Discussion keeps the world turning.
This is Roundtable.
What makes a city finally feel like yours?
A steady paycheck, a door that only you can unlock or something simpler like having a go-to person for bad days and good news?
A new survey asked young Chinese people exactly that question, and the answers turned out to be less about square footage and more about the weight of human connection.
But when millions are uprooting their lives for degrees and careers, building those bonds is often the hardest part of the move.
So what is it then that makes certain places easier to call home than others?
Coming to you from our studios in Beijing, this is Roundtable.
I'm Steve.
Thanks very much for being with us today.
And for the show, I'm with Fei-Fei and Yushan.
What makes you feel that you truly belong in a city?
Is it finally finding a stable job, having a place to call your own, or maybe simply knowing that there are people there that you can count on?
A new survey has explored how young people in China think about belonging, revealing that feeling at home is much more than just where you live.
But as more people move to new cities for work and study, building a life and especially building meaningful connections can be easier said than done.
So today we're talking about this.
What turns a city into a home and what makes some places easier to put down roots than others?
You know, moving to a new city can obviously be a really exciting thing.
We've all done it, right?
We know the excitement that comes with it, but it can also be a little bit scary, a little bit intimidating as well.
China Youth Daily, I want to start here.
They conducted a survey not so long ago, and what they did was they asked young people here in the country
How they were feeling about the new city that they moved to.
So let's start with the results of that.
Yeah.
Overall, the survey suggests that many young people are just adapting better than we thought they might adapt into that new environment.
Even though moving to a completely new city might
Come with a lot of uncertainty
Still most respondents felt their cities were welcoming and gave their sense of belonging a relatively high score and by high score that's like a big agreement on yep i i
Come here, I am here, and I want to settle down in here.
Yeah, with an average score of more than 8 out of a 10 score rating system.
So that's, I think, on some level very surprising to me even, not only because most of the young people thinking they're making the right choice, they're adapting better than what we might expected,
But also, you know, moving to a new city, that's a new chapter in your life that also means a lot of uncertainty.
But also that also means that maybe the cities are doing something right so that these young people feel that they are welcomed, that they don't have to go through a lot to adapt to a new life.
Well, somebody's doing something right because the score, 8 out of 10, you said, more specifically, 8.1 out of 10, which is really good.
And 91% said that their city is friendly to young people.
So if we take those statistics as an indicator... Mm-hmm.
Of what it's like for a young person to move to a new city, it's actually quite a pleasant experience.
Yeah, and especially now that more cities are paying attention to how not only we're attracting youth and young talents, but also how can we retain them
Meaning that we want them to stay here even after they first came here
So beyond just offering employment support and temporary housing and entrepreneurship programs many local governments are also just starting to think more broadly about what young people need in order to stay here and i think
One city that's kind of taking the lead here is Chengdu because I heard that lately there's a new name for Chengdu called prefrontal cortex friendly city.
They call it that.
What's that?
So prefrontal cortex is like the part of the brain that controls your emotion and kind of like how smart you are in general, like how you respond to things externally.
So by calling Chengdu the prefrontal cortex friendly city, actually it's giving this indication that the city, once you're in there, it makes you calm.
It makes you feel pleasant.
It calms you down and it feels like the pressure is less intense and life is arrangeable.
Have you guys been to Chengdu before?
Not yet.
A long time ago.
Yeah.
Yeah.
I can agree with this.
What did you call it?
The prefrontal cortex friendly.
We may want to workshop that title.
But yeah, very different vibe from Beijing.
How so?
Very relaxed
Um i think it feels more like a town than a city
Obviously it's huge and obviously it has a big population too but just the overall vibe of the city doesn't make it feel that big
It also doesn't feel that congested either
Um getting around i never found myself i only took a
A taxi a couple of times, but I never found myself in bad traffic.
And also the other thing that stood out was nothing's really that far away.
So it's a very bikeable city.
I loved it there.
It's very chill, very relaxed.
Everybody eats outside.
It's a city of food.
And I think those are great factors that could serve as, you know, something that could attract young people to want to work there.
Yeah, and they're also adding more parks and greenways, easier access to healthcare and public services, community space that's closer to home, and a vibrant mix of different types of entertainment like concerts, sporting events, and cultural festivals.
We see a lot of
Foreign travelers stopping by in cities down in southwestern China in Chongqing and Chengdu there, too, because not only because of the modernity, but also just how relaxed they feel.
And sometimes it's even unexpectedly chill and unexpectedly bilingual or just friendly to whomsoever is walking in it.
So for young people, having a good pay for your job, have a stable or a job of their dream is not the only thing they are looking for in city livings.
