discussion keeps the world turning this is roundtable happy new year everyone as we step into 2025 let's take a moment to look back at trends in socializing mastering new skills and entertainment preferences of 2024 we've also got your unforgettable milestones memories and moments that made the year
pop stay tuned for all the juicy highlights coming to you from beijing i'm he young joined by liming and steve hatherley in the studio first on today's show 2025 is officially here ready or not let's rewind and reflect on the vibrant year of 2024 a year where sugar -free socializing and dads meetups
became the ultimate way to connect from reinventing social places to embracing new ways of learning and consuming entertainment young people in china have been leading the charge in reshaping how we interact with the world around us so liming you know what young people are doing in china does he i'm
not sure i would assume there'll be is this our go -to correspondent on this topic kind of owed no you're forever young my friend and you can research you keep in touch and you know in tune with what's going on in china so how do young people prefer to socialize well apparently they're into something
they call a zero sugar socializing and very interesting not something that you would commonly use for something outside of coke but anyway they're borrowing the concept from beverage marketing strategies and they're using it in the field of socializing and now zero sugar socializing means today's young
people do not want to overly rely on others for emotional value and they want to maintain a certain distance from those around them in social interactions in this way there won't be excessive social expectations while maintaining one's personality it can effectively avoid the pressure brought by social
interactions keeping one's social behaviors in a more relaxed and free state are there pressures with social interactions i find these terms and this topic interesting in the sense that it's kind of um an intangible thing you can't put your finger on this right so what does it mean that there's pressure
in social interactions these well there are extroverts and there are introverts i'm sure you are familiar with that of course but there have always been extroverts and introverts and ambiverts which is the combination of the two right so i'm just wondering is this social pressure somehow new or is it
just that it's always been there and it wasn't really clearly defined before well i would think that it's always been there because like you said earlier there's always introverts there's always extroverts but we are talking about a trend that we notice or the over the internet and i think that makes
a difference because well the extroverts will presumably be being out there talking to people partying you know they don't have time for anything over the internet whereas now we're getting tendencies getting the latest updates from the internet then presumably these are all introverts you know they
they spend time over the internet they talk about their quirky preferences and tendencies you know so i think they shape the dialogue and discussions over the internet which is why zero sugar socializing is now dominating the discussion because this zero sugar socializing sounds suspiciously like the evasive
kind of character in the category of introverts i mean you're not particularly introverts to the point that you don't want to go out and socialize with anybody at all you're not a recruits but you're the kind of person who wouldn't initiate contact with somebody unless it's absolutely necessary but once
you are in contact with people outside you may be able to enjoy that connection so the evasive kind of character i think that's the point that we're talking about with regard to zero sugar socializing to have this kind of successful relationship i think that you need to have all parties on the same
page and it kind of reminds me of dating in the sense where if one person is looking for a serious relationship you know you go on this first date and you know what you want before you arrive at the first date right one person is looking for a serious relationship the other person is looking for something
more casual well right from the beginning that doesn't have a great chance of success right we can apply this to friendship as well if one person is looking for a partner a friend to hang out with all the time and go do stuff with all the time and talk deeply about their emotions with but the other
is looking for a zero sugar relationship well then that's not going to work however if both parties are into that more casual friendship where there's less pressure about sharing your deep feelings then in this case this can be successful and i think it can be really successful in the sense that you
don't have any expectations i think friendships a lot of the times fail because one person might have too high expectations of the other person and when that other person doesn't come through then even though there were no promises made per se then still there's a level of hurt that exists there and it
damages the friendship right so the pressure might arise from the accusation how dare you steve hattley go on and have malatan didn't ask me about it and didn't invite me there no it's true i asked him for a recommendation for malatang just a couple of days ago and i didn't even invite liming to enjoy
it with me how rude oh wow so some members of the society might feel that that is a kind of a stress if i fail to ask my friend for malatang will my friend feel bad about our relationship and you know that it was zero sugar malatang what can i say well i suppose definitely maybe this can only happen
in the 21st century when the internet is everywhere so pervasive and because these folks they're looking up for potential suitors no that's not the right word okay a potential friend or just a dad or you know this person online so it's almost like all people who are looking for this online and you come
together you kind of have that shared expectation to a certain level and that is great in the internet world but also i would possibly argue that this might not have all that much to do with the personality of extroverts or introverts or ambiverts in the middle because in china if you're fully immersed
in the chinese way of dealing with social relationships i think most of us regardless of our personalities we feel a little bit of the stress or pressure that is you're building on your guanxi or your connections and then with that it comes with expectations like you mentioned steve and then it's such
an integral part of how the social roles interact with each other and i think for a lot of us you just feel like if you want to have a relationship with someone then you gotta participate in some shape or form in those more traditional relationships and that's why when we're looking at today or actually
in the social relationship trends of 2024 the things that pop up all have this shared prerequisite that is we want low commitment relationships but we still want to interact and we don't just want to be strangers that you know we have nothing in common or that kind of thing right so i guess it's about accumulating
more shallow friendships shallow well shallow it has a negative connotation doesn't it that word but i don't mean it negatively i just mean surface level relationships so you accumulate more of those as opposed to having one or two or three deep deep deep relationships or or many deep relationships
and therefore you still get the fulfillment of the social interactions but you don't get the pressure of the deep relationship right i think the term guanxi might be specific in the chinese context but i think the concept is not entirely exclusive in the chinese culture because in the west you have the term
