You're listening to Roundtable.
I'm Niu Helin, joined by Fei Fei and Yu Xun.
Coming up soon, Roundtable's full circle segment.
You know the drill.
We rewind the week and pull out three stories with different topics, describing different worlds, and have zero obvious connection.
And yet, somehow, there is one.
And have you noticed mosquitoes showing up earlier this year?
Maybe you brushed one away during a walk or heard that familiar buzzing sooner than expected.
It might feel like a minor seasonal change, but scientists say it could be a sign of something bigger.
Longer transmission seasons, expanding insect habitats, and new challenges for disease prevention.
Should we be alerted by the premature buzzing?
But before talking about that, roundtables full circle.
Three stars.
One connection.
This is the full circle.
Welcome to the Full Circle.
So who are picking the three stories and finding out that thread, linking them together?
That will be me today for this week.
It's been a challenge this week for the three stories, first of all.
On Monday we talked about the overwork culture in China in a show called Why Can't China Stop Working Over Time?
The idea is that we see a new stat showing the average weekly working time for employees in enterprises was 485 in 2025.
That is far more than what the labor law put the cap on at, I think, 40 hours a week.
And, of course, when it comes to extensive overtime at workplace, it comes a lot of risks when it comes to your health or your mental health.
And also you can have spillover effects on your family and your leisure time and all that.
And now I think on that discussion, we talked about how to stop that.
Why can't we stop that?
Hopefully we got some progress.
Wow, Monday.
Why can't China stop working?
This sounds really depressing, but I think it is also a good time for us to actually remind ourselves.
We also need to maybe put the pause button for a little bit.
Or find a way to change the trend.
We talked about it.
It's sometimes related to company culture.
When everybody works overtime, you work overtime.
It's kind of like you cannot stop it with your own ability.
It needs a collective awareness and pushback.
So it's been on the way.
And then second, on Tuesday, we had a story called The Voluntary Trap.
It's about voluntary jobs at schools are turning into a burden.
As a parent.
You've just finished a full day of work, but instead of going home, you now need to stand outside of your child's school in the cold, wearing a vest, trying to manage the traffic.
No, I think I assume I would be the only one who could face this issue right now in this studio.
Right now.
Right.
Sometimes it can be a burden when a teacher calls you up and asks you can you come for this kind of voluntary job and you worry about saying no would leave not a good impression from the teacher and that may translate into something else for your children.
I feel that they're probably the threat.
Don't reveal that.
Don't reveal that.
But right now we are seeing cities that has been putting a start to canceling these kind of voluntary jobs among schools and replacing them with other technologies or personnel arrangements in the city started by parents like Fei Fei openly, like on roundtable, or secretly privately, complaining about this issue.
Because there are things that you can say no to directly and immediately.
But there are things that you want to say no to.
The moment.
You get the question, you get the invitation, you get the request, yet you can't.
So this is one of those situations.
As a individual parent, you find it hard to say no, but when you talk to other parents, the situation is suddenly changed.
You got the gut to voice your concerns and also your unsatisfactory kind of situation, and that happily lead to led to changes in the society already.
And then finally, my third story is on Thursday that we talked about shared gardens in cities.
From shared vegetable plots in cities to adopt a chicken programs where you can manage on your phone.
Agriculture is being moved onto the cloud.
You can farm remotely, digitally, and on your own terms.
Wow, then I'm lost.
I feel that there is a thread, but Feifei said that it has been a challenge this week, but I think the full circle has always been a challenge to find a thread.
Of course, mental gymnastics we play.
Yeah, but for the Shared Garden.
It's something similar that I can reveal later, but it's basically about people wanting to have a little bit of an escape from their busy urban life and getting in touch, have their hands get dirty in the soil in the farmland.
It feels like Chinese people has always, has the history of, the mindset of owning a little garden.
Growing something.
Wherever Chinese people go, even in maybe overseas countries, when you see there is a little, maybe a field for vegetables, you can probably guess that there is a Chinese family living there.
Yeah.
And also when it comes to the space station, when it comes to our station in the Antarctica.
We also have little boxes of fresh vegetables blooming in the house.
Yes.
So these are my three stories for this week's Full Circle.
I'm curious because I really can't draw the thread from these three stories.
So would you reveal what is the common thread here?
Surprising, surprising.
The common thread that link these three stories together is the technologies of stopping.
There are tools, there are rules, there are even spaces designed to end work in a world that seems like cannot stop by themselves.
For example, on the overtime working culture.
We do have a law in place.
That said, we need a finish line.