They're also looking for, for example, building a community of their own,
Like what Chengdu did with all the public services, community services that are close to home so that they can enjoy different sports.
But I feel like,
There are still challenges, isn't it?
It doesn't mean that for we have a city like Chengdu that are prefrontal cortex.
That is a term that we need to learn.
Yeah, but I think, you know, since we're on the topic of Chengdu, the shopping center there, it's called the Global Center.
Do you know what I'm talking about?
Not really.
Are you talking about the panda with the panda?
No, no, no, no, no.
When I went to the panda reserve, I spent 20 minutes just watching a panda eat bamboo, which brought me tremendous happiness.
But that's one example of, you know, incorporating nature into your city, which can be a big draw.
But I was talking before about the global center in Chengdu.
It's one of the largest single buildings on the planet.
I think it hits like some biggest record in Asia or something.
Yeah, maybe in the world.
At least it was at some point, I think.
Maybe not anymore.
It's 20 times the size of the Sydney Opera House.
Oh, imagine the legwork.
It's a shopping mall?
It's not just a shopping mall.
It's got the shopping mall.
It's got an IMAX cinema.
It's got an Olympic-sized skating rink.
Oh.
Which I dropped by to see.
It's got Paradise Island Water Park, which is a 5,000 meter squared artificial beach with the water included, plus your giant LED artificial sky overhead.
So we can do everything there.
It's huge.
It's absolutely huge.
You can enjoy the water park in the morning and then go skiing in the afternoon.
That's very futuristic.
Pretty cool.
It's a small town by itself.
Yes.
Yeah.
All right.
So Chengdu, I mean, we're just talking about one example here.
You know, when people move to a new place, there's a lot of things to take into consideration.
Housing costs would be one, of course.
Workplace competition.
Um would be another and i think just the general pressure of building a new life from scratch because for a lot of people a lot of young people when they move they're doing so kind of blind and what i mean by that is to say they don't know anybody perhaps in the city um so it's kind of like a leap of faith
In a certain sense anyway.
And for a lot of young people, like we mentioned, of course, it's nice to have greenways, to have parks, to have entertainment facilities, like big malls like the one you mentioned.
But still stability is the first thing is the foundation for everything those are the cherry cherries on the top but if we can't secure something like economic security or
Just a stable rent that wouldn't go up all of a sudden or wouldn't spike to something that we couldn't afford to, then yeah, I think it will all go down back to the economic side of things, how the foundation is solid in the first place.
Yeah, and foundation is a good word to use there because going back to the survey now, we'll look at another statistic.
One of the things that really helps people feel like they belong to a city is stable long-term housing.
Over 68% of respondents...
Said that that was the biggest contributor to their feeling like they belonged.
And then stable working income was second on the list at 62%.
That makes sense.
So economic security is the building block, the foundation block of, first of all, to have your belonging of the city.
And before anybody have that emotional attachment, I think it's very natural for people when they move to a new city to feel like somewhat detached.
From this city because you're brand new, you're a newcomer, you don't know anybody.
But if you have, for example, a long-term housing available, you have a stable job, at least
This is giving you the faith to start another step forward.
And I think that's why more than 60, close to 70% of people thinking that
Is the biggest contributor.
That said, though, I mean, not every city is created equal in China or any country around the world, right?
So naturally, some cities, I think, would be more attractive, perhaps, than others.
Yeah, I actually saw another ranking of Chinese cities when it comes to their appeals to young talents, especially those born after the year 1995.
We call them 九五后.
And last year, actually, the ranking found that the top 10 cities attracting people born after the year 1995, the top one is the city of Shenzhen.
And then followed by Beijing, Shanghai, Hangzhou, and Guangzhou.
You can see they're all bigger cities.
When we're talking about the first tier cities that are Shenzhen, Beijing, Shanghai, and Guangzhou, which are all
The top tier, within the top 10 ranking of the cities.
And the reason, for example, for Shenzhen to be the number one choice for these young people is actually the third year in a row that Shenzhen was elected, sort of the top choice for young people is precisely because
They have a very robust tech sector.
When we're talking about big tech companies, when we're talking about Huawei, BYD, they're all situated there.
Tencent also headquartered in the city of Shenzhen.
And that's why very naturally in 2025, Shenzhen attracted more than 400,000 new university graduates alone.
That being said, that doesn't mean that everybody born after the year 1995 are flocking into Shenzhen and Beijing and Shanghai.
Because when they're talking about the salary that these big tech companies are offering, the gap...
Between big cities like Shenzhen with a smaller city is actually narrowing.
And we are seeing more people, more young people are sort of going toward smaller cities like Wuhan and Hefei and Changsha.
Changsha, yeah, exactly.
Wuhan, for example, retained more than 2 million university graduates over the past eight years.
