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This is Roundtable.
You're listening to Roundtable with myself He Young.
I'm joined by Limeing and Steve Hatherly in the studio.
Coming up, from solo dining to private gyms, businesses are catering to young adults embracing independent living.
The solo living economy is booming in China, with services tailored for convenience, self -care, and personal fulfillment.
How do you feel about this rising trend?
And need a boost to crush the week?
Our special segment, Motivational Monday, is your ultimate adrenaline shot to kick things off strong.
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Now let's switch it up.
Before settling down and perhaps starting a family, personal spending tends to rise.
Because why not? Eating out solo?
No problem. Booking a private gym?
Even better. Living alone isn't just about having a space to yourself.
It's about curating a lifestyle that suits you best.
And businesses are taking note, rolling out services in China, catering to this demographic from solo dining experiences to personalized wellness plans.
Guys, paint the picture for us about young people living alone these days.
Well, a 2021 report released by Baker Research Institute, which is a property information and analysis platform, says the number of people living alone in China is expected to reach 150 million to 200 million by 2030.
Among them, the number of young people aged 20 to 39 will increase from 18 million in 2010 to 40 million to 70 million.
So that's a drastic increase.
And as more and more young people choose to live alone their unique lifestyles and consumer demands have unconsciously influenced multiple sectors such as housing, dining, entertainment and socializing giving rise to the solo living economy a new and promising consumer trend which is a high time that we
should see Because really, as a college graduate, I have been looking forward to living alone for, I don't know, more than 20 years.
Because before you go to college, you live in your own home, and you have to suffer with your parents.
You love them, but you still have to suffer with them, of course.
So did you have an opportunity to live by yourself?
No, I didn't. And then I went to college.
I have to live with and also suffer with three other, you know, roommates.
From one family to another.
With strangers. You said unconsciously influenced multiple sectors, and that could be true, but it could be a conscious influence of multiple sectors.
But we'll get to that a little bit later.
Statistics from different parts of the world show similar numbers to what we're seeing here in China in terms of people living alone.
There was a report from Census .gov, that's from the U .S.
Census Bureau, that showed that 1 in 10 young adults aged 18 to 34 and nearly 3 in 10 adults 65 or older lived alone in America in 2022.
More research from the country found that 38 % of U .S.
adults aged 25 to 54 were living without a partner.
That's up from 29 % in 1990.
That's America. In Japan, single households now make up one -third of the total, and that is expected to climb to 40 % of their population by 2040.
Korea, last year, 42 % of all households in the country were single -person households, and in Canada, that number is around 30%.
We're seeing a trend here, aren't we?
I see a trend of progress because really this is, I think, due to and thanks to, in fact, increases in productivity and also increases improvements in gender equality.
Because now with gender equality and people being able to get jobs to feed for themselves, to fend for themselves, this has somehow eliminated the kind of marriage for contingency.
Back in the days, you have to get married to make the economically and financially more efficient choice or way of living.
But now with people being able to find jobs and fend for themselves, they can now leave the option open for marriages of choice.
If they don't be the ideal partners, then they just stay single.
When we talk about Asia and the West, people love to look for differences, don't we?
Don't they? But there are plenty of similarities as well.
And this is one of those similarities.
42 % in Korea, 40 % in Japan.
We learned the numbers from here in China.
And then you look at Canada and America, similar numbers there, too.
It's just, yeah, it's something that young people, people in that generation group, that age group, that's how they're choosing to live.
I think for women especially, like you guys, this is just one data point, I suppose, within that bigger picture, is that now it's just increasingly rare for women to experience what possibly their mother's or grandmother's experience that's going from your father's home to your husband's home.
Yeah. Because now, like, with women, especially with those who are lucky to receive higher education, then you've put your whole life to get this degree.
Don't you want to work a little bit, earn your own money and see what the world is like before you settle down?
And then that gives rise to living alone for women as well.
And Lai Mei, you point to a really good point that in China, I think in a way, the single population is spoiled by all the services available.
And let's go through them.
This is a two -way street.
You know, it's not like these services are provided for free.
You're paying for them as well.
But in turn, it gives the economy a boost.
So first, let's look at the most basic need of all.
How are people or the single or solo living population feeding themselves?
