China: young workers combat stress in relaxation centers

Dim lighting, sofa beds and relaxing sounds. During lunchtime, Xuan Yi, who lives under pressure like many young Chinese, finally manages to fall asleep at a relaxation institute in Beijing (China).

Xuan is one of the 300 million Chinese who suffer from insomnia, the product of a culture of high stress and pressure at work, especially in the country’s main overcrowded cities.

The young woman tried everything to sleep better, she explains to AFP; from psychological counseling to essential oils.

”I had a lot of pressure at work. I couldn’t go to bed before two or three in the morning and I had to get up at seven to start working,” she says.

”I also worked on weekends, and my sleep wasn’t very good for a long time.”

But when the curtains are drawn and the singing bowls begin to hum in healer Li Yan’s study, she can finally sleep.

– Charge batteries –

To the sound of a gong and a rain stick, Xuan and the other participants enter a sweet lethargy.

After fifty minutes, they wake up after what they claim is the best sleep they have had in years, at a price of 180 yuan ($25). “Dozens of people with tense minds go to bed together and want to give their brains a short break,” Li explains to AFP.

”It’s like charging your cell phone battery from 3% to 100%.”

“Pressure,” “anxiety,” and “insomnia” are the words Li hears most often.

He says he often receives calls from clients desperate to get some rest.

“They tell me: ‘I need to come right away, in half an hour, I’m very tired,’” says Li Yan.

Many work in the competitive Chinese industry of information technologies, a sector in which the rate of people with depression and anxiety is among the highest in the country, according to a national health report.

Li calls his sessions “tangping concerts,” the name of an expression that has become popular in China in recent years.

Literally, it means “lie down on your back,” but it can also be translated as “renunciation”: giving up a big career or money to focus on a simple life.

– Happiness, “a luxury good” –

Surrounded by office buildings in the heart of Beijing, Li’s studio offers Schedules tailored to the busy routines of young workers.

According to him, demand has grown since the COVID-19 pandemic, which, according to the World Health Organization (WHO), it caused a 25% increase in cases of depression and anxiety worldwide in its first year.

”Many emotions and problems have come to the surface and people need to deal with themselves,” Li notes.

And in a country where many turn to video games or shopping to unwind, he says, “relaxation and happiness seem to be a luxury good.”

Xuan, for her part, is willing to pay to sleep well. “If I don’t pay for these relaxation sessions, I might have to pay a doctor,” she says.