So that's evidence, isn't it?
So a long time ago, you'd have young people who were putting the tier one cities on their list, Beijing, Shanghai, Beijing.
You know, Shenzhen, for example, because that's where the money would be.
And that's what they would want to follow.
Naturally, you'd probably find that in a ton of cities around the world.
Now, though, you've got smaller cities.
And by the way, smaller is a relative term.
A small city in China is still the biggest city in Canada.
The smaller cities though, they're now competing.
I don't know if competing is the right word.
On some level, yes, sort of.
In some way, right?
They're attracting young graduates and they're able to keep them there too.
Just want to quickly follow up a little bit on the Shenzhen part because I was just looking at a survey from 20 years ago earlier today.
And that time at 2006, an official survey covering 5,000 university fresh graduate in 2006.
Also responded about at least 30% of them, which is the highest among all other choices, wants to go to Shenzhen.
It's still number one, even back in 20 years ago.
So I think it means that these cities, including Shenzhen, and yeah, big or small,
They're doing something right.
Like, for example, since we're talking about Shenzhen, it has expanded its free accommodation program for recent graduates, offering more than 10,000 temporary apartments in phases.
And while other cities are following suit, but we can also see that 20 years ago, it was also something tech related, like computing.
Like mechanic technology.
It was also those pillar industry locally in Shenzhen that attracted so many young graduates to want to go.
And today that tech grew to something AI related, EV related.
And still people go after these attraction or attractive points out of the same reason.
It's just generations change and people's pursuit for a good life never really change.
And even the industry there is not really changing much.
And here I want to really focus on Hefei, the city of Hefei, which I think on some level sort of copy part of Shenzhen's strategy when it comes to attracting young talents.
How so?
Because when it comes to Hefei, I think Hefei wasn't at least not a top 10 choice for young people in 2006.
Yeah, previously it wasn't on the chart.
Because it was situated in central part of China, which is not the best, the advanced developed regions of the country.
But over the past one or two decades,
Hefei start to build his own industries just like Shenzhen,
Like they are focusing on semiconductors, for example, they're also focusing on new energy vehicles, photovoltaics, and they are also, like Shenzhen, providing
I would say an ecosystem for especially young entrepreneurs to have the confidence that maybe Hefei can be the choice that I can have a future in.
So Shenzhen would be the tech place to go?
Hefei might be the new energy place to go.
You said semiconductors and photovoltaics and new energy vehicles and things like that.
So maybe it depends on your degree.
That's true.
A little bit.
It might determine where you at least would look first when considering where to move after you graduate.
Yeah, I think that's a big factor, definitely.
For example, for somebody studying computing, for instance, or semi or circuit, you know, technologies surrounding the integrated circuit system, they would be, for example, looking at the city of Hefei simply because Hefei have that industrial cluster
That you want to have if you want to have an advanced integrated circuit ecosystem, meaning you are not only to be only focusing on one company, the job opportunity within one company, you can look around at several different others.
And also at the same time, I think a lot of young entrepreneurs
Who want to start their own business in integrated circuit can also have preferential policies offering to them so that they can start up their own businesses.
So that's why I think when it comes to a city attracting young people, building this foundation block for them that you can have a future in your career professional wise.
And that's a very key thing.
And then they can talk about, for example, free housing or accommodation assistance.
It's one of the things that I think is such a wonderful draw for young people when they're considering a city.
Shenzhen, to use that as an example, they've expanded their free accommodation program for recent graduates.
So what they do is they offer more than 10,000 temporary apartments annually.
And they'll do that in different phases.
So that's 10,000 people who are able to check that off their list of potential concerns.
When moving to a new city.
We already learned it's 68.1, 68.2% of people said housing is number one on the list as a concern when we move somewhere.
Shenzhen says that's not going to be a problem.
Chengdu.
Also, they operate a similar type of system where they provide job seekers with up to 30 days of free accommodation, which is a huge deal.
Because if you go to Chengdu with the knowledge that you can stay somewhere for a whole month
While you're looking around for work,
Again, it's not just something that takes a little bit of stress away, but it also takes a little bit of money or puts a little bit of money back in your pocket because you don't have to pay for accommodations while you're looking.
Especially when you are in that transitional phase, for example, you're thinking about maybe Chengdu is a place that I want to settle in.
So I might go to that city looking for some job opportunities.
But where am I going to stay in a hotel for 30?
14 days, that's too expensive.
And these kind of, I think what they call is youth talent stations are very, very vital for these job seekers.
But that's not the only type of housing assistance that's offered.
Wuhan, for example, they put long-term settlement into their policy priorities.
So what they do in Wuhan is they offer university graduates access to what they call talent apartments.
