In October 2014, the "Survey Report on China's Post-90s Youth" described the "post-90s" group as follows: The "post-90s" in contemporary China are the most vivid and vital group in society. They like change, their individuality, they are not confined to stereotypes, they hate to be constrained, they grew up in China, where the economy is growing rapidly and the society is changing rapidly.
This year, the LIZHI Newsroom, which has been established for more than a year, also happened to usher in a group of "post-90s" graduates. We want to know how the "post-90s" peers in the neighborhood and everywhere describe themselves and how they live their "self" lives? So, we made a bold 10-year covenant with a group of ordinary "post-90s", hoping to tell the story of a young generation with 10 consecutive years of follow-up interviews.
The gears of fate began to turn.
In 2023, LIZHI News will celebrate its 10th anniversary, and the ten-year covenant will also usher in the final closing moment. In the past ten years, we have been in a changing world, witnessing the transformation of tradition, the renewal of information channels, and how the Internet has changed and integrated into every inch of our lives. But we have always kept our promises, connecting each other's real lives with interviews, and recording individual growth with writing.
When we look back today, we will see that in this precious time scale, the confusion, thinking, struggle and experience of each of us have become the footnotes of this era, depicting the most vivid and vital development and changes of this society.
Stand at the fork in the road of choice
Ten years ago, in 2014, the number of college graduates in the country exceeded 7 million for the first time, and the first batch of "post-90s" began to enter the workplace after graduating from university.
Li Guofang and Zhou Ya, who graduated from Nankai University, did not feel too much pressure to find a job. Before graduation, Li Guofang took the national examination and entered the interview of Guangzhou National Taxation with the second place in the written examination. But he eventually gave up the interview and chose to join Phoenix.com to become an editor. Zhou Ya entered Jiangsu Radio and Television as a network editor as soon as he graduated, and in his impression, when he first graduated, it was normal for his classmates to hold two or three offers in their hands, "Everyone feels that their future has infinite possibilities." ”
Perhaps it was with the longing for this infinite possibility that at the end of 2014, Zhou Ya began to consider moving to Beijing, so that he could reunite with his girlfriend who had been in a long-distance relationship for several years in Beijing. Li Guofang resigned from Beijing in July 2014 and went south to Shenzhen to start a business with friends and set up a joke ** "Laugh at your sister". The two began a career "breakout" that was regarded as a "toss" by their parents. After the failure of his first entrepreneurial project, Li Guofang traveled to Beijing and Shenzhen, and joined Tencent in 2015. At that time, Tencent was like a day, with a total revenue of more than 100 billion yuan in 2015 and an average daily profit of nearly 80 million yuan, creating a milestone in its own development history. It wasn't until 2019 that Li Guofang resigned from his job at Tencent to start a new round of entrepreneurship. Zhou Ya of "North Drift" has also changed several jobs, from the operation of a start-up, an investigative reporter for news and information apps to the public relations of a leading recruitment company, and he has switched from a journalist to the embrace of the Internet.
A similar transformation was also completed by Yi Zoya. At the end of 2014, Yi Zhuoya, who is still a student majoring in broadcasting and hosting at Hunan University of Mass Media, won the first prize in the first "Most Beautiful Experiencer" competition hosted by Lizhi.com, and the TV station in her hometown also threw an "olive branch" to her. After working as a TV anchor for a while, she was determined to go out with a yearning for a bigger world in her heart. From Miluo to Nanjing to Shenzhen, from real estate ** to e-commerce**, Internet planning to content operation of Internet manufacturers, Yi Zhuoya, who changed 7 jobs, worked all the way and finally gained a firm foothold in a foreign land.
In 2018, Yi Zhuoya was interviewed.
The encounter with Li Sidani also began on the recording site. The "post-90s" female singer who entered the entertainment industry in 2011 because of her participation in "Happy Girl" has long been famous. In 2014, Li Sidani participated in Jiangsu Satellite TV's variety show "In the Mood for Love Season 2" as a resident guest, and our "ten-year appointment" with her began. In 2016, Li Sidani returned to Jiangsu Satellite TV again to participate in the ** variety show "Heroes of the World", for her, it was an important life node that "let me really find the state of being myself on **". In 2020, 30-year-old Li Sidani opened a new page in her life through the variety show "Sister Riding the Wind and Waves". This young girl, who initially held that "more people can ask her to teach dance lessons on TV", has become more and more calm and mature under the tempering of time.
Lee Si Dani. Compared with his peers, Zhong Cheng's life is smooth and stable. After graduating from the School of Journalism of Chinese University in 2014, he joined the China Youth Daily newspaper as an editor and commentator for the ** section "Youth Topics". After working for a year, he got a Beijing hukou and registered his marriage with his girlfriend. After four years of work, he was rated as an intermediate title, and also won the third prize of the China News Award for Text Commentary. He admits that he has missed some "opportunities of the times", but he also does not look down on those who are "good at grasping the pulse of the times": "Everyone has a different personality, and I may spend more time making my own value judgments".