But when it comes to the digital tools in place, they start to erase that line and that work stopped, stopped ending and they spilled into nights, into meals, into emails at midnight, into messages at your dinner and into a small WeChat message called quick question, with really no edge.
And the system assumed people would know when to stop, but they didn't because nothing told them to.
So the response is no longer about discipline, it's about enforcement.
We have workers refusing after hours demands and pushing law for laws to define when work must end.
And also we have some industries and companies testing collective anti-involution agreements.
They are sharing rules that make stopping automatic and not optional.
So the goal is quite simple is to rebuild that stop.
And the similar thing can be seen on the school guard system story that The school gate was supposed to be a stopping point but it didn't hold.
It started to asking questions like, just help when you can.
And that request kept extending until it didn't stop at all.
And then parents are putting on rotations throughout shifts.
And voluntary becomes scheduled and that role expanded, not because somebody planned it, but because there is nothing to push it back.
So this is not really a failure of goodwill.
It is a failure to stop.
Are you suggesting the school gate is where the responsibility of parents stop?
Where the responsibilities of the school can start to thinking about stopping?
There is a no stop button for the parents because yeah, as you said, voluntary became some kind of mandatory.
If we are not, quote unquote, voluntarily go to there and then there will be consequences.
Sometimes, yeah, that's what people fear.
That's what people think.
But in real cases, when they say no, it's okay for teachers and we, even after the problem is revealed, when the Parents are saying stop to this phenomenon.
They hear teachers saying, we don't want to do this as well.
And we would not treat your kids differently just because you said no.
And the reason we're talking about this is that that stop sign is actually what everybody wants, but fear to say out loud.
Yeah, so there needs to be somebody out there that has the courage or has the ability to put a stop to it.
Yes, and when it comes to the final story, the shared garden ones can be a little difficult to understand, but it's also coming to the point of stopping, because city life doesn't stop also, you know, when it comes to our work, our entertainment, our social life.
They currently blur into this continuous feed on your mobile phones.
And when everything is always on, nothing tells you when to stop.
So that feels like you need someone someplace somewhere, to tell you now it is the time and place for you to stop, and the shared garden in a suburb or in a little area in your community is the place that is telling you.
You know it's, it's okay to stop for now.
So a plot of land doesn't scroll and it demands, it asks you To stop to water the plant, close your laptop, you show up on the land.
And it's sort of a constructed stop when it comes to the shared gardens.
A place where the cycle of blurring feed, blurring social media feed, blurring messages coming from both work and private life breaks.
I think yeah, as long as you grow the vegetables by yourselves, it is.
I think you are pushing this stop button.
Otherwise you are just.
If you're just paying others to grow the vegetables for you and you're just checking the situation on your mobile phone.
I don't think that is a stop.
But I see the connection in these three.
And I think that is when I think when it comes to this, my final thought about why do we need a stop in our life?
So when we say it opens another door, we assume something important that open is always better than closed, that more access, more possibility, more connection must be progress.
But what if that is exactly the trap?
When you decide to stay put in, that room never leaves.
And that open door, the door that never closes, doesn't lead you anywhere.
It doesn't mark a transition.
It doesn't signal an ending.
It just keeps you suspended, sort of huffing half out, never fully arriving but never fully leaving.
And over time, that starts to cost something.
So maybe the real skill we're missing isn't about how to open doors, but how to close them, with intent to say this is where my work stops.
This is where my responsibility ends.
And this is where I will step out.
Because a closed door isn't failure, it's a structure and it's also a protection.
It's what gives meaning to the next room you walk in.
And some things only make sense when we decide deliberately to bring them to a stop.
Nicely done so.
I think what i want to leave with our audience after today's full circle is actually a question, that is, we want you to take a moment and think about the things that are happening in your life for a really long time.
The inertia is tremendous.
You have never thought of putting a stop there, but it has been bothering you perhaps for a while.
It has been creating more problems than it benefits your life.
And after today's full circle, we find so many different examples.
There are so many different stories in at least this week on Roundtable.
That shows us, that have shown us that the things that you believe are supposed to happen maybe have already been outdated.
They're no longer real. for you at this certain stage.
So, if we draw the line already, what you can do is to again take a little closer look at what you have right now and maybe tell us what would be the thing that you want to put a stop sign to.
Where in your life are you relying on a system to stop when it has no reason to stop?
Only you can stop it, can change it.
And what would it take to build a boundary that actually holds?
So please let us know in the comment area or send us an email to roundtablepodcast at qq.com.
You're listening to Roundtable coming up next.
Are mosquitoes arriving earlier?
Stay tuned.
