#tangp

[like-this-post-if-you]

Like this post if you know how to Tango

[aggressivenesswhilecrying]

Can we please just start writing the entirety of the life serise as a one big polycue? Obviously Scott is just in a queer platonic relationship with all the ladies, but, please?like, please?????

[mishmashmj]

躺平 A sneeze, a cough or possibly a wince inducing pinch.

No,

This is a hiccup.

A familiar feeling washes over, gently taking me under. Gradually tightening it's grip.

Now I'm Chained to the bed, chained to my thoughts.

Unable to move. Lying flat.

[fyodordostoevskeys]

Well according to the bible one cannot do the devils tangp before marriage

I...

stop this

[leibal]

Lagom13 is a minimal space located in Hangzhou, China, designed by Shire Space Research. In her book “Lagom,” Swedish author Laura A. Akström offers an intimate look at life in Sweden, a concept that has significantly influenced the initial design phase of a new bakery on Tangping Road.

[mariacallous]

U.S. politicians have begun to lament the country’s falling birthrate. Their concern is legitimate; The United States’ total fertility rate has fallen from a robust average of 2.12 births per woman in 2007 to less than 1.7 births per woman today. (Demographic experts generally identify 2.1 as the rate needed to keep the population stable absent immigration.) From a smaller tax base and a shrinking labor pool to higher pension burdens that could crowd out spending on things such as education and infrastructure, falling birthrates represent a looming social and economic drag on U.S. prosperity.

This discourse, however, misses key context—namely, that the demographic situations in China, Russia, and the European Union are an order of magnitude worse. Far from being a drag, the United States’ relatively strong demographic hand endows it with a key advantage in an age of great-power competition with China and Russia.

While the United States may be in demographic transition, its competitors are increasingly in demographic turmoil. Nowhere is this more apparent than China. In the span of less than a decade, its birthrate has plunged from 1.81 births per woman to 1.08, according to the official figures, placing it among the lowest anywhere. Chinese authorities anticipate a modest rebound, speculating that fertility rates will rise above 1.3 by 2035, a figure that would still spell demographic doom for the world’s second-most populous country.

But far from recovering, a confluence of demographic and social trends suggests that the Chinese birthrate still has further to fall.

Start with the fact that after decades of the one-child policy, there are dramatically fewer Chinese citizens able to have children in the first place. There are, for example, 216 million Chinese citizens in their 50s but just 181 million citizens in their 20s, meaning that the population is all but destined to fall since the pool of potential parents is now so much smaller.

Even worse, a societal preference for sons has created a severe shortage of women. There are a whopping 11.7 million more Chinese men in their 20s than there are women in the same age bracket. A small portion of this imbalance can be attributed to nature’s slight tendency for boys over girls at childbirth. (Some scientists speculate that humans may have evolved this tendency to compensate for higher mortality rates for men later on in the life cycle.)

A much larger share of the imbalance, however, can be attributed to the many sex-selective abortions and the Chinese girls who were put up for adoption during the peak years of gender selection, before government efforts began to close the gender gap. Decades of the one-child policy, in short, have resulted in a shortage of young people and an even greater shortage of young women. Both factors condemn the country to continued demographic decline for the foreseeable future.

Despite the government’s best efforts to convince people to have babies, including a turn to patriarchal language under Chinese President Xi Jinping, new social realities also suggest that China’s ultra-low birthrates are here to stay. Chief among these is a newfound and ingrained cultural preference for small families, especially among the generation of people who grew up without siblings. Chinese women surveyed about their preferences, for example, reported an ideal family size that averages to just 1.7 children, far lower than almost everywhere else in the world. This means that even if Beijing was able to afford every woman the perfect conditions for raising a family, Chinese fertility would still be far below the threshold required to maintain population size.

Also worrying for China is the rise of the tangping—the “lying flat” movement—a social phenomenon observed among young Chinese emerging from the anomie resulting from both China’s long COVID-19 lockdowns and a hypercompetitive academic culture. The movement, which rejects typical societal expectations (parenthood included) as a form of quiet but defiant protest against the state, has been subject to heavy censorship but still seems to capture the prevailing mood among young people. It bodes poorly for their future procreation.