Zhong Cheng travels in Karajun, Xinjiang.
Nie Qi is another person who chooses to "stick to the status quo". Since she stood out from Jiangsu Satellite TV's host selection competition in 2012, Nie Qi has been working as a female anchor on Jiangsu Radio and Television City Channel. CCTV has sent her many audition invitations, but she has declined them. Nie Qi said that he was a stubborn person who missed the old days, and once he got used to a city, it was difficult to change. This "Hunan girl" regards Nanjing as her second hometown and is unwilling to go to a bigger city to work alone.
Nie Qi. Looking back on the past ten years, the development of various industries has experienced a new cycle, and the 10 "post-90s" we selected have also ushered in a turning point of fate in the tide of the times. Zhang Ailing once said, "For people after the age of 30, ten or eight years is just a matter of seams, while for young people, three or five years can be a lifetime." The first batch of "post-90s" is about to enter the "35 years old". At the end of 2023, Zhou Ya suffered layoffs. When he left, the previous leader teased him: "Let's take another civil service exam, while the age has not yet passed." "But about the future, he hasn't thought about it yet.
Thirty and standing
In 2014, when we first opened the interview of "The Decade of the Post-90s", Liu He, as the first batch of "Post-90s", had just turned 25 years old. This young man from Qimiao Village, Qishan Town, Pei County, Jiangsu Province, entered the society as early as the age of fifteen after graduating from junior high school and worked everywhere. At the age of 19, he met his future wife in a factory, then married early and had two daughters. From the first year of our interview, Liu He had a firm dream - to buy a house in the county. In 2017, the couple finally bought a 123-square-meter rough house in Peixian County, so that their daughter could successfully enroll in the county. For the sake of a better life for his family, Liu He changed careers and ran long distances and successfully obtained an A2 driver's license. The changes in his life have become smaller, and his wish has become more practical, "I must give the best to my family and spend more time with them." ”
Liu He. Like Liu, most of the interviewees mentioned buying a house in their interviews over the past decade. But few people are like Zhou Ya, who have suffered huge psychological pressure in order to buy a house. In 2016, Zhou Ya, whose work in Beijing gradually stabilized, bought a house in Chengdu. Two years later, with the blessing of Beijing's property market policy, Zhou Ya decided to sell his house in Chengdu and buy a second-hand house in Fangshan instead. But things didn't go as smoothly as he expected, and for a while, he had to pay off his mortgage in Chengdu and the down payment in Beijing, borrowing a lot of money. That year, when we went to interview him, Fang Shan's new home had not yet had time to add furniture, so he had to sit on his suitcase for the interview. Soon, however, the lucrative salary at work allowed him to pay off his loan and live a small life that was enough to afford. Zhou Ya, who has experienced the ups and downs of life, wishes to live a more peaceful life in the future.
Zhou Ya and his wife took a photo with the two dogs at home**.
For the younger Xu Feng and Kangkang, what kind of job to choose and love and marriage is a "standing" problem that has plagued them.
In 2020, he returned to Kangkang in Nanjing.
Born in 1997, Kang Kang came to Nanjing from his hometown of Anhui after graduating from junior high school and entered the hairdressing industry by mistake. In his early years, he loved to dye a tuft of his hair in a bright color, "It's okay to be called Kill Matt". Although the childishness on his face has not been removed, he has a preliminary imagination of his future. In 2018, he finally grew from an assistant who only washed his hair to a barber, but the accumulation of customer complaints made him hesitate to love the industry. In 2019, he chose to leave Shanghai, dye his hair back black, and work in an electronics factory. But the same life could not solve his real misery. In 2020, the master's first call summoned him back to Nanjing and returned to the hairdressing industry. The short life of "Shanghai drifting" seems to have made him think more clearly, and it has also brought him sweet love. This year, he went to visit his girlfriend's parents and also planned to put marriage on the agenda.
In 2021, Xu Feng returned to Hefei from Shanghai.
Xu Feng, also from Anhui, ended his "Shanghai drifting" life in 2021. Prior to this, he had been in Shanghai for four years, and the repetitive life of being unable to settle in a foreign city made him finally choose to return to his hometown. After returning to Hefei, Shu Xin pushed him forward. He cleared his long-standing obsession with becoming a teacher and devoted himself to continuing to improve his work. He yearns for the most ordinary family life, and also looks forward to his early blossoming in marriage and love, "I just want to be a very ordinary person, and I want the family to be happy." ”
The joke and gift of fate
Xu Feng's simple wish also comes from the impermanence of fate he faces.
In the first year of our interview with Xu Feng, he had just experienced the great grief of his father's death and his mother's injury while working abroad. At the beginning of the semester, he briefly fell into a slump, but fortunately, with the guidance of his classmates and elders, he slowly came out of his sadness.
