The thriving sinking market can't save the bored young people in the town
Author | Hu Buxi
Edit | Liu Yiran
The young people of the small town save themselves in the spiritual world
Coffee is the social password of Luo Yi's life in the county.
To see who has the habit of drinking coffee as the standard, quietly observe who is the same kind of people in the same system who can talk.
As one of the first batch of young people to return to a small town during the epidemic, her Shanghai life tone is a bit unusual when she returns to Henan County.
However, in the past year, as Starbucks sank into the county market and Mixue Bingcheng counterattacked the first-tier cities, Luo Yi was surprised to find that in his hometown of only 200,000 people, young people in small towns who were in line with the first-line consumption habits suddenly sprung up like mushrooms after a rain, and the number was far greater than he imagined.
It's just that the dual consumption structure of urban and rural areas has not disappeared because of the sinking business giants. Luckin and Starbucks can stimulate the tongues of young people in small towns, but they can't salvage the boredom of life.
At the beginning of the New Year, in Luo Yi's circle of friends, friends from Beijing, Shanghai and Guangzhou were skiing, watching exhibitions, and participating in community activities, but the rich and idle colleagues in the county were tired of the Internet celebrity milk tea shop, and only mahjong parlors, food stalls and KTV were left in the social space.
Empty city study on a weekday (photo courtesy of the interviewee)
There is nowhere to spend the New Year, which is becoming the biggest New Year's worry for young people in small towns. The wallets of the young people in the small town are bulging, but how can the spiritual entertainment of the young people in the small town be placed?
Small-town youth are forced to have low desires
After returning to his hometown from Shanghai, Luo Yi unexpectedly found that his income had been cut in half, but he had saved money without effort.
She crossed her fingers to calculate the account for me: "When I was in Shanghai, I earned 10,000 yuan and spent 10,000 yuan, and I wanted to take it home, but I worked in the administrative unit of the county, ate in the canteen of the unit, had a provident fund for the mortgage, and the day's expenses were a cup of coffee in the morning and a cup of milk tea in the afternoon." ”
Except for Luckin, Cudi, and Michelle Bingcheng, no one will worry about her money bag, "The restaurants here start to close at half past seven in the evening, except for bars and KTV, there is no nightlife at all." There was no choice to spend, so Luo Yi naturally saved money.
In Shanghai, "Anna" dresses up every day, carrying a light luxury bag of two or three thousand at every turn, which can be regarded as elegant, and when they return to the county, the "Cuihua" who has restored their simple appearance is delicate enough to wipe their lipstick. The anxiety about her appearance disappeared, and her desire to shop also decreased, and Luo Yi no longer had the idea of treating herself, and she didn't even remember the last time she bought lipstick.
The savings rate of young people in small towns is high, and their spending power is naturally not low. The "2022 Research on Youth Consumption Trends in the County Market" found that the median annual household income in the county is around 90,000 yuan, and half of the families have a house and a car. Life is worry-free, there is no 996, and the average working time is only 7.2 hours.
Luoyi's county seat (photo provided by the interviewee)
Compared with Shanghai, the time in the county seat seems to have been adjusted to 0.5 times the speed. The work in the system is idle and stable, there is almost no overtime, Luo Yi returns home, has a lot of time for himself, can read books and movies, write Xiaohongshu notes, and record his observations in the county.
In his hometown, Luo Yi felt like a stranger. She has lived in the big city for ten years, and the only few friends are out of town, and when she returns home, her social circle is basically limited to relatives at home and a few colleagues in the unit, they have all formed their own families, have children, and basically have no common topics.
Once chatted, a colleague asked her what entertainment she had, Luo Yi casually replied that she was reading, the colleague was incredible, looking at her and smiling, the office was full of happy air, and everyone didn't believe that reading could be a kind of entertainment.
Luo Yi needed a spiritual space, and in big cities, museums, independent bookstores and coffee shops can generally carry these needs, but Luo Yi walked around the county and found that there was no independent bookstore here. In order to support the construction of spiritual civilization, the government led the construction of the city study, Luo Yi was curious to go there several times, and found that most of the books here were low-quality chicken soup for the soul or success studies, and there were not many valuable classic books.
City Study Room (Photo provided by the interviewee)
Parents don't read books themselves, but they don't delay their chicken babies. On weekends, parents send their children to study and listen to lectures, so it is lively and lively on weekends. Luo Yi went a few times, but he didn't go anymore because he was noisy.
Luo Yi's daily pastime is to read e-books at home and chat with friends from other places on the Internet. Sometimes, if she hears that there is an exhibition in a nearby big city, she will drive two hours on holidays and rush over to see it as a relaxation.
In fact, it is not only returning young people like Luo Yi who have nowhere to go, but also young people in native towns who have long lost interest in the same old-fashioned entertainment activities back and forth.
