people are particularly intense. Long working hours and domineering managers are common. The economy is slowing, dimming the prospect of upward mobility for a generation that has known only explosive growth. | 在世界各地，新冠病毒大流行促使人们重新评估工作的价值，比如美国出现的“大辞职潮”。但在中国，助长年轻人幻灭感的力量尤为强烈。工作时间长和专横的上司很常见。经济正在放缓，让向上流动的前景变得黯淡，而这代人以前只知道爆炸式的经济增长。 |
| And then there were China’s three years of “zero Covid” restrictions, which forced many to endure prolonged lockdowns, layoffs and the realization of how little control their hard work gave them over their futures. | 再就是中国执行了三年的“新冠清零”政策，它迫使许多人忍受长时间的封控和裁员，而且令他们意识到，辛勤工作并不能换来对未来的掌控。 |
| “Emotionally, everyone probably can’t bear it anymore, because during the pandemic we saw many unfair and strange things, like being locked up,” Ms. Liu said. | “大家的情绪会有点受不了，疫情期间遭遇了很多不公平的待遇，觉得莫名其妙的被关起来。”刘女士说。 |
| The job-changing trend has revived a debate about the futility of the rat race. Two years ago, a similar call to quit work and enjoy life, dubbed “lying flat,” spread widely online. Critics accused adherents of wasting their parents’ investment and abandoning the industriousness that helped build China into a superpower. But others blamed a values system that had prioritized one, consumerist path to success, for their disenchantment. | 换工作的趋势重新引发了关于激烈竞争是否徒劳无益的争论。两年前，网上广泛流传过被称为“躺平”的类似号召，意思是让人们辞去工作、享受生活。批评者指责那样做的人浪费了父母在他们身上的投入，放弃了帮助中国成为超级大国的勤奋努力。但其他人则将他们幻想破灭的原因归咎于一个优先考虑消费主义成功之路的价值体系。 |
| Since then, competition for white-collar jobs has grown only more cutthroat. A record number of students are expected to graduate from universities this year, even as companies have cut back on hiring. The unemployment rate among people ages 16 to 24 was nearly 20 percent last summer, according to official statistics, with the rate higher among college graduates. | 那之后，白领工作的竞争变得更加残酷。就在企业减少招聘人数之际，预计今年的大学毕业生人数将创下历史新高。据官方统计，16至24岁人群去年夏天的失业率接近20%，大学毕业生的失业率更高。 |
| So rather than trying even harder to compete, some find the traditionally less coveted route attractive. | 所以有些人不愿意更努力地去竞争，而是发现传统上不那么令人垂涎的选择富有吸引力。 |
| “The purpose of studying and accumulating knowledge is not to land an impressive job, but to have the bravery to accept more possibilities,” reads the description for one online forum, which invited its more than 39,000 members to ask how tiring setting up a street stall is, or to describe their experience waiting tables. | “我们读书，学习知识，不是为了做到什么了不起的职位，恰恰是有勇气去接受更多可能性吧，”一个网络论坛上的帖子这样写道，该论坛邀请其逾3.9万名成员提问题，比如在街头摆摊有多累，或描述他们当餐厅服务员的经历。 |
| When Eunice Wang, 25, was offered a consulting job in Beijing last year after finishing her master’s degree, she immediately accepted. She was proud of having stood out among so much competition, and she wanted to see how much further she could go. | 现年25岁的尤妮斯·王（音）去年拿到了硕士学位，北京一家企业提供给她一份咨询工作，她立即接受了。她为自己在如此之多的竞争者中脱颖而出感到自豪，她想看看自己在职场上能走多远。 |
| But China’s corporate culture is notoriously demanding, with employee deaths at internet companies prompting questions about overwork and mental health. Soon, Ms. Wang said, she fell into a vicious cycle: She developed anxiety from her heavy workload, but was too busy to decompress. She also had not seen her parents in nearly a year, because of Covid travel restrictions. | 但中国的企业文化是出了名的苛刻，互联网公司员工的突然死亡曾引发人们对造成过度劳累、影响心理健康的工作的质疑。王女士说，开始工作后不久，她陷入了一种恶性循环：繁重的工作让人焦虑，但又忙得无暇减压。由于“新冠清零”限制了旅行，她已有将近一年没与父母见面了。 |
| Last fall, she quit. She now works at a coffee shop in her hometown Shenyang, in northeastern China, making one-fifth of her previous salary. She is living with her parents and earning extra money through freelance illustrating, a hobby she’d given up in Beijing. | 去年秋天，她辞了职。她目前在东北老家沈阳的一家咖啡店工作，收入是以前的五分之一。她住在父母家，并担任自由插画师挣点外快，画画是她在北京时放弃的爱好。 |
| Ms. Wang, who described her family as comfortably middle class, acknowledged that she was lucky she could afford such a choice. She would return to white-collar work if her parents one day needed financial support, she said. But until then, she valued the opportunity to challenge her long-held notions of success. | 王女士将自己的家庭描述为丰衣足食的中产阶级，她承认自己很幸运，能够负担得起这种选择。她说，如果有那么一天，她需要在经济上支持父母的话，她会重返白领工作。但在那之前，她珍惜有机会挑战她长期以来持有的成功观念。 |