Well, according to a recent report by Tech Media, 36ker, on short video platform Douyin, videos related to the topic of solo dining have been watched for over 2 .9 billion times.
And on social media Red or Xiaohongshu, solo dining has attracted 1 .7 billion views and over 4 .4 million discussions.
and even if you live alone you should eat well now it's a lifestyle attitude for young people and I can tell that on food delivery platforms many restaurants they now offer one person's portion yeah right tiny little um tomato with eggs and then and then veggie you can choose to combine and form one
man's or one woman's portion of both veggie and meat and protein and and rice Question, would that have been available, say, I don't know, 10, 15 years ago?
Would you have seen that as an option, that one -person meal package?
10, 15 years ago, we didn't have food delivery platform to begin with.
And then for single people who want to eat out, I, for one, as a poor student, would shearn the restaurants.
I would go for, let's say, dumpling places or noodle places where you can have a bowl of dumpling or a bowl of noodles.
and not, you know, forget about balanced meal, forget about veggie and meat you just eat anything that's down in the menu and that's hidden and you have to dig somehow Was there any other reason that you would forego the restaurant experience?
Well affordability is one thing Right, exactly, but that's my point is that at a restaurant you would have a hard time finding food for one or a meal for one, perhaps, or perhaps the stigma, too.
I'm not sure about here in China, but in Canada and America, it used to feel weird.
You wouldn't go to a restaurant by yourself.
It's just not something that you would typically do.
But those numbers are changing now.
This is from CNN from last year.
OpenTable, that's an online booking platform.
And reservations for parties of one, that's a one -person reservation, at sit -down restaurants increased 8 % over the period of one year.
And they also asked 2 ,000 customers in June of last year, the same group, OpenTable.
And through that survey, they found that 60 % of respondents had dined alone in the last year, including 68 % of Gen Z and millennial respondents.
So I think those surveys show that the attitude towards dining alone has changed.
Again, I'm not sure about in China, but in the West, there was this stigma associated with it.
Like you were, I don't know, lonely or sad.
Like restaurants is for social occasions.
And if you are only socializing with yourself, what's your problem?
Well, you're having your own date.
You're dating the city.
I mean, it's all in your mind, I suppose.
I mean, in China, maybe there's, to a certain extent, maybe that stigma.
I'm not sure. But I certainly don't see it as strong.
And I think the most annoying thing about, you know, the Western setting of this, you know, going to a restaurant on your own is, you know, the usually nicely dressed, nice looking.
What do you call the person?
The usher? Like who brings you into the restaurant.
Oh, the maitre d'. Yes.
Party for one. It's like nobody needs to know that.
Exactly. But here in China, I don't think it's as bad.
I think maybe the restaurant's thinking, okay, well, this person has money to just dine on that person on his own.
It's totally different now.
There was a 19—I'm sure you've never heard of this movie.
It's from 1984. It's called The Lonely Guy starring Steve Martin.
And there's a scene where he walks into a restaurant table for one.
And when he says that to the maitre d', the whole restaurant goes silent.
and then a spotlight appears on him as he awkwardly walks to his table by himself.
But that's speaking to the stigma that I was talking about.
It used to exist and those statistics show us that it doesn't exist anymore.
In China, we're seeing that, yeah, maybe let's say on Valentine's Day and going to a fancy restaurant that might look a little odd on your own.
But a lot of the other times, I think, And also thanks to popular Japanese drama series such as The Lonely Gourmet, which I love.
And it's been running for more than 10 years.
I think it's also helped to drum up that trend of, you know, just being proud of being able to go to a restaurant on your own.
And also, sorry, in Beijing, in China as well, we're seeing the rise of single dining restaurants as well.
And that's apparently a trend that's coinciding with Japan as well.
I was going to say, in Japan, they have a special term for this solo dining.
It's called, if I'm saying this correctly, ohitorisama.
And it means alone, but there are honorifics on the front and the back of the word to make it feel less hesitant, I guess, about doing that.
But they found that 23 percent of Japanese people eat out alone.
That's up from 18 percent in 2018.
So six years later, there was that increase.
But also in Germany, solo dining reservations are up 18 percent there and in the UK in 2024, up 14 percent.
Not surprising, I suppose, to see these, because we just talked about the fact that we can find similar statistics in the West and we can find these statistics here in China.