According to the survey of the "2020 White Paper on the Deconstruction of the Consumption Characteristics of "Small Town Youth", the post-90s and 95s are more fond of leisure shopping and novel experience formats. Luo Yi's husband, a young man from a native town, doesn't know how to play mahjong, and hates KTV, a place where the society is afraid of picking his feet, and would rather stay at home and play "League of Legends" most of the time.
The spiritual entertainment that the county town cannot accommodate has squeezed the youth of the small town into the line. Offline cannot meet the spiritual needs of young people in small towns, and playing games and watching TV series online has become a way for young people in small towns to relax after work.
Like Luo Yi's husband, it is very common for young people in small towns who prefer online games. Fighting games such as "Dungeons and Warriors", "Glory of Kings" and "Peace Elite" can be played online with familiar friends, and are the most popular around Luo Yi. And women like Luo Yi who are not interested in fighting games, the main way of leisure and entertainment is to watch film and television dramas, chase variety shows, and recently in order to chase "Flowers and Boys", Luo Yi deliberately downloaded Mango TV.
A book, a cup of coffee, is Luo Yi's way of resting
With nowhere else to go, the two of them lived an early retirement. Friends in Beijing, Shanghai and Guangzhou envy Luo Yi's quiet years in the small city, but as everyone knows, Luo Yi is also secretly envious of their check-in experience in the circle of friends.
The only time she wasn't tempted was when a friend went to the temple to take pictures and check in, after all, she was in the county, and she had already learned to be pure-hearted and have few desires.
Question, understand, and learn to be fun
Don't the young people in the county have the need for a spiritual life? The answer is quite the opposite.
Luo Yi found that the people here showed an urgent desire for this. The most prominent performance is that he loves to join in the fun.
The parks in every county are a place where the dragon and the tiger are hidden. When Luo Yi came back to visit the park, he often saw a group of people gathered together, gathered around to watch the excitement, driven by curiosity, Luo Yi would also stretch his neck and look over. In the center of attention, it is often a middle-aged and elderly person who is either writing calligraphy or doing tai chi, but no matter what he does, he will immediately attract everyone's attention.
In recent years, there has been an increasing number of self-media entrepreneurs in Luo Yi's county, they are slash youths in a small town, working during the day, going to the park to play the guitar live at night, and singing in the evening breeze. Luo Yi commented that the level is improvised, and there may not be anyone in the second-tier cities, but in the eyes of people in small towns, this is already the ultimate romance.
Luoyi's county town, occasionally romantic (photo provided by the interviewee)
In order to attract tourists, the county seat of Luoyi has also hosted music festivals and camping festivals. Different from those concerts that require security to maintain order, the county music festival is more like self-entertainment, and you can't afford to hire decent singers, self-media bloggers and live broadcast anchors are the brightest stars on stage.
The coffee seats are not enough, which does not affect the enthusiasm of the locals, and they have brought their children to join in the fun, and they do not forget to take photos and record them, leaving a memory. The figures are crowded, and the turbulent is the yearning of the county people for poetry, romance and beauty.
Luo Yi's experience is not unique to China's county seats: in the more economically affluent Cangnan county of Wenzhou, Mi Lan, a young designer who returned from Hangzhou, felt the excitement of the county town at rural markets and shopping mall festivals.
The bazaar in Cangnan (photo provided by the interviewee)
Unlike the county town of Henan where Luo Yi is located, Cangnan is one of the top 100 counties in the country, adjacent to Fuding, Fujian Province in the southwest, and 81 kilometers away from Wenzhou.
When she first returned to the county seat, Mi Lan was puzzled for a while, where did the young people in Cangnan go? It was not until she was celebrating temple fairs and shopping malls in the countryside that she found that her county seat was not deserted.
The elderly and children are the traffic passwords for the county's activities. The lively county temple fairs often start with opera, and a few children's favorite games can attract a large number of audiences.
"It feels like they don't put a lot of thought into the creative activities. After Mi Lan made up a few times, she was disappointed and helpless. After all, once they get married, the identity of young people in small towns completely gives way to their fathers or mothers, even if they are not interested, as long as there are parent-child activities, they will be present.
Fun market activities that always attract young people (Photo courtesy of the interviewee)
"As long as there is something new here, they will definitely go to the show. If there is any big mall nearby, it must have been packed with people on the opening day. "Fresh cultural and recreational activities can immediately form a dimensionality reduction blow in the county. For example, the iron flower activity in the shopping mall market has been unanimously welcomed by everyone in this New Year.
Luo Yi originally didn't understand these people who loved to join in the fun, but after returning to the county to live for three years, the poor and limited entertainment venues made her understand the desires of the county people.
They are in dire need of fresh and interesting cultural and recreational activities to stir up ripples in their ordinary lives. Gradually, Luo Yi also learned to join in the fun, and in the summer, she camped on the streets, drank beer, and "pretended" to be in Hawaii.
