Here is a translation from some of the original posts made by Luo Huazhong (the Kind traveler).
His rejection of modern life & the way he chooses to live his life struck a chord with some people in china, so much so that he seems to have been banned from posting & mention of Tang Ping is also not allowed.
Its an interesting read!
All true. It definitely feels like there’s at least a shred of schadenfreude driving the behavior, but its hard to be sure. I read this piece last night in case you’re interested in learning more:
https://www.brookings.edu/articles/the-lying-flat-movement-standing-in-the-way-of-chinas-innovation-drive/
It doesn’t estimate exactly how large this movement is (which is the main thing I was hoping to learn), but it’s apparently at least large enough to garner state-sponsored propaganda against it.
Oh wow. I read a couple little blurbs about it when I first read this post, but I had no idea that the government had responded to it.
Makes me think the movement is much more pervasive than the articles I read made it out to be.
There’s a Wikipedia page about it, looks like it’s the top searched meme on sogou.
https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Tang_ping
That post that we read, apparently had a discussion group around it with $10,000 followers, looks like the CCP shut it down.
There are Tang ping t-shirts.
Survey on Weibo had 144000 user saying they’d like to embrace the movement.