And if you have more people living alone, well, then you're going to have more people eating out alone.
Those just coincide.
So the demographics is one thing.
And also the way of thinking is the other thing.
And that is, so you live alone.
It doesn't mean that you can't enjoy life.
In fact, as somebody who's been married for 10 years, I would think that you can only enjoy your life when you live alone.
Okay, sarcastic comment, sarcastic.
Okay, and also we're seeing that there are a whole bunch of services that have been developed to satisfy the emotional needs of single living people.
Yeah, toys for young adults, not just for kids.
36 kr that survey was conducted by the china toy and juvenile products association the information came from 36 kr those born in the 2000s have become the main consumer force in the stuffed toy market 43 of the market share followed by those born in the 1990s at 36 we think stuffed animals are just
for children. That is not the case.
There was a LinkedIn article from last year by the Metrics Factory.
Jellycat. You know Jellycat?
Because we talked about Jellycat on the show one day.
That's this British plush toy brand.
They have a great marketing scheme, how they kind of prepare their toys before they give them to you.
They've seen remarkable growth in recent years.
Annual revenue reaching 1 .3 billion yuan.
That's over $180 million in China in 2022.
Gross profit margin of 61%.
So they're obviously doing something right.
And what about cloud adoption of animals and plants?
Well, this thing happened many years ago.
I remember talking about it on Roundtable.
And so this is referring to the practice of people paying for, I would call it, a membership or certain privilege to support certain programs.
Yeah, it's like an adoption kind of.
We call it adoption, but really you don't own it.
You don't keep it in your household.
And the thing with the cloud is that it's up in the cloud.
You don't really own it.
It's a good thing because at the Dalian Forest Zoo, you can adopt a black panther.
I don't think you want a black panther living in your… I hope not, no.
…in your living room.
Yeah. Good security guard, though, I suppose.
If I were, like, a tycoon, I own a villa, and I will let the black panther roam the field and keep protection.
But no, not really.
So when people adopt a black panther, they pay 2 ,000 yuan, and they get certain privileges.
They get an adoption certificate, meaning that you've adopted this black panther.
You can show it around and brag about it.
And then you have free access to the zoo.
You have in -depth animal feeding experience.
Hopefully not with yourself.
And adopters can also receive regular cloud reports about the adopted animal's recent activities.
Sure. So the panther has killed seven chickens this week.
Good job. You can rent a hippo.
Not rent. Sorry, that was the wrong choice of word.
Adopt a hippo as well.
Not rent. That's animals.
You can do this with plants as well.
In Shanghai, they have a cloud adoption service for an ordinary tree.
It will only cost you dozens of yuan or up to several hundred yuan.
But they also have cloud adopting services for ancient or famous trees with historical and cultural value.
Those are a lot more expensive, though.
Those can cost tens of thousands of yuan.
So you can cloud adopt animals or you can cloud adopt plants, too.
What about working out alone?
solo fitness studios apparently is on the rise too yeah i kind of like the idea of this this is a private room with basic fitness facilities you have your treadmills and your dumbbells and your yoga mats or whatever some of the fancy ones even have ai private trainers which is pretty cool these are really
convenient because they're open 24 hours and then you can arrange your schedule and book a room on an app and then you pay each time you use the room or for the time period that You use it so you don't pay an annual membership.
It's a lot more affordable and accessible too.
Maybe you have to compete with other people's schedules a little bit, right?
Because you have to make a reservation, but still quite impressive.
It sounds like an economically viable way to do it because people living alone, sometimes they live in a studio or in a one -bedroom apartment.
They don't necessarily have the room for all the fitness gadgets and utilities.
So therefore, it makes sense for people who are really into it to pay money to rent the time.
Yes, and we've covered so much ground of people doing stuff on themselves, but apparently we are human beings after all, and we crave companionship.
So how are folks engaged in solo living getting that part sorted out?
Yeah, this is a fun one.
So if you're a gamer or you enjoy playing video games, you can get somebody to accompany you to play video games with you.
This is kind of cool.
They can be an expert in that game, so they can help you with strategy or what have you and help you improve your skills.
That's one example.
Then there's AI companions, AI therapists, for example.
We've talked about the AI therapists on Roundtable as well.
Those are powered by large language models.