The most unheralded driver of China’s demographic decline, however, is its continued urbanization. This factor correlates with fertility perhaps more than any other; higher housing costs, more liberal social norms, and a new economic logic (extra hands to help with work on a farm become more mouths to feed in a city) all conspire to make urban families much smaller than rural ones.

China’s relentless urbanization, then, promises to act as a continued check on Beijing’s ambitions to raise birthrates. Most worrying for Beijing is the fact China has a lot of room left to urbanize: Less than two-thirds of Chinese citizens live in cities, compared to 81 percent of South Koreans and 92 percent of Japanese. Beijing will find efforts to raise the birthrate even harder as a greater share of the 34 percent of its citizens currently living in rural areas decamps to cities.

Russia’s population also promises to plummet, but it’s expected to do so for a slightly different set of reasons. Like China, Russia’s population growth is constrained by the smaller generation of people now entering adulthood, an echo of the tumultuous 1990s, when birthrates first collapsed following the dissolution of the Soviet Union. This reality means that the birthrate was already destined to fall due to the smaller pool of potential parents.

Unlike China, however, Russia has made this weak demographic hand even worse by starting a war.

Russian President Vladimir Putin’s invasion of Ukraine has locked Russia into a cycle of demographic decline in at least three ways. The first factor is death from the war itself, with many of Russia’s estimated 50,000 fatalities being from the same small generation—of those born in the 90s—that it can scarcely afford to lose. Second is the wave of emigration that the invasion and subsequent mobilization has caused, as many of the roughly 1 million Russians who have fled the war are in their prime childbearing years.

Above all, however, is the fact that military spending—which now stands at a record 6 percent of Russia’s GDP—has crowded out spending on education, health care, and other policies that induce family creation. Chief among these are the Kremlin’s generous natalist policies, which succeeded in meaningfully raising the birthrate and even led to a brief period of natural population growth from 2013 to 2016. But this is a far cry from 2021, when Russia’s population dropped by 1 million people—the opening shot in what will be a protracted period of decline.

Against this catastrophic backdrop in China and near-catastrophic backdrop in Russia, the United States’ relatively robust demography is a source of strength. It’s true that, like Europe, the United States is now entering an era of lower birthrates. But—buoyed by higher religiosity and strong Mormon and evangelical traditions that Europe lacks—this decline has been both more delayed and less dramatic than the precipitous drop seen across the EU.

The United Sates can also rely on its status as a first-choice destination for immigrants across the world, something that has propelled its continued population growth even as China and Russia have begun to decline. The United States’ world-beating universities and tech firms will continue to attract the world’s best and brightest while high wages and a tight labor market have incentivized an ever-growing number of lower-skilled migrants to arrive via the southern border.

While the United States will still have to adapt to realities such as higher pension obligations in the face of an aging population, it’s the inverted population pyramid seen in countries such as Russia and China that presents the greatest threat to productivity and growth.

Of course, Russia and China could yet climb out of the demographic holes that they have found themselves in. Both remain powerful autocracies that are potentially capable of corralling their people in ways that the United States and the West can’t—although encouraging population growth has, as autocracies such as Nicolae Ceausescu’s Romania shows, often been far harder than limiting it.

But the United States shouldn’t discount its own strengths, chief of all the political and economic liberties that make it such an attractive location to move to and raise children in the first place. The United States will still have to contend with the numerous threats posed by Russia and China. Their falling populations, however, will make the job much easier.