And what those will cost you is no more than 70% of market rent.
And that's for up to three years.
So Chengdu is doing a great job, you know, putting people up for a month while they look for a job.
It seems like Wuhan's taken it a step further and said 70% of the market rent covered for up to three years.
That's pretty attractive.
But also Changsha just giving out subsidies, you know, money, cash out to this house, to these young people.
I think they are providing like house purchasing subsidies up to 120,000 yuan, which is about 16,000, more than 16,000 US dollars.
For eligible young professionals.
And also when it comes to Changsha, their housing price is kind of affordable.
So it's also a big draw for a lot of young professionals.
Would that be given to you all at the same time?
120,000 yuan deposit into your bank account?
I think, first of all, depending on the industries you're working in and also the level of professional capabilities you have.
I have a friend living in Changsha at the moment for somebody with a doctoral degrees working in a, you know, in an industry where the city want to have a future development.
Of course, you can have a one time such subsidies.
Given to you.
That's pretty good.
The bigger contribution you have the potential to give to the city and the bigger amount of incentive you are more likely to receive.
100%.
But that said, it's not just about
Housing that makes young people feel like a city is their home let's go back to the survey housing and employment 61.2 percent said beyond housing and employment 61.2 percent said
Having close friends or a partner nearby was one of the biggest factors in feeling that they belonged.
And I think what they're saying there is that settling into a city is, yep, you have to have a roof over your head.
But once you have that.
Then you can move on to your next priority.
And for young people, the next priority is having some sort of personal network in the city to have your own community that really matters.
As long as stability is kind of soft and addressed, then, of course, we want to have our own pack to hang out with after work or something.
We mentioned so many cities by now.
I think Suzhou in eastern China's Jiangsu province is a good example because Suzhou itself already has a very strong cultural identity.
Value so that people already feel like this is such a scenic spot, just living there and walking around.
But also Suzhou in recent years, they are borrowing the advantage of the very fact that geographically speaking, it's neighboring Shanghai.
So that is providing this more dynamic
Environment, not only on providing, of course, more opportunities and more connections with bigger cities for the young people locally in Suzhou, but also that it's easier to have fun.
You know, if you want to hang out, traveling from Suzhou to Shanghai isn't really that far away either.
Yeah, not really far.
Maybe an hour, an hour and a half, two hours.
20 minutes?
Within half an hour for high-speed trains.
There is a joke in Suzhou.
You know, when it comes to the city of Suzhou, it's a relatively big city.
But it doesn't have an airport.
And the reason for that is they don't need one.
They can just go to Shanghai.
That's not that far away.
And in my understanding, it's really important that
These are taken into consideration if you're deciding to move into one of these cities.
Like previously, I remember Yushun told us that one big attraction that he decided to move from Jiangsu province to Beijing is because it seems like, at least on the eastern part of Beijing, there seems to be more fun.
Especially nightlife and you know the malls and the restaurants more international cuisine gathered around and clubs and really interesting events they're hosting during the
Weekends and throughout the holidays.
So that's one big attraction for young people to get to know France and get to visit these places and feel that, yeah, this is part of my life and I feel belonging.
I feel, though, that solving that problem of the network of friends
Or a community of people, I feel like that's a little bit more difficult.
Maybe it's not.
It seems like a personal choice, isn't it?
Yeah, and what I was gonna say is that,
Maybe comes off as a little bit of a harder problem to solve is because, you know, a house is a house and a house, the same house can cover many different heads.
What I mean by that is it can solve a problem without any personal taste per se.
Yeah.
But when it comes to building your own community or finding friends, or if Yushin is looking for the hottest nightclub or whatever, I didn't know he was such a party animal.
Yeah, me too.
Then that might be a little bit
A little bit more difficult to accomplish.
Am I wrong?
Is that fair?
Do you think?
Could be.
Well, I think it depends.
It seems like, you know, building your own friends circles and having your own community seems like it's your own choice.
It's your own decision making.
If you are somebody who enjoy a bigger friends circle, of course, go out there.
Enjoy go join more clubs you know go to more clubs and nights but if somebody who is more of an introvert and don't enjoy a lot to have a lot of friends hang out
But I think what it means is that in a book, when they're talking about architecture, it says something about you are thinking when you are living in a house, you're thinking you are designing the interior of the house.
But in fact, the house, the design of the house also has an impact on you.
Meaning if you have such a space, you are likely to make that choices.
But if you don't have that space, more likely you will be retreating from a similar choice.
Oh, that's pretty deep.
Like that house was chosen for you.
Or you were chosen for that house when it was in its design.
This time last year I moved into a new apartment.
So previously I've been living in a relatively more affordable apartment, but last year I decided I had enough.
