‘Quiet quitting’ — Phrase of the Week
Many young Chinese people are unhappy with the outlook of their careers, and life in general. Like their Gen Z counterparts in the U.S., many are “quiet quitting.”
Our Phrase of the Week is: Quiet quitting (糊弄学 hùnong xué).
The context
Lying flat (躺平 tǎngpíngìng) first appeared on the Chinese internet in 2021 as a reaction of China’s youth to the social phenomenon called “involution” (内卷 nèijuǎn), or intense economic competition for ever-scarcer resources, which entered popular usage in 2020.
To lie flat is to choose to escape involution and high-pressure city life, to disengage from the intense social competition of China’s 996 work culture.
Young people are still disenchanted with the rat race: The Economist, a weekly newspaper, last week said that “China’s defeated youth…have little hope for the future.”
The outlook is gloomier than it used to be. China’s economy is struggling, and unemployment among urban Chinese aged 16 to 24 is over 20%, with 70% of them being university graduates.
This malaise felt by many young people is expressed in new phrases that have emerged in the last two years, such as involution, lie flat, and let things get to their worst (摆烂 bǎi làn), a previous Phrase of the Week, a reference to things getting so bad that it’s not worth even trying anymore.
Having had enough of the intense grind of life, China’s Gen Zers are finding ways to cope with the pressure. They find ways to entertain themselves, save time, or cut corners.
This new approach to life is called 糊弄学 hùnong xué, which translates as “slacking off,” “blagging,” or “bluffing it.”
And it’s not just about cutting corners at work. Media outlet Huxiu 虎嗅 interviewed a group of youngsters in China, who are applying the approach to all parts of their lives:
We spoke with several young people who are proficient in “bluffing” in their daily lives. Among them, some are bluffing through blind dates in order to cope with their parents’ demands; some bluff at work during overtime; others bluff their way through intensive travel plans, going to places briefly just to check it out; and there are even some people, in order to save high haircut costs, who bluff their way by cutting their own hair.
我们和几位在日常生活中精通“糊弄学”的年轻人聊了聊他们的“糊弄”日常。他们当中，有人为了应付父母“糊弄式”相亲；有人为了应付不合理的公司制度，开启“摸鱼式”加班；有人原本计划完成15城的随心飞计划，却不想只维持了两周，就变成了“糊弄式”打卡；也有人，为了节省高昂的理发费用，“糊弄式”剪头发…
Wǒmen hé jǐ wèi zài rìcháng shēnghuó zhōng jīngtōng “hùnong xué” de niánqīng rén liáole liáo tāmen de “hùnong” rìcháng. Tāmen dāngzhōng, yǒurén wéi le yìngfù fùmǔ “hùnong shì” xiāngqīn; yǒurén wéi le yìngfù bù hélǐ de gōngsī zhìdù, kāiqǐ “mō yú shì” jiābān; yǒurén yuánběn jìhuà wánchéng 15 chéng de suíxīn fēi jìhuà, què bùxiǎng zhǐ wéichíle liǎng zhōu, jiù biàn chéngle “hùnong shì” dǎkǎ; yěyǒu rén, wèile jiéshěng gāo’áng de lǐfǎ fèiyòng,“hùnong shì” jiǎn tóufǎ…
And with that, we have our Phrase of the Week.
What it means
The three characters of the phrase bluffing it can be split into two parts: 糊弄 hùnong, which translates as to “fool” or “deceive,” or to “muddle through.” The third character is 学 xué, which normally means to “study,” but here is translated as “-ism,” or “-ology.”
It’s an internet slang phrase. According to Baidu, the definition is:
Using ways that look serious (but are actually not) to deal with the things in life that you have to do (but don’t want to).
以看起来不敷衍的方式，去应对生活中难以推脱之事。
Yǐ kànqǐlái bù fūyǎn de fāngshì，qù yìngduì shēnghuó zhōng nányǐ tuītuō zhī shì.
It’s a minimum-effort approach, which must look like maximum effort is given in order to do those unpleasant things in life that must be done.
The phrase first appeared on Douyin, China’s version of TikTok, in November 2020. A well-known blogger criticized the homepage of another blogger, which was well designed but produced very limited content: They were blagging it.
Soon after that, the new phrase went viral after a group was created on social media platform Douban, with over 110,000 people sharing their tips and tricks on how to bluff it in all aspects of life.
Since then, the phrase has become widely used by young people. It’s a humorous phrase with a touch of sarcasm, a way to relieve some pressure of life and find an excuse to do as little as possible.
The interviews in the Huxiu article reveal young people are not just blagging it in work. They are cutting corners at the gym while cooking at home or eating out, and even when they go away for the weekend.
The phrase has a similar meaning to the “quiet quitting” trend seen in Western countries after COVID.