[bnuuyfluff]

mine is below the cut bc for some reason the picture is massive LOL but it is accurate i so would

tagging if u guys wanna!! @yanoyan @tangpings @norikohearts

Rude. and very true but still rude 🤨

Tag game cuz I’m bored (don’t feel pressured)

@stickypiratepeach @lee-always-kn0ws @quokkalighthanji @kenia4 @takemeseriouslyanddie @leonchansblog26

@official-hannah-bahng @stayriinaa @silencionyx @azuna-sz @foivestarrsketchez

@hopelessskznatic @2mins-world @channiesmegaverse @softkisshyunjin @skz-fanfic-recs

@psychologybat @jeonginplsholdmyhand

@thek-kraze @mf-rockstar @marie-is-seein-stars @demi0lune @stanskzot8 @skz-lover21

[fff777]

Watched WayV at Bilibili

Hendery shareholder roleplay

Staff: *Explaining the milk tea options that are gifts* Winwin: *Drinks one*

The drinks have WayV cupsleeves on them

Kun calling their names and handing out ID badges like he's their manager

I think I saw videos from this livestream, but they were super incredibly blurry so it's nice that I finally get to watch lol

Hendery and Winwin trying to volunteer each other for rock paper scissors

Yangyang: 我們是什麽? Hendery & Winwin: 人 Yangyang:

Yangyang: 我很? Winwin: 可愛 <3

Every time Yangyang asks 你是什麽 or 我是什麽, Hendery just says 人!!! X'D

Xiaojun helping Yangyang with the Cantonese :3

Friendship with Hendery is over, now Winwin is the Cantonese man

Learning a dance :P

Ten: You have to choose a person to battle Ten: *Instant regret*

And then teaching On My Youth

Hendery first shouting for Ten to do the challenge against Yangyang and then changing targets to Winwin

Oh there's a dance for Rodeo

Chopsticks spitting competition, because apparently Hendery never gets it right lol

Stuffed toys for all :3

Volunteering Winwin to say a few words again ^^;; 'Make Winwin talk' hours are always open

Hendery you snake lol

Winwin volunteering Yangyang >3

Honestly Yangyang's ment was pretty good. Winwin had a super generic one but Yangyang added a bit of fanservice into it lol. Made it feel a little more personal.

Hendery: You gotta tell the princesses to work hard Yangyang: ....Ten you talk And then Ten just slipped gongzhu so easily into his speech

Ten....you're not helping the tangping girlies XD

Xiaojun ending the day off with On My Youth and trying to have a good time on his own. He sang the second line all alone and Yangyang and Kun are just laughing at Xiaojun powering through the cringe.

The cupsleeve event reminds me of the cafe event they had where Hendery and Winwin were just putting lids and sticking straws into the cups X'D and the real coffee was being made by someone else lmao.

[anewtemporaryspace]

diary in poem form

#2

a 21st century Eastern philosophy of interest:

lying flat (tang ping)

or lie flat or tang ping or tangping [ lahy-ing flat ] or [tong ping ]

the trick is to lie flat in your mind,

where no one

can catch you. all day i lie flat

as the clouds that sail

over this sky garden. i lie

flat while descending the escalator,

losing a minute of my life

to thoughts that will never return.

one minute i'm at the top,

the next i'm at the bottom.

i lie flat at pilates,

the only one still on their mat

while the others pulse steadily.

the teacher doesn't notice either:

maybe, in his mind, he's lying flat too.

[imoim36news]

