Chinese MZ begins to “imitate birds”… What is the reason for the bias?

(Reporter Edaily Lee Won) Selfies imitating birds are becoming increasingly popular on Chinese social networking services (SNS), especially among young people. This is interpreted as part of the “lying still” phenomenon that has emerged as China’s economic growth slows and future uncertainty increases.

Photo = Screenshot from Douyin (China’s TikTok)

According to a report by The New York Times (NYT) on the 2nd (local time), Wang Weihan (20 years old), a student at a university in Shanghai, posted a video on Douyin (China’s TikTok) of himself imitating a bird in his dormitory. In the video, Wang hid his legs and wore a loose short-sleeved T-shirt on his shoulders. Instead of putting his arms into the sleeves, he pulled them out from under the T-shirt and grabbed the bed rails to make them look like bird claws.

Zhao Weixiang, 22, a biology student from northern China’s Shanxi province, uploaded a bird-shaped composite photo of himself perched on a telephone pole on TikTok with the caption: “Stop studying and turn into a bird.” He explained that one day he looked outside the classroom and saw birds flying in the sky, “I envied their freedom, so I decided to imitate these birds.”

Photo = Screenshot from Douyin (China’s TikTok)

Sociologists explain this phenomenon as an extension of the “lying still” trend among Chinese young people.

Xiang Biao, director of the Max Planck Institute for Social Anthropology in Germany, said, “Many young Chinese people have been told since childhood that as long as they study hard and work hard, they can have a bright future, but now their ideals are shattered.” China’s economy is slowing down.

“Young people have high expectations for themselves, for China and for the world, but when they graduate from college and become adults, they become victims of the economic recession,” Xiang said. “They ask, ‘Why did I study so hard?’ I started asking questions,” he added.

Not long ago, the culture of wearing ridiculous outfits such as multiple layers of pajamas to work became prevalent among young Chinese, which was also interpreted as a potential sense of loss and emptiness.