And I moved into somewhere that's costing 2,000 yuan more per month than previously.
And the first thing I moved in, apart from settling down with my stuff, scattering around the place, I bought a lot of decoration.
Because I feel like I'm moving into a
Fancier, if that's the term, of an environment and it deserves a little bit more of a beauty or enjoyable sights inside the room.
Interior decoration, totally.
So the place before didn't feel like that's like bare minimum.
Yeah, that's enough.
And you didn't really realize that I have this urge to have a lot of decorations within my house.
Not at all.
So that's why I think we're talking about, you know, helping or encouraging young people to build their own communities.
Maybe instead of talking about their personalities, also our cities, I mean, not us, are cities creating that space for them to hang out and enjoy themselves and exploring, meeting new people?
Well, I think what Jiangsu does is a pretty good example.
So they proposed, the province has proposed building the youth, this is what it's called, the youth communities that understand young people best.
Mm-hmm.
I've actually heard about that communities.
They have a bunch within those province.
So the basic idea is that they're building such spaces for young people.
What Jiangsu is doing by offering those communities
Then young people know it's there if I want it, right?
As opposed to it doesn't exist at all.
And that's why I say, you know, maybe they will make use of those hubs where they can meet people and do all types of things, or maybe they won't, who knows?
But the fact is, is that it's there and that's a great thing.
Yeah, it's important to give you a vision that you can picture for your future.
And I think that's mostly especially important for young people in their 20s.
100%, yeah.
All right, so jobs.
Housing.
What about the rest of life, if you will?
The other everyday details that make a city feel like a home.
We'll go back to the survey once again.
So it suggests that belonging isn't only built on the major life decisions that we talked about.
43.6% of respondents said that becoming accustomed to local lifestyles like food or climate can help them feel like they belong.
What do you think about that?
Food.
My friend is originally like me from Inner Mongolia and she moved to Guangdong because she went to university there and then afterwards she decided to settle in that province.
We have huge differences when it comes to food cultures and climates.
It's a northern part of China versus a southern part of China.
So Inner Mongolia would be, the food culture would be like a lot of meat and potatoes type thing?
Meat, dairy, yeah.
We don't have a lot of potatoes, but a lot of meat and dairy.
Meat, dairy, and more meat.
You know, chicken is considered to be the more vegetarian side of meat.
We need the hardcore lamb and beef.
But when it comes to Guangdong... Spicy?
No, no.
They're very...
They don't have a lot of flavor in their food.
Sweetened...
Yeah, they have a lot of sweet things as well.
And they eat a lot of seafood, which in Mongolia is never heard of before, at least 10 years ago.
A lot of steamed food, a lot of soup.
Yeah.
And she started, we have never liked, especially for example, duck soup or chicken soup.
I like the meat, not the soup.
But my friend is getting used to drinking soup for every meal.
And especially those duck soup and chicken soup that Guangdong people love so much is part of her gene right now after living in Guangdong for like 10 years.
Interesting.
So that wasn't a turn off.
That the food culture was so different.
That was actually one of the attractive things for your friend was that, you know, you're not going to get the same food that you will get in Inner Mongolia.
And she actually liked that.
Yeah, because that sort of opened up her window.
But I think for somebody, maybe if they stayed in Guangdong for a period of time and deciding, you know, this hot and very humid climate is not for me.
I'm of course moving away to a different place.
And then a similar issue would be like the survey said, about 40% of them pointed to the understanding of local culture and dialects that can also be
You can say it's a challenge, but also an opportunity for young people moving to a new city.
Dialect, Yushan, you think that would be a factor in considering whether you may enjoy a new city or not?
Yeah, of course, if you can try to learn a little bit of local dialect, I think it would instantly make you sound more amiable to the local community,
Looking like, oh, at least this newcomer is trying.
But yeah, they will try to correct you, of course.
It's interesting though, isn't it?
Some things that might... And this is what I think makes it an issue of perspective because some of those things might put people off.
Not the dialect thing per se, but food, for example.
If you can't find your local food, well, then that might be a deciding factor
But I think there you're getting pretty close to the top of the pyramid.
You know, you satisfy your housing first and the job and then your social network and then hobbies.
And then maybe at the top, you start being a little bit picky about your favorite things.
Restaurants.
But, you know, when you have programs in place that help people find out
Where those restaurants are within the community, cool places to hang out as well.
All those things when you put them together can help make a city feel like a home.
I've been in Beijing now for two years and I'm still learning a lot about the city, but one of the best decisions that I made
Early on, and I didn't even realize I was making a good decision at the time, the shared bicycles in the summertime.
Jump on the bicycle and go ride anywhere.
And I did that every weekend for the entire summer.
And what it did was it gave me a layout of the city.