Trung QuốcHết tiền thuê nhà sau bốn năm thất nghiệp, Lý Thọ bán hết đồ đạc rồi dựng lều ngoài đường sống tạm bợ. Lý Thọ, 29 tuổi, người Thành Đô, tỉnh Tứ Xuyên mua một chiếc lều cũ giá 400 tệ (1,5 triệu đồng) để sống tại một bãi xe bỏ hoang gần một năm nay.Xung quanh lều là gạch đá ngổn ngang với cây cối um tùm vì là nơi chứa phế thải xây dựng. Bên ngoài lều, Lý treo tấm biển nhắc nhở mọi người đây là nơi ở của mình, vui lòng không động vào bởi không có đồ đạc giá trị bên trong."Đây là nhà tôi chứ không phải đồ bỏ đi. Nếu muốn tôi chuyển đến nơi khác, vui lòng gọi điện thông báo. Nếu việc tôi ở đây làm phiền người khác, tôi sẽ lập tức rời đi", Lý viết.Câu chuyện của Lý Thọ sau khi được chia sẻ trên mạng xã hội đã gây tranh luận gay gắt về trào lưu "tangping" (nằm yên không làm gì) của một bộ phận giới trẻ Trung Quốc. Từ này có nghĩa là chỉ làm những gì tối thiểu để sống qua ngày và không phấn đấu vì điều gì khác ngoài những gì cần thiết để tồn tại. Nhiều người coi đó là cách để họ phản ứng, chống đối lại văn hóa làm việc ngày càng độc hại và cạnh tranh quá mức của Trung Quốc, đặc biệt gây khó khăn đối với những người trẻ tuổi. Lý Thọ cũng nằm trong số đó. Căn lều của Lý Thọ với tấm biển cảnh báo cũng như bữa ăn được nấu trong ngày của anh. Ảnh: baidu Lý sinh ra trong gia đình có bố mẹ là công nhân, cả tuổi thơ gắn liền với ông bà ngoại. Từ nhỏ cậu đã sống nội tâm, không có bạn bè.Năm 18 tuổi, Lý thi trượt đại học. Do gia đình quá nghèo nên cậu xin học tại một trường cao đẳng dạy nghề gần nhà. Tốt nghiệp, Lý làm nhiều công việc khác nhau như thợ sửa xe, viết bài quảng cáo, tiếp thị xe hơi nhưng không được bao lâu.Khi làm tiếp thị xe hơi, công việc đòi hỏi phải tiếp khách thường xuyên. Lý vốn không biết uống rượu, cũng không muốn bị ép uống nên nhiều lần từ chối lời mời của khách hàng cũng như bỏ qua những cuộc điện thoại của cấp trên. Vì lý do này mà anh xung đột với lãnh đạo rồi bị cho nghỉ...

[pyth1a]

Five years ago, Luo Huazhong discovered that he enjoyed doing nothing. He quit his job as a factory worker in China, biked 1,300 miles from Sichuan Province to Tibet and decided he could get by on odd jobs and $60 a month from his savings. He called his new lifestyle “lying flat.”

“I have been chilling,” Mr. Luo, 31, wrote in a blog post in April, describing his way of life. “I don’t feel like there’s anything wrong.”

He titled his post “Lying Flat Is Justice,” attaching a photo of himself lying on his bed in a dark room with the curtains drawn. Before long, the post was being celebrated by Chinese millennials as an anti-consumerist manifesto. “Lying flat” went viral and has since become a broader statement about Chinese society.

A generation ago, the route to success in China was to work hard, get married and have children. The country’s authoritarianism was seen as a fair trade-off as millions were lifted out of poverty. But with employees working longer hours and housing prices rising faster than incomes, many young Chinese fear they will be the first generation not to do better than their parents.

They are now defying the country’s long-held prosperity narrative by refusing to participate in it.

Mr. Luo’s blog post was removed by censors, who saw it as an affront to Beijing’s economic ambitions. Mentions of “lying flat” — tangping, as it’s known in Mandarin — are heavily restricted on the Chinese internet. An official counternarrative has also emerged, encouraging young people to work hard for the sake of the country’s future.

“After working for so long, I just felt numb, like a machine,” Mr. Luo said in an interview. “And so I resigned.”

To lie flat means to forgo marriage, not have children, stay unemployed and eschew material wants such as a house or a car. It is the opposite of what China’s leaders have asked of their people. But that didn’t bother Leon Ding.

Mr. Ding, 22, has been lying flat for almost three months and thinks of the act as “silent resistance.” He dropped out of a university in his final year in March because he didn’t like the computer science major his parents had chosen for him.

After leaving school, Mr. Ding used his savings to rent a room in Shenzhen. He tried to find a regular office job but realized that most positions required him to work long hours. “I want a stable job that allows me to have my own time to relax, but where can I find it?” he said.