And those are available 24 -7.
And then AI virtual partners for real emotional interactions that are simulated through text or voice conversations.
Those are available, too.
Coming up next, Motivational Monday.
Motivational Mondays And this is our Motivational Monday segment Lai Meng, what do you have for us?
Well, we talk about living alone So I asked Deep Seek to find me a quote About enjoy life while living alone And Deep Seek didn't disappoint He found out something about Well, scholar Lin Yutan the guy who was a writer and in fact inventor of the Chinese typewriter he was well known for his book The
Importance of Living in Chinese 生活的艺术 I think I recorded him once on the Motivational Monday and today I have a quote about living alone from him and he said Solitude when broken down has children, melons, a little dog and flies, enough to fill a summer evening at the entrance of a lane.
This is very hard to understand unless you understand Chinese characters.
He is actually breaking down the Chinese characters for gu du.
Steve, you're learning Chinese.
Slowly. I'm showing you the characters.
I haven't gotten to gu du yet.
You know Chinese characters, they are highly pictographic.
Yes. So they have different components.
Standing for different, sometimes it's a meaning, sometimes it's a pronunciation.
So what Lin Yu Han did was he broke down the two words for Gu Du.
And so there are different parts standing for children, for melons, for dogs, and for flies.
So by breaking down the two characters, he's really painting a picture of a somewhat lonely alley or lane in Beijing, Qutong.
And then you have children playing loudly beside you, and you have melon.
You have a little dog by your side, and it's summertime, so the noisy background.
And then you were enjoying some cool melon.
So the point is even if you're seeing all those things by yourself, you can still enjoy them?
Right. So these little details, little things in your life that you can enjoy even as you live alone or with people around you.
So this is quite the thing that I would recommend to you guys to try and pay attention to the little things in your life.
Wow, very nice. Mine is from a painter, an artist, and a teacher.
His name is Hans Hoffman.
And this is the quote.
And the reason I chose this is because over the weekend, we were doing some serious spring cleaning.
Serious. Serious, yeah, high -level spring cleaning.
And a friend of mine was talking about decluttering.
So here's the quote.
The ability to simplify means to eliminate the unnecessary so that the necessary may speak.
and I thought that was a very poetic way of saying if you get rid of the excess clutter in your life, the things that you keep in your life will have more of an opportunity to be the star or to showcase, meaning you'll pay more attention to those things.
This is the logic that I use to convince my son to get rid of his toys.
Look at the toys that you stuffed in the corner.
You never played them, so that means they're lost to you.
Remember what Hans Hoffman said?
Now you've got the quote.
And I wonder if you were like me spending the weekend playing Fung Datong, or his English name is Hao Liu Fong's song on loop.
Since the late 2000s, Fung Datong was a unique voice in Chinese R &B, weaving together soul, R &B, and an Eastern sense of subtlety with his signature warmth.
His music felt both intimate and universal.
speaking to Mando pop listeners of the millennial and Gen Z generations.
And he passed away at just 41 years old.
The news broke over the weekend, announced by his record label.
For the past five years, he's been quietly fighting major health issues.
Yet he never stopped creating music and art.
His final album, Meng Xiang Jia, or The Dreamer, now feels like a gentle farewell, one filled not with sorrow but with love, hope, and the quiet strength that defined him.
His song Only 23 feels even more profound now.
And here's my favorite lyric.
青春是一个梦 ,人生如一阵春风 Youth is but a fleeting dream.
Life, a whisper of the spring breeze.
Fang Datong was more than just a brilliant musician.
He was a person of decency, humility, and grace.
He didn't seek the spotlight, yet his influence was undeniable.
And I want to share with you this song.
It's about making the dream come true and fulfilling a passion of yours lifelong.
that's what I get from Fang Datong's life story.
So take that dream you've been holding onto, starting it, chasing it, living it.
Time doesn't wait, but every moment is a chance to build something meaningful, create something beautiful.
With that, I want to share with you Fang Datong's Song ,才 23, Only 23, from his 2024 and final album, The Dreamer.
And that brings us to the end of today's roundtable.
Thank you so much, Steve Hatherley and Lai Meng for joining the show.
Thank you for tuning in.
You can find us on Apple Podcasts at Roundtable China.
I'm He Yang. We'll see you next time.