You know, Beijing is so huge that when you look at a map, you don't know where anything is.
And you try to figure out, okay, how do people talk about where stuff is in the city?
It's like, oh, between the second and third ring roads on the west side.
And I was like, that has no meaning to me whatsoever.
But when I biked around and I saw, oh, there's the third, I saw the sign, right?
Third Ring Road West.
I was like, oh, that's what they were talking.
So it gave me a bit of a mental map for the city.
And I didn't know at the time, but it kind of made it feel like home a little bit more, so.
FYI, the smaller the ring is, the closer you are to the Forbidden City.
Yeah.
And there's no first ring road.
That's the Forbidden City, the ring around the Forbidden City.
Exactly.
I mean, there are so many factors that go into play, come into play when you're
Deciding where you're going to move, where you're going to kick off the next stage of your life.
And housing and jobs, of course, are first on the priority list.
But once you have those boxes ticked, then you start to look for other things.
And then it becomes a little bit of personal preference.
But I think we can all agree it's exciting.
Yeah.
No matter what, no matter where you're moving, it's a pretty exciting thing when you're starting your next stage.
So if that's you right now, good luck.
And we hope the best for you.
You're listening to Roundtable.
I'm Steve Hatherly today with Yushan and Feifei.
Stay with us.
We have a lot more to talk about.
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Imagine you're living alone.
One evening, your washing machine suddenly stops working.
You need someone to come and fix it as soon as possible.
A repair technician says they'll be at your house within the hour.
Would it make any difference to you if that person knocking on your door was a woman instead of a man?
For many consumers in China, that answer is yes.
In recent years, all female home repair teams have quietly attracted a loyal customer base by offering services ranging from appliance repairs to plumbing and electrical work.
The appeal isn't necessarily about better technical skills, but about creating a service experience that some customers find more comfortable and more reassuring.
So what makes this service different?
What are customers really paying for?
And does its success say anything about the changing customer environment and consumer expectations here in China?
Okay, so typically when you hire someone to come to your house to fix something here in China, like your pipes or your electricity or...
Wi-Fi.
I don't even know it.
This shows you how useless I am at home.
Cleaning your AC since it's like hot summer season now.
I was trying to think what else breaks in your house.
Okay, so typically when you do that, it's a man.
It would be a man.
99.9% of the time.
Someone to your place.
That would come to your door.
And the reason for that is, is because those industries or the industry of home services is largely dominated by men in terms of the workers.
There's data to support that.
And that's according to an industry insights report on home services that women account for less than 10% of China's home repair workforce.
And depending on which city we're talking about, that ratio can also be lowered by just 3-5%, maybe even less.
Yeah, like in cities like Hangzhou, it's about 3%.
So male dominated workforce there.
So what that means is, and this is how you do it, right?
You open up your app on your phone.
You ask the company to send someone to your house.
And when you do that through the app, you don't know who is going to come to your door, but odds are it's going to be a guy.
And for some customers, they just prefer that, as we are here in 2026, they just prefer for that to be a woman who comes to their door.
Yeah, because females are on the market offering all-female repair teams.
But it's not necessarily new, right?
These all-female repair teams have been around for a number of years.
Yeah, for several years actually.
I think in the year 2024, which is about two years ago, we have one of China's earliest commercially operated all-female home repair teams.
It's called Qiangji Women's Repair Team, and they launched their service in Sichuan and Chongqing area.
And they really quickly started to attract a lot of attentions and such business mode basically expanded to more cities afterwards.
Yeah, throughout the years, I think people never stop paying attention to this title of all-female mechanics team or repair team.
And they're even more emerging out throughout China in several cities in recent years, too.
I think this is a trend that's not going anywhere else, at least in a while.
It's a bit different than what it seems on the surface, though, I think, because on the surface, it seems like, do you prefer a man to come to your house or do you prefer a woman to come to your house?
But it's a little bit deeper than that because the service that is offered is a little bit
Different.
The female repair workers that come to your house are offering a bit of an upgraded service.
Yeah.
For example, they are kind of expected, they're also trained to be like putting their shoe covers before entering your house and protect nearby furniture before beginning repairs.
Like for example, covering the furniture with
We'll be right back.
Like a plastic film or a cloth film before they start.
And also there's the service that covers organizing the tools carefully while working and also clean up the area after the repairman job is done, which I think is kind of the add up.
It's kind of what a lot of customers that pursue this kind of off email service are looking for because
We tend to not expect all the above from a common or day-to-day repair that's usually done by a male.
Yeah, such services are normally missing from the regular repair teams.
Yeah, and if they do it, if the male mechanics do it, then
Oh, you're so nice.