The county seat is also calm (photo provided by the interviewee)
Every time I look at it, every time I look at it, I can't suppress the curiosity of yearning for exploration. Luo Yi is sometimes afraid that if he has been in the county for a long time, will one day he lose this desire and become a person who will not look out.
The county bookstore that can't survive, and the young people in the small town who have nowhere to have fun
Although the young people of the small town have a strong thirst for spiritual entertainment, opening an independent bookstore in the county town is tantamount to killing themselves.
Whether it is the Shieryue Bookstore in Badong County, Enshi, Hubei Province, in the central region, or the bookstore without bookstores in Huidong County, Guangdong, a developed coastal area, they have all chosen the same business model to maintain their stores with stores.
The owner of the shop can barely break even by making and selling custom-made cakes, which covers the daily costs of running the bookstore, and no bookstore can also rely on the business of another craft beer shop to support another small shop.
When I asked why, the owner asked me, "Do you think the people in the county need a bookstore that sells books?"
To a certain extent, the Internet has smoothed the gap between the county and the first- and second-tier cities, and people in the county can also have access to classic books.
Just like Luo Yi, who loves to read, she will choose to read e-books or shop online. Therefore, Ah Ba hopes to make his bookstore an offline social space in the county, where young people in small towns who cannot be on the same frequency as their friends can come here to watch movies and discuss topics of interest.
Similar movie-watching and exhibition activities will also be held at Shi Eryue Bookstore, but the number of customers attracted is relatively limited, after all, the bookstore space is relatively quiet, and young people in small towns like to smoke and chat, so it is naturally difficult to sit here.
For Mi Lan, she hopes to be able to connect with first-tier cities and enjoy a more creative experience. "When I just return to the county from a first- or second-tier city, there will be a big gap. Although Wenzhou's economy is relatively developed, it is really a bit monotonous in terms of entertainment activities. I'm actually a person who loves to join in the fun, and I hope that during the festival, there will be some rituals, such as going to the hot springs and skiing, although there are hot springs and ski resorts near Cangnan, but it takes two hours to drive over, and the experience is not as good as when I was in Hangzhou. ”
What kind of social space do small-town youth need? The answer is that they should neither be high nor too small.
Dusk in Cangnan County (interviewee's content)
Xu Hong, a young man from Liupanshui, Guizhou, hopes that the offline space can provide richer experience activities in addition to consumption.
"My county seat can be completed in twenty minutes. The bookstore has closed down, and the only place to play is the coffee shop. ”
Xu Hong's options for making friends in the county are also very limited, except for classmates, friends are colleagues, or introduced by their respective friends, but it is not easy to find people with similar interests.
In her vision, the county needs such an art space, which is a place of consumption during the day, but at night, it is a collection of social experience spaces where people can cultivate their interests, such as learning flower art, tea art, or making friends and entertainment.
But in the county seat, can such a space survive? Can Luo Yi, Mi Lan, and Xu Hong really represent the most real needs of young people in small towns?
In fact, no matter how small an individual is, he can find his own collective in the county, and the community activities that are full every month are the best proof of this.
As a resource-exhausted city with a population of 1.78 million, Fuxin, even though there are not many young people, the online community activities of the Onyx Culture Museum are still hard to find.
Young people in the county who have money and leisure are more enthusiastic about "learning something together after work" activities. As far as the experience activities in January are concerned, they include New Year's freetalk, red wine tasting, glory of kings exchange, butterfly specimen making, astronomical observation activities, etc., and the cost of each activity only ranges from 10 to 30 yuan.
Offline experience classes, a new social platform for young people in small towns
Originally, the staff told me that it was okay to book three to five days in advance, but just two days after the event was released, the seats were already booked.
This phenomenon is in interesting contrast to the recent rise of "night school fever" in first- and second-tier cities, and I also perceive the urgent desire of young people in small towns for offline socialization and experience. Luo Yi, Mi Lan, Xu Hong, their desires are not niche, but because they are always outside the fourth line, they seem a little weak.
For young people born in small towns, it has always been a difficult problem to keep their spirits full and return to their hometowns to properly settle their bodies.
epilogue
In the past two years, young people like Luo Yi, Mi Lan, and Xu Hong have returned to small towns to account for a large proportion of the total number of people in the county.
According to Tencent's 2019 Research Report on New Youths in Small Towns, 63% of young people in small towns have lived in first- and second-tier cities, and they have been exposed to and accustomed to the consumption habits and entertainment methods of high-tier cities.
As Xu Hong said, she likes the small county town in her hometown, where the summer is only 19 °C, and the house price is three or four thousand square meters. But for her in her twenties, the boredom of a pool of stagnant water forced her to want to return to the front line.
For many young people returning to small towns, a place where their spirit can live is a second hometown that can stop their wandering.
*Names have been changed
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