Mr. Ding thinks young people should work hard for what they love, but not “996” — 9 a.m. to 9 p.m., six days a week — as many employers in China expect. Frustrated with the job search, he decided that “lying flat” was the way to go.

“To be honest, it feels really comfortable,” he said. “I don’t want to be too hard on myself.”

To make ends meet, Mr. Ding gets paid to play video games and has minimized his spending by doing things like cutting out his favorite bubble tea. Asked about his long-term plans, he said: “Come back and ask me in six months. I only plan for six months.”

While plenty of Chinese millennials continue to adhere to the country’s traditional work ethic, “lying flat” reflects both a nascent counterculture movement and a backlash against China’s hypercompetitive work environment.

Xiang Biao, a professor of social anthropology at Oxford University who focuses on Chinese society, called tangping culture a turning point for China. “Young people feel a kind of pressure that they cannot explain and they feel that promises were broken,” he said. “People realize that material betterment is no longer the single most important source of meaning in life.”

The ruling Communist Party, wary of any form of social instability, has targeted the “lying flat” idea as a threat to stability in China. Censors have deleted a tangping group with more than 9,000 members on Douban, a popular internet forum. The authorities also barred posts on another tangping forum with more than 200,000 members.

In May, China’s internet regulator ordered online platforms to “strictly restrict” new posts on tangping, according to a directive obtained by The New York Times. A second directive required e-commerce platforms to stop selling clothes, phone cases and other merchandise branded with “tangping.”

The state news media has called tangping “shameful,” and a newspaper warned against “lying flat before getting rich.” Yu Minhong, a prominent billionaire, urged young people not to lie down, because “otherwise who can we rely on for the future of our country?”

Mr. Luo decided to write about tangping after he saw people heatedly discussing China’s latest census results in April and calls for the country to address a looming demographic crisis by having more babies.

He described his original “lying flat” blog post as “an inner monologue from a man living at the bottom of the society.”

“Those people who say lying down is shameful are shameless,” he said. “I have the right to choose a slow lifestyle. I didn’t do anything destructive to society. Do we have to work 12 hours a day in a sweatshop, and is that justice?”

Mr. Luo was born in rural Jiande County, in eastern Zhejiang Province. In 2007, he dropped out of a vocational high school and started working in factories. One job involved working 12-hour shifts at a tire factory. By the end of the day, he had blisters all over his feet, he said.

In 2014, he found a job as a product inspector in a factory but didn’t like it. He quit after two years and took on the occasional acting gig to make ends meet. (In 2018, he played a corpse in a Chinese movie by, of course, lying flat.)

Today, he lives with his family and spends his days reading philosophy and news and working out. He said it was an ideal lifestyle, allowing him to live minimally and “think and express freely.” He encourages his followers, who call him “the Master of Lying Down,” to do the same.

After hearing about Mr. Luo’s tangping post on a Chinese podcast, Zhang Xinmin, 36, was inspired to write a song about it.

Mr. Zhang, a musician based in Wuhan, had quit his job in advertising five years ago to pursue his music, and the idea of lying flat resonated with him. He called his song “Tangping Is the Right Way.”

Mr. Zhang uploaded the song to his social media platforms on June 3, and within a day censors had deleted it from three websites. He was furious.

“Nowadays, only running forward is allowed, but not lying down,” he said. “It doesn’t make sense to me that they deleted this song.”

He eventually uploaded the song as a video on YouTube, which is blocked in China. The video shows him lying down on his sofa, casually strumming his guitar as he sings in a breezy voice:

Lying down is really good Lying down is wonderful Lying down is the right thing to do Lie down so you won’t fall anymore Lying down means never falling down.

[willowfoot]

looking at jobs and simultaneously losing the will to live

[como-un-tango]

Sentido y sentimientos...

Cuando me quito las ropas de las mentiras, de la hipocresía, de los miedos, de las dudas y de las falsas ilusiones no puedo evitar comprender que la vida vuelve a tener sentido.