Millions of ‘losers’ say they’re short on love, money
Print Edition
NO girlfriend, no savings, and a poorly paid job: Zhao Jun is typical of the diaosi, or “losers” who have been left on the sidelines of China’s decades-long economic boom.
According to a survey by Peking University and a Chinese social networking site, 72 percent of diaosi are dissatisfied with their lot.
There are no official figures for this group but the term could apply to tens of millions of Chinese people.
Originally from east China’s Jiangsu Province, 30-year-old Zhao moved to Beijing eight years ago.
Despite having a degree from Harbin University of Science and Technology he said he earns just 3,000 yuan (US$483) a month working for a design company.
“I live in a basement apartment in west Beijing, and pay rent of 500 yuan a month. I can’t save anything as everything is so expensive here,” he said.
According to the September poll, the typical diaosi — who can be male or female — is single, spends less than 39 yuan on their three daily meals and uses a cheap Chinese smartphone. Almost 38 percent said they were depressed.
Of those with jobs, 69 percent work overtime every day. Their leisure time is typically spent playing video games online, while swigging cheap beer and chain-smoking cigarettes.
‘Ugly and poor’
Beijing-based Sinologist Renaud de Spens has given the word diaosi a prominent slot in the 2015 edition of his “Cheeky China Dictionary.”
The literal translation means “penis hair” (male pubic hair), but as a slang term, de Spens said. “It refers to the failures, those who are both ugly and poor, those who are unmarriageable.”
One Beijing diaosi nicknamed A Qi shares a room in a 1950s red brick building, of a type built to accommodate an influx of migrants from the countryside, and now often so decayed they are being demolished for redevelopment.
“Diaosi means we have no money,” said A Qi, who recently quit his job at a publishing company.
“I felt depressed when I walked into the office every day and told myself I couldn’t continue.”
He tried to start an online business on the online marketplace Taobao, but that also failed.
Now disillusioned, he wants to leave the capital.
A banner in the entrance of his building reads: “Follow the Party, realize the Chinese Dream” — a phrase popularized by President Xi Jinping.
In a country where the definition of success is a career, home ownership and marriage, the term diaosi was first coined pejoratively on the Internet.
It has online opposites that represent all it is to be at the top of the Chinese social pyramid: Men should be gaofushuai — tall, handsome and rich, while women should be baifumei, — rich, beautiful and fair skinned.
Creating a positive
But the diaosi are now seeking to re-appropriate the word, in the same way that ethnic or sexual minorities in the West have taken possession of former insults.
The term has become a rallying point for some, symbolizing their rejection of the frenzied consumerism of China’s economic boom, which they can only watch from the sidelines.
“The large number of Chinese who define themselves around this concept shows how self-deprecation and a counter-culture are developing,” de Spens said.
“The diaosi affirms his or her pride in being neither a senior official nor a rich kid — in their imagination, officials and rich kids don’t do a damn thing.
“As such, he or she retains a moral integrity in the face of a society that seems to him or her to be plunging into an abyss of materialism.”
Now, though, there is a backlash to the backlash.
In a microblog post that was forwarded tens of thousands of times, film director Feng Xiaogang decried as “brainless” those who call themselves diaosi.
Even the Communist Party’s official newspaper the People’s Daily weighed in last month.
The tendency to “self-denigrate,” it said, should “be denounced and abandoned, because it can cause serious harm to the spirit of youth.”
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