But it's not like it's something you can require them to do because most of them wouldn't consider this as part of the job.
So covering your furniture or wearing those...
No, that's our job, our own job.
Clean up afterwards.
Yeah, so when they, for example, order a deep cleaning of my ACs, their thinking is my sole job is to come here and deep clean your ACs.
But when it comes to if there are any drips of that detergent or the cleaning thing they're using dropped.
That's what I call it.
The cleaning thing.
Yeah.
It's very sophisticated.
So that liquid drop to the floor or to your furniture, that's not really my part of my concern.
That's more of your responsibility.
You should have it covered before I come.
So this is part of the, and that's why I said that in the beginning, is that this isn't just a man versus woman, which do you prefer?
This is an upgraded quality product.
Or service quality that you get.
Another thing that they do that's really, really cool, and I think this is from the company that you mentioned maybe just a moment ago.
Changji.
Yeah, Changji in the Sichuan Chongqing region.
One of the things that they do differently as well, and I've never heard about this before.
They run community training programs and there they help hundreds of women earn nationally recognized electrician certifications.
They do, of course, your hardware installation and all the typical stuff, the repairs that you're asking for.
But they also have these educational programs on the side.
I've never heard about anything like that before.
Yeah, they release the training advertisement, you can call it, via their WeChat program.
They've got a WeChat account, official account for it.
And usually what they do is they align with the local
I think it's a vocational training center.
It's not a vocational school.
It's a training center that already have all the equipments that you probably will need in terms of fixing stuff in different parts of the house.
So what they do is they roll out this training program every once in a while and
Have 24 trainees, usually people have to race to get a candidate seat in order to be part of that training.
And I remember seeing reports on behind the wall, there is a big line of words saying,
Oh, just these.
These are common tools of women, too.
And next to it, you see the schoolers and, you know, the mechanic stuff and everything.
And the teacher is there.
The teacher are also the workers of this women's repair team.
They're there to start from ground zero, teaching by community base.
We're talking about like moms who's resting at home and also single living women of all different walks of life.
And also female that's of a senior group, for example, after they retired, everybody's welcome to sit down and learn from ground zero of how things are done practically.
And they also kind of have dedicated training for those certificate that you mentioned,
So that after training, you can go for that exam, and once you're certificated, you are very welcome to work for them afterwards.
Very cool.
These types of all-female repair teams of various sizes, by the way,
They've begun to pop up in cities like Shanghai and Shenzhen.
Jingdao has some as well, Guangzhou too.
So it's becoming a nationwide thing.
Now, here's another layer of the onion, because I said before, it's not just do you prefer a man or a woman there?
You're getting a premium service here.
But for that premium service, you're not paying the same price.
It's more expensive.
It's actually way more expensive.
Oh, you think that?
But I think of all the services they offer, I think the money is worth spending.
Well, I'll explain why.
So let's say that you got a deep clean that required your air conditioner to be taken apart.
So typically that would cost about 200 yuan.
That's about $29 per unit.
If you have the female team come to your house.
But if you got a company where a man would come, that would be about 100 yuan to 150 yuan.
So that's, you know, let's go on, for the sake of argument, let's go on the bottom end of that range.
So that's 100 yuan if you want the guy to come to your house.
It's 200 yuan if you want the woman to come to your house.
That's double.
That's a huge difference.
Here's one more example.
If you want to have a ceiling fan,
You got a new place.
Are you considering a ceiling fan installation?
No, I prefer AC.
Thank you.
If you are, here's the information you need to know.
If you want to have that installed with a built-in light, it will cost you about 100 yuan.
That's $14.
Per unit if you get the female company to come.
If a man did it, it would cost 30 yuan.
That's more than triple.
So that's why I said, you know, it's not just more expensive, it's double or triple depending on what you're having done.
Yeah, because they're also offering a lot of add-on services that we mentioned before, like they are really neat, setting up their equipment, their tools, and then they clean afterwards and they're very careful around your furniture.
For example, when they are installing that ceiling fan with a built-in light,
Above your bed, for instance, they can be very careful to cover up your bed so that nothing from the ceiling will fall onto your sheet.
And that's part of the cost.
Yeah, and that's part of the cost.
I think it's justified, and that's why a lot of customers are willing to pay this kind of premium prices for this kind of all-female repair team coming to their doors.
Yeah, that's the argument for, right?
I guess the argument against would be, I'm paying to have this thing fixed.
The other details don't really matter that much to me.
Not me, but this is the counter argument.
Trust me, I'm willing to pay for keeping the house clean.
But that's the counter argument is that it's not for everyone.
No, it's not.
Bifactual, yes.
And usually people who are willing to pay more for such services have their very ample reasons to being able and willing to pay.
