‘I wish my company would fire me’: Young Chinese workers struggle to call it quits

It was a sunny autumn afternoon with a bite in the air and the musicians were in their usual place near the Workers’ Stadium, each sitting on a separate park bench with a music stand in front of them. One woman and five men, four were on the saxophone and two on trombone, each apparently playing their own tune so that they were performing alongside one another but not quite together.

Further along, a few men shuffled around what looked like an elongated bus shelter, reading the newspapers displayed behind a pane of glass, each page pinned up separately in order. Old men sat in clusters nearby playing cards, a few kids swooped across the pavement on skateboards and a mother and her daughter tossed a shuttlecock between them, over and back.

Walking alongside me in his black hoodie and tracksuit bottoms, Yuxuan was complaining about the strangers he shares a flat with beyond Beijing’s 4th ring road. The worst offenders were a couple who spent too long in the bathroom, one of whom left her hair in the sink every morning.

“Why does she have to do that? F**k!” he said.

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The idea was that Yuxuan, who was about to do an interview for a job at Amazon, was practising his English and I was practising my Chinese. But we were interrupted every few minutes when he would stop to record a voice memo in response to a text message.

“It’s my boss. He wants me to work on Sunday. I wish he’d fire me. F**k!” he said.

Under Chinese labour law, a worker who is sacked is entitled to severance pay of one month’s salary plus a month for every year they have worked at the company. Yuxuan had only been doing his sales job at a mobile phone company for 18 months but he said that if he got two months pay he would leave Beijing with its high prices and his horrible flatmates and go home to his family.

One reason he wanted to work at Amazon was that the job in some kind of quality control function, for which he had to do a video interview in English, was closer to where he came from. I asked if there was any chance his current boss would fire him.

“No, he likes me too much,” he said.

Chatting a few days later to another recent graduate in her 20s who was doing what sounded like a high-status job, I told her what Yuxuan had said.

“I wish my company would fire me,” she said.

“Some of my friends have just quit their jobs.”

[ I had about three minutes to choose my new Chinese name ]

Tang ping, or lying flat, was the talk of China last year as young people spoke about quitting their jobs during the pandemic to focus on life outside work. But this woman said the problem was that as economic conditions in China worsened, employers were pushing their workers harder and some were starting to snap.

“Because the economy is bad there’s no chance of promotion either so yeah, I’d love to get fired,” she said.

One impediment to quitting is that the job market has never been tighter and youth unemployment is approaching 20 per cent. Many of the millions of businesses that have ceased trading during the pandemic were in the consumer-facing sectors that employ a lot of young people.

After his interview, I asked Yuxuan how it went and he thought it had gone badly because he didn’t hear the last question clearly and the interviewer asked it again in Chinese. He got the verdict in a message soon afterwards.

“The excellent qualifications of candidates like you have made our talent selection process a difficult one. Careful consideration has been given to each individual. However, based on our current hiring needs and specific requirements, we regret that the role we are currently hiring for is not aligned to your particular experience,” it said.

A few days later, after the weather turned and it was already cold and dark in the early evening, I was passing a restaurant and saw the staff sitting around a large table having their dinner together before the customers arrived. I thought about Yuxuan preparing to finish work and heading back to avoid his flatmates and I sent him a message asking if he wanted to meet.

“I’m not in a good mood and want to be alone,” he wrote back.

[ When they asked on the third day of Beijing quarantine if everything was all right, I said I’d love some coffee ]

“I’m frustrated and confused about the future. Beijing does not suit me. Far from my home and it is expensive. I am tired and I want to be close to my home.”