At the beginning of 2016, Xu Feng, who was preparing for the graduate examination, suddenly fell seriously ill, and the doctor issued him a critical illness notice. During this period, he studied on his own while ** and successfully passed the final exam. After 3 months, the condition miraculously improved. The most memorable thing for him was the care of his roommates, and the three roommates who learned the news of Xu Feng's illness rushed to Hefei from Wuxi and Nanjing as soon as possible. When the three of them appeared in the ward, Xu Feng couldn't cry. This friendship in college continues to this day, Xu Feng said, everyone chatting together is an indispensable ritual for the Chinese New Year every year.
experienced the difference between life and death, and Li Guofang. In March 2018, Li Guofang was supposed to have a minor operation to remove the cyst behind his cheek, but the doctor highly suspected that it was a malignant tumor. With the help of the company, he was admitted to Guangzhou Zhongshan Hospital, and went through a long ** from diagnosis to surgery to radiotherapy. After being discharged from the hospital, he planned a one-and-a-half-month recovery adjustment period for himself, and it was also during this blank period that he began to think deeply about the meaning of life.
He wrote in the circle of friends, "The first review got the conclusion of the suspected **, at that moment I decided to do something, if the time is really short, I have to leave something in this world." He used his spare time to make a public welfare single young man to make friends*** to help his colleagues find a partner. In fact, in previous interviews, he has said many times that he doesn't like blind dates, but he has become an "Internet matchmaker" for strangers around him and more. "I just saw this need and used it as a starting point to do something meaningful. He said.
Li Guofang returned to his alma mater to give a speech.
Later, this platform, which was originally just a hobby, became his main business. Looking back on the past decade, Li Guofang sees this as his most rewarding thing: the product is valuable to users and has been recognized by millions of users. At the end of this year, the owner of the blind date platform who has been single for many years got married, and he sees this as the beginning of a new stage in his life, "It has been ten years since I graduated, and this is the first time my life identity has changed." ”
And so on for ten years
At the beginning of this ten-year interview, we tried to record the stories of 11 "post-90s", but the next year, the courier brother Yang Hubei lost contact with us in the change of ** number, and the British student also refused to be interviewed because of family changes. In 2018, we reached out to Derpy Xin, the "Alipay Koi", to join us for an interview, but then her schedule became increasingly busy and she politely declined our invitation amid the online controversy. We connect with people through the Internet, and because the Internet disconnects with people, what we finally persist in is real interviews, listening and communication.
Web page of the 2014 Interview Collection.
Looking back at the interviews of the past decade, we can almost get a glimpse of the history of the changes in online pop culture. In 2014, "Little Apple" and "My Skateboarding Shoes" were the most popular pop tracks at the time, and the Korean drama "My Love from the Star" once set off a wave of Hallyu craze. In 2015, "Langya Bang" and "The Legend of Miyue" were popular film and television dramas that were mentioned many times by interviewees. In 2016, swimmer Fu Yuanhui went out of the circle because of her true temperament in the post-competition interview at the Rio Olympics, and "the power of the wilderness" also became a popular buzzword. In 2017, the mobile games "PlayerUnknown's Battlegrounds" and "Glory of Kings" became popular, and Yang Chaoyue, who attracted attention in the women's group talent show in 2018, became a name often mentioned in people's mouths. Most of these buzzwords are short-lived and quickly faded away, only to be replaced by new ones.
On the contrary, digital lifestyles such as WeChat payment, ride-hailing apps, and bike-sharing that are frequently mentioned by respondents have entered our lives for a longer time, and these things that were once regarded as "new things that have the greatest impact on life" have now become a habit. It has only been ten years since WeChat Pay was born in 2013.
The social environment under the influence of "Internet+" has also changed the form of our reporting. In the first three years of the interview, we chose to record our conversations with the interviewees in the first draft. In December 2016, the number of LIZHI News clients exceeded 10 million, and we also thought about how to make the records more vivid, vivid and beautiful. Since then, our annual record has been added to the ** shooting, which captures the moments and emotions that are scattered beyond our gaze. These records have also been published in more and wider places, and we hope that more people of the same age will find a trace of resonance in these "post-90s" in these neighborhoods and everywhere.
In Zhong Cheng's view, the post-90s generation is not the "rebellious" image in the first report, on the contrary, the post-90s generation is a very "pragmatic" generation, they have personally experienced the improvement of people's living standards and the surging tide of national social development. In this ten-year plan, which initially seemed a little "whimsical", our group of "post-90s" also grew up, changed and broke through in the tide of the times full of unknowns and changes along with the interviewees.
Today, ten years later, the first batch of "00" generations are also 24 years old, and we bless them and ourselves to continue to write our own generational stories in the next ten years.
Text: Litchi News reporter Gu Huimin interviewed Litchi News reporter Meng XuGu HuiminLee AiFang WenhaoHuang Yizhou, Liu Man, Zhang Zijun, Design: He Junwei, Wu Qian, Intern: Liu Xiaohong.