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Hi everyone, and welcome back to happy hour. Hi, 安澜.

hi, Lulu, hi, everyone.

欢迎回到酒馆. What are we gonna talk about today?

Well ,I’ve got a bit of a confession. Last week I made dinner at home, rice, eggs, leftover vegetables, no restaurants, no aesthetic plating,

No dates？

No dates, nothing whatsoever. And I felt weirdly proud.

Congratulations. You have officially entered过日子mode.

Okay,

You know, you've heard of that on Chinese social media, right?

Well, I know 过日子 just means like “get by” just like, you know, living in an ordinary life.

Exactly! You know, honestly, over the years, my mom always uses this term like I think the older generation they use this term, you need to过日子. It's kind of like you need to be very down to earth. And I always found that to be really boring. And also if you say oh, she is the type you can过日子with. 她看上去就是个过日子的人. It's a little bit insulting. It almost sounds like she's a plain Jane you can settle for.

Yeah, it's the idea like settling down you would say in English,

Yes, it's like stable, practical, boring. It's not the sort of exciting life that you wish you would lead when you were younger.

But nowadays that is becoming a bit of a trend, isn't it?

Exactly，people are calling themselves纯过日子人.

OK.

…purely just living.

So basically posting grocery receipts that type of life .

Exactly instead of the… you know, the trendy restaurant selfies.

So today this is what we're going to be discussing. What does 过日子 actually mean now? Is it thrift? Is it burnout? Is it ancient wisdom? And how is it different from other concepts such as lying flat, consumption downgrade,

Ah, trading down?

Yeah, and that old “I have no money, but I still want an oat milk latte”.

Let's get into it.

So I remember when I first started learning Chinese. I used to get very confused between 日子 and 生活.

Actually it's difficult to translate that, because日子 and 生活 can both be life, right?

Yeah.

But I guess 生活 is life as a concept like quality of life, lifestyle, the big picture.

Yeah.

But过日子 is more the everyday work of living.

Well, exactly that's how I always used to remember it. So like passing the days,

not just passing, but doing a lot of chores and running a lot of errands.

Yes, living a day to day life.

Exactly, a lot of the boring but very necessary stuff like paying the bill, cooking the rice, checking what's left in the fridge, making sure tomorrow still comes.

Exactly.

So you can still survive tomorrow.

So it's the opposite of a highlight reel. It's just well, Thursday.

Or Tuesday.

Or Tuesday.

Yeah, highlight reel, we’ve talked about this a lot. When it comes to social media, it used to be all of these highly curated, highlight reel. Everyone seemed to have an amazing life.

Exactly. Just living was the thing that you were supposed to escape from. You are meant to travel more, upgrade your apartment, live your best life.

Buy that bag.

Exactly. But now it's completely changed.

This script just flipped. I think in this year, people started announcing themselves as纯过日子人. We are entering a 过日子 mode and I think it's almost turned into kind of a manifesto for a group of people, and I think in English speaking world they have this trend of under consumption.

Yes,

So you know under consumption, the manifesto was almost kind of comic in how specific it was, so no more late night crying about attachment styles. No more analyzing your family of origin为原生家庭. No more chasing大结果, the big result, and no more lining up for a photogenic restaurant什么出片、漂亮饭, just cook, sleep, save money and maybe go for a walk.

Oh exactly. This is the important thing to bear in mind that 过日子 doesn't mean poverty, doesn't mean that you can't afford it. Some people do it because they are broke. Let's be honest. But some are not.

Yeah,

The point is priority. Money goes to food, rest, family, cash buffer, not to looking expensive.

I think if you look at all of the world, in the west, it's the same. You have the affordability crisis, the cost of living crisis; people are complaining about grocery bills. So even if you currently don't have a cash flow problem, you are kind of cautious about spending, right?

Exactly. The thing is that over consumption now has got such a bad reputation. So I know for a fact in the UK--the idea of spending lots and lots of money has always been quite negative. It's always been that if you are frugal with your money, then you are somewhat a better person.

Exactly that's why in English you say things like filthy rich or obscene amount of money. These are very negative words linked with money. And also this whole to flex your money-show off your money, it’s not really seen as that positive.

Yeah.

I think before people used to, really in Chinese, we say 打肿脸充胖子, even if they didn't have the money, they try to bluff their way through, they would go into credit card debt, but nowadays people are really calming down…

Yeah,

like you said, some people they might actually be struggling financially, but other people they seem to be calming down even if they don't currently have sort of cash flow problems, when they say they are纯过日子人, it's more like they're proud of the new existence.

Yeah. And let's be honest. Nowadays prices are going up.

Yeah.

There are fewer pay rises and the old formula grind（grind：名词，内卷苦工、日复一日耗精力的打拼，该词来自游戏：反复刷任务刷经验，形容枯燥重复） —buy a house, level up — feels very broken.

Exactly, and all of the world is getting more and more difficult to find a decent job.

Oh yeah, exactly.

And housing still looks unreachable even though it's coming down and jobs feel less permanent.

Yeah. For example, the BBC now even covers creators who film two meals for about $1.

$1?

Yeah, so there's a whole big thing about very very cheap meals in the UK and they might be just cooking on a minimum budget.

Yeah, same here. On social media, even like quite showy flexy social media, like 小红书， they now have things like survive a day on 10RMB.

Yeah, and I've also noticed a bit of a quieter shift as well.

Okay.

Lot of people are renting instead of owning. So cameras, formal wear, even drones, people rent them for a short time and then give them back.

Yeah, that's another... I've seen a few apps now which allow you to rent clothes and accessories. It's not about taking pride in consumption anymore. It's taking pride in saving money. It creates a whole thrift culture. Some online platforms have giant groups like they call themselves stingy people's federation or like save money like you mean it.

And that's the whole thing. Frugality has become gamified, yeah. It's become a competition,

Exactly, it becomes a competition, becomes content as well. So let's make this concrete. What does a过日子day actually look like? What does it look like to you?

For example, reading a free newspaper on my phone, checking the savings app,

Okay.

Because even just getting a little bit of interest feels like a tiny win,

You like…yay~~.

then lunch, you might see if there's any leftovers in the fridge,

I go to the school canteen.

or go to the school canteen, and then for dinner you cook. But you make sure that if you buy any groceries, you only buy what you actually need for dinner; or even better, you go to supermarkets towards the end of the day where things are a little bit cheaper.

Oh yeah. they start to do that as well. Years ago, when I went to Japan, that was the thing I really loved, like I think around 8 o'clock or so...

All the sushi’s half price.

but you have to fight other housewives for that.

Exactly.

I think now they're starting to do that in China as well, which I think is really good because why waste that food?

Yeah. I was doing that when I was a student I went to supermarkets around 9 or 10 o'clock because they would get rid of the food that is already kind of like “best before”.

Because by law they cannot keep on selling certain things overnight, right?

No.

排版长图：Jer.ry

文稿校对：Cindy 齐 & Jenny

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