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Then tune in to Roundtable, where East meets West and understanding is the goal.
You're listening to Roundtable with me, Fei Fei and Yu Xuan.
Early spring, the weather finally turns warm enough to open the window.
You hear the quiet buzz near your ear and suddenly that familiar instinct kicks in.
But then comes the second thought wait, aren't mosquitoes supposed to show up later in the year?
Across many regions, people are also asking a more serious question.
If mosquito season is starting earlier, could it be an early signal of shifting climates and changing disease risks?
So before we talk about the whole scenario, I have to ask for your personal feeling.
Do you feel like you're seeing mosquitoes earlier?
Or to be more precise, when did you first notice a mosquito this year?
I already encountered mosquitoes at home.
Yeah, me too.
A couple of weeks ago.
Really?
I listened to something when I was sleeping and then it started having that.
I thought it was.
You know my audio.
But I took out my headphone.
Wow, it's there.
It's right in front of me.
It's very annoying.
But do you think it's suggesting something earlier before preparing for the show?
Because I didn't.
I just thought it was, you know, climate change, getting warmer earlier, good central heating system in place, something like that.
Yeah, that's my first reaction.
I thought the central heating is the reason why mosquitoes can survive this winter and pop up early in the spring, even before the summer arrives.
But apparently, well, climate change is one reason.
But another thing is well, actually I did a report, I think, last year.
It's about the spreading of dengue fever and chikungunya also fever.
They're both transmitted through mosquitoes, certain types of mosquitoes in particular.
And scientists have witnessed that The mosquitoes that are able to carry these two viruses originally are only constrained in tropical islands, like in the middle of the Pacific Ocean.
Where it's warmer.
And then it's slowly expanded to Southeast Asian countries and then to southern regions of China, like in Guangdong or Hainan only.
But now I think scientists starting.
That was last year.
Scientists started to spotting These kind of mosquitoes even in central China.
That was in 2025.
And the thing is that the internet comments are not only saying that they're coming earlier, they're saying that the mosquitoes are coming even stronger.
There's a phrase for them, they're getting epic buffs.
They think that they're getting stronger than before.
Yeah, because I think we are seeing that a lot of these mosquitoes are carrying some of these diseases and it is happening worldwide.
And then people are worrying that would that bring these diseases to us since we have more Besides what we've talked about, what are some other things that we must notice about this year's mosquito, early mosquito, especially individual, for individuals when we're at home?
Is there anything we can do to combat the already rising risk?
Well, first of all, I think I do have some recommendations coming from China's National Health Commission.
First of all is, of course, cover yourself up.
Just don't think mosquito bites don't matter at all.
But even when it comes to having some water in your home, Just remember to clean them out on a timely manner.
Just don't keep a bucket full of water in your home all the time.
That is where the mosquito can thrive.
But when it comes to going outside when, for example, entering grassy or wooded areas, you also need to cover yourself up with long sleeves and trousers, tuck the cuffs into your socks and also apply insect repellent.
This is very, very important, especially for people living in southern areas.
I think they're more prone to this kind of particular type of mosquito called Aedes.
That is sort of having this black and white straps on them.
And they are able to carry a lot of viruses that can transmit this kind of diseases.
And also, there are also other, you know, recommendations or alerts coming from the commissions.
For example, there are also viruses can be transmitted through ticks.
So just keep in mind of checking your bodies, especially after returning to your home from outside environment.
Check your bodies, your clothing, your pets for ticks.
Pay particular attention to hidden areas it's like your armpits for them as well, just be aware that they can be dangerous.
Yes, and another way is that to figure out why we are having early mosquitoes, or even probably quote unquote stronger?
They are not exactly or literally stronger, it's only because, um the global situation, And it seems that they're getting stronger.
So don't panic.
Yeah.
And what we can see is that one of the reasons of this situation is that more international travel is happening worldwide.
So higher chances of imported cases can be one of the reasons.
And yeah, don't panic and do all of the research precautions that Feifei just mentioned.
That I think you will be fine.
You will be fine.
And if anything happens that you find a little bit alerting, make sure you go pay at the hospital a visit just to remove the anxiety, which is also good for your health.
And that brings us to the end of today's Roundtable.
We'd love to hear your thoughts on today's topics.
Leave us a comment wherever you listen to your podcasts, or send us an email to roundtablepodcast at qqcom.
That's roundtablepodcast at qq.com with no space.
Deep dives and nuanced views.
We are clearing the table for now, but may the ideas stay with you.
I'm Niu Honglin with Fei Fei and Yixuan.
Thank you for listening.
Bye.