Because of course, that's the different aspects of how
Detail the service you can receive but also there's the transparency and convenience side of things where these female technicians are also providing like telling you actually what went wrong with this equipment in the first place so that you can avoid it in the future and also how you can possibly fix it yourself
If similar issue happen again in the future.
And also just the convenience of thinking, yeah, like someone is willing to communicate with you is the first place.
And honestly speaking, if a male technician are willing to offer all that service in their package, I'm willing to pay more too.
You're shaking your head.
They're very quiet for a lot of the regular mechanics coming to my doors.
When I'm trying to understand what went wrong with my AC, for example, why it is suddenly having this kind of issues, they'll be like, that's very common.
Or like, oh, that's not really something you should mind.
You're just a young girl.
Why do you care?
That leaves a question mark in my mind.
It's like, is it true?
Is it really just that common, similar thing happened in the future?
I just call you again?
Yeah.
It's just not part of their job description, I guess, right?
Whereas with the other style of companies, it is.
Would you like to know what I did here?
Would you like to know what went wrong?
I kind of like that.
I kind of think that's a great thing.
I'll be honest.
I thought when we started this conversation, we were going to talk about safety.
But it hasn't even come up in the conversation yet.
But it has to be at least one of the factors, I would think, that would make this attractive for a lot of people who are living alone, for example.
They would feel more comfortable having a woman come to their home instead of a man come to their home.
Yeah, especially for women who live alone.
I think we have a 2021 report coming from the Beike Research Institute saying that China could have
Between 150 million to 200 million people living alone by the year 2030.
And for many of these kind of group, especially women living alone, inviting a stranger into their home is often
More than simply getting something repaired.
And even for like, for example, in my house, when I was out there working, it's only my kid and her or his grandparents.
I would also be concerned if somebody knock on the door saying, you know, I'm here to check your gas meter.
And I would like to check with the property management team saying, is that true?
Is this really the guy who has the regular checkup or is somebody who are doing something else very fishy?
So I think having naturally having a female repair team coming to your door sort of lower that concern barriers on some level.
Especially for the seniors and women living alone.
There's obviously a large spot in the market for this, right?
Which is why it started a couple of years ago or more and why it's expanded to other cities around the country.
But why hasn't it expanded...
More quickly, I guess, is my question.
Why hasn't it been in the news more often?
Why hasn't it become more popular?
I think after all, it's still a very niche market when we're talking about, first of all, it's more expensive, of course, and also
The limited locations that they're offering such services
For example in beijing you can't find such teams right now so it's only in that several cities like shanghai qingdao and zhuhai in guangdong province
And that's also another reason is really the talent.
That's also maybe one of the reason why the example that we gave before, the Qiangji example, they're offering training courses because they can't find enough female mechanics on the market.
So they need to train themselves.
At the very beginning, there were only six of them.
Considering the whole region of Chengdu, Sichuan, Chongqing, served by six people.
I mean, if it started with six people and it's expanded to this number of cities, that alone is kind of impressive.
We've seen other examples of this.
All women's gyms come to mind.
There's a primary example I think a lot of people will think about when we're talking about all female services.
I remember one of the gyms I used to go to, it was kind of a vertical gym.
It had different floors.
And the third and the fourth floor, I believe, were for women only.
I thought that was such a great idea.
But they go further than that, too.
They have all women's gyms, which, you know, all the clientele are women, right?
All women's bookstores.
Which was new information for me.
But we've seen this type of thing before.
So I guess what my question is, is that it's expanding here with the repair teams.
Do you think it can expand to the point where it can be a sustainable, successful industry or part of an industry for decades to come?
Well, if we're talking about businesses, it's really coming down to the services they're offering, like the consistency of the details they're able to finish with every repair services they offer.
They always, everybody within the team always put on their shoe covers, always clean up
After they finish repairing and also they can have the ability to repair things they're ordered to do.
And I think that really matters because when we're talking about, for example, all-female gyms, it's a business model that's also been developing for a longer period compared with all-female repair teams.
And I've actually found a report from 2025 saying that in China, at the end of 2024, the number of all female gyms are actually growing.
And the backdrop of this number is that the number of fitness facilities across China is falling.
Oh, interesting.
So you are seeing for all female gyms, they're not entering to a dead end as a lot of people expected.
But on the other side of the story, they're expanding very fast.
Even the whole fitness industry are going through some transitional phase at the moment.
Yeah, it's kind of a cool move within the industry itself.
And that will do it for today's Roundtable.
Thank you to Yushan.
Thank you to Feifei for joining the show.
And of course, thank you to you for being with us as well.
Don't forget, you can find us on Apple Podcasts by searching at Roundtable China.
My name is Steve, and we will see you next time.