| “Everyone thought that conquering a project or securing a client was such a great thing, and I wanted to force myself to believe the same,” she said of her former job. But she discovered that she found enough gratification in befriending a customer, or being praised for a well-made latte. “I don’t need other people to tell me what my future will hold.” | “他们会觉得我把这个项目给攻克下来，我把这个客户给搞定，会是一件很了不起的事，我当时就很想逼迫自己能这么想，”她谈到以前的工作时说。但她发现，与顾客交朋友，或因制作了一杯很棒的拿铁咖啡受到称赞时，她找到了足够的满足感。“不用别人告诉我，我的发展方向是啥。” |
| Those who have made the change are likely still a tiny minority. Many who have posted in online forums are asking questions rather than jumping in. Some who left their higher-earning positions acknowledge that they do not know how long they will stay in their new occupations; some say they are now spending more than they earn. | 做出这种变化的人可能仍是极少数。网络论坛上发帖的许多人是在问问题，而不是已经转行的那些。一些离开了高收入职位的人承认，他们不知道自己能在新职业上坚持多久；有人说他们现在花的钱比挣的多。 |
| Online critics have slammed the job switchers as naïve, suggesting that they are playacting at poverty or taking blue-collar jobs from less educated people who need them. | 网上的批评者抨击改行的人天真，暗示他们是在假装贫穷，或抢了需要这种工作的人的饭碗，那些人因为受教育程度较低只能从事蓝领工作。 |
| But criticism has also flowed in the opposite direction: China’s state broadcaster recently blamed the unemployment problem in part on young, educated Chinese being too unwilling to take on blue-collar work, suggesting that they were spoiled. | 但也有相反的批评：中国的国家电视台最近将失业问题部分归咎于受过高等教育的中国年轻人太不愿意从事蓝领工作，暗示他们被宠坏了。 |
| Social media users responded furiously, pointing out that society had long prized education above all else and, especially since China’s economic reform began, cast manual labor as something to be shaken off. | 社交媒体用户对这个说法的反应激烈，他们指出社会长期以来将教育看得高于一切，尤其是在中国开始进行经济改革以来，体力劳动被视为是需要摆脱的东西。 |
| The problem was not that young people thought they were too good for that work, but that it did not offer a real chance at a better life, because of lower wages and persistent discrimination, said Nie Riming, a researcher at the Shanghai Institute of Finance and Law. Until China offered better-paid blue-collar jobs and accorded them most respect, young people were being pragmatic, not picky. | 上海金融与法律研究院研究员聂日明表示，问题不在于年轻人认为体力活不值得他们干，而是因为低工资和持续存在的歧视让体力劳动没有给人提供过上更好生活的真正机会。年轻人这样的选择是出于务实而非挑剔。除非中国给蓝领工作提供更高的薪水，给予体力劳动者更多的尊重。 |
| “If society isn’t diverse, it’s impossible to expect students to make diverse choices,” he said. | “你不是一个多元化社会，但是你希望让学生的选择是多元的，但这个是不可能的，”他说。 |
| Even some of the young Chinese praising their new, less prestigious jobs had not initially planned to take them. | 就连一些夸耀自己在平凡领域新工作的中国年轻人最初也没有打算接受那些工作。 |
| When Yolanda Jiang, 24, resigned last summer from her architectural design job in Shenzhen, after being asked to work 30 days straight, she hoped to find another office job. It was only after three months of unsuccessful searching, her savings dwindling, that she took a job as a security guard in a university residential complex. | 现年24岁的约兰达·江（音）去年夏天辞去了在深圳的建筑设计工作，之前她曾被要求连续工作30天。她希望再找一份白领工作。但找了三个月都没有成功，积蓄越来越少，她找到一份在大学宿舍当保安的工作。 |
| At first, she was embarrassed to tell her family or friends, but she grew to appreciate the role. Her 12-hour shifts, though long, were leisurely. She got off work on time. The job came with free dormitory housing. Her salary of about $870 a month was even about 20 percent higher than her take-home pay before — a symptom of how the glut of college graduates has started to flatten wages for that group. | 起初，她不好意思告诉家人或朋友，但后来她开始逐渐喜欢上这个角色。12小时轮班虽然很长，但也很悠闲。她准时下班。这份工作附带免费宿舍。她每月6000元的工资甚至比她以前实际得到的工资还要高出约20%，这说明大学毕业生过剩已开始压低该群体的工资。 |
| But Ms. Jiang said her ultimate goal is still to return to an office, where she hoped to find more intellectual challenges. She had been taking advantage of the slow pace at her security job to study English, which she hoped would help her land her next role, perhaps at a foreign trade company. | 但江女士说，她的最终目标还是回到办公室上班，她希望办公室工作让她找到更多的脑力挑战。她一直在利用安保工作节奏缓慢的机会学习英语，希望这能帮助她找到下一份工作，也许是在一家外贸公司。 |
| “I’m not actually lying flat,” Ms. Jiang said. “I’m treating this as a time to rest, transition, learn, charge my batteries and think about the direction of my life.” | “做保安不算真的躺平，”江女士说。“因为我只是把它当成一个休息、过渡，歇脚休息（的地方），（来）学习充电、思考人生方向。” |
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