Generation Z: A Cleaner Workforce?

We regard Generation Z and Generation Alpha as the revolutionizer of the modern workforce; Expectations dictate them to connect, communicate, and lead mankind into an era of hitherto prosperity. Yet, blinded by this facade, millions of Chinese laborers hold themselves to the belief that the free market will gift them with warm acceptance, high wages, and workplace equality. Ming Han, however, tells a wicked tale that reflects the slice of hell young labor faces in 21st Century China.

Ming Han, 2023

I met Han in Starbucks, the one place that he considers a resort from the hellish workplace. But why are the corporations and offices that millions of college graduates praise, so horrifying in Han’s eyes?

“This brings me back to my childhood when I was bawling my eyes out as my mother butchered a pig in front of my eyes. It was squealing hellish cacophonies, so loud and distorted that we barely felt sorry for it. But when its screams finally died down, the silence that imprinted on me.”

He was 26. As he spoke, his eyes had a glint of determination and the calmness unfitting for his rather young age.

“I was 16 when my mother evicted me. And just like that I ended up in Liao Ning’s internet cafés. I had to learn something; I knew that sooner or later, with idleness, I would be cut up like that squealing pig. During lunch breaks, I would learn coding. It took me 5 years to sit in an office, but it was worth it. Why would they hire a high-school graduate? Do you know the Apple Developer Event? I won in 2017.”

Han struck me as a literate young man – not someone who only had a high school degree. His lips trembled as he described his way up to MiHoYo, an elite game-developing firm located in Shanghai.

“MiHoYo isn’t as pleasant as you think. We pull all-nighters all the time. I know what the corps advertise; it’s the peer pressure that gets you. I still remember the chilling night before Genshin Impact’s 3.0 update when I had to work overtime to put out a severe server emergency. I slept at the office that night.”

Han wasn’t the Gen Z that I expected, but between him and the pig, I thought I saw millions suffering like him.

“I wanted to quit, trust me. But who could have turned down a well-paid, established job in a city like Shanghai? In the silence I live and work, where the pain is muting. But I dare not to make a sound. What for? Money.”

He was no martyr; he enjoyed a pyrrhic victory just like anyone else. All he sought was to keep himself and his family afloat in the Shanghainese metropolitan abyss.