for networking so i think the game or the practice of helping people know each other and specifically in the chinese context if you are invited to a dinner if you know that this is a relatively stable relationship and stable network that you already have what is customary for you to bring somebody else
that the others don't already know to sort of expand and broaden the network and that can be a burden and stress and it's a game in and of itself not everybody is in the game not everybody enjoys it but it's just a game that we play socially whereas now i think with the rise of the internet and the ease
of making friends outside of our usual and normal daily contact of people i think people now have a greater tendency to enjoy other parts of their lives and not every kind of relationship is based on well helping expand our network exploring possibility of the future cooperation you know that kind of thing
so which is why um yeah there is a far cry from the the older traditional practice of getting more people in the network and expanding ads and then get things done you know yeah and also even the word friend sounds like too much pressure for some people and that's why they go for the other alternative
with less pressure and less expectation attached is that is that is i was just about to ask you mentioned that term before what does that mean well it's a term we use to describe the people we invite or we get on board when we do things very specific things for instance in the office you might notice
i go to lunch work lunch with uh near holly very often but when she's not around i turn to somebody else and there's the the dazu when people go to get hot water it might be a different group of people when they do a different type of activity so it's not like we are bonded forever we get water together
we go to lunch together we get off work together we do everything together it's not anything that permanent it's more like a modular kind of relationship when you do this you get this model in and you when you do that you get this model but only that the models are people right and on social media it's
everywhere you see these posts of asking or looking for potential bads so this is like a temporary companion temporary is the key word here so even when let's say you know for the new year's vacation you want to go to a new city and you don't have a friend coming with you just go online go to maybe
one of these platforms and shoot a message let's say going to ching dao beijing to ching dao at 9 a .m tomorrow morning looking for a dazu and then somebody will come up and say oh i'm going too and let's go together it can be as casual as that so people are using in china social media platforms to find
these temporary friends i feel like that's not the scenario based scenario based friends it's so it sounds so analytical yeah right again not friends just a companion so i guess another example might be if you're going hiking right if you want to go to the great wall and go for a hike but you don't
have anybody to go with you go on social media say i'm going to the great wall at this time anybody want to go yeah and then your relationship is in that particular moment on that particular day yeah and who knows it may i guess it may blossom into a friendship it may but it may not and that's totally
okay that's totally okay people going into that kind of relationship knowing what to expect to avoid becoming like socially awkward i mean actually this is something i've always thought like um let's say in the u .s or in the u .k or what especially with those married people often they have parties with married
people and then you have to bring someone with you and i just feel that's a lot of pressure for us you know single and fabulous people so i've always thought oh wow i mean yeah i actually do have a friend who could accompany me to those like the stand -in boyfriends like otherwise i'm perfectly fine
going by myself but if it's like a couple's thing then yeah i mean there are these pressures and things and then people oh and with the dots of thing it's more like you don't really want to show up alone sometimes and sometimes as a woman i can particularly say this if you go hiking or go to some of these
um events that you've never been to it just feels kind of safer to have a weight man with you yeah but hopefully well coming with a stranger though doesn't sound like a great idea in terms of safety but i can understand why having a plus one however you can find this person can become useful from time
to time so it's not that chinese younger people or younger chinese people are not socializing it's not like people are just staying at home and playing video games or watching movies or whatever i'm surprised or not because i i'm still under the impression that they're still wiping on their smartphones
and looking for friends yeah but it's just that people are now socializing in a different way than they use to socialize it's kind of a cool trend i think because it's not about being shy is it it's the exact opposite young people are willing to go out there and meet new people yeah it's just like i
said in the beginning there's no expectations for the relationship whatsoever which keeps things nice and light and fun and airy and yeah it's fantastic absolutely and that is definitely a relatively new trend that's been blossoming in china in the last couple of years and what are the preferred ways
for them to learn apparently young people are going to night schools these days night schools yeah it's been years since i heard the word because last time i heard i think it was in the 1990s when my parents were talking about you know it was the age of reform and opening up and all of a sudden people
realized that they didn't know enough they haven't received proper education enough to be able to do things that they wanted to do which is why at night schools were kind of a thing back in the days and why is it a thing now well this is from china daily and this is from june of this year and it's not about going
to school in the evening to take classes like accounting or bookkeeping or things like that it's more by the sounds of things hobby based and night schools across the country have become kind of a hot thing in march of of 2024 there was a report from jinhua news agency that talked about the fact that in shanghai
there's a place called shanghai citizen night school for arts and it launched 680 courses for the spring semester that is i don't think my university had 680 different courses anyway listen to how many people were attracted to this 730 000 students for their online classes that's one example here's
another in may of 2024 wuhan youth night school they served more than 8 000 students with 228 courses which pales in comparison to the seven what was it the 680 courses from the other program but still a huge a number of classes available and like i said it's not about studying accounting at night the classes
offered there were ranging from tango to the type of dance to street photography to hand brewed coffee to graffiti psychology i didn't even know there was graffiti psychology um lots of different types of things and yeah there are sciency things offered to a mineral identification and collection for two
reasons and how cool that these types of classes are offered in the first place and how cool is it that young people are finding an interest you know you go to your office job from nine to five or whatever it is and then in the evening time you seek out things that you're interested in i love it i think
it's fantastic it's nice to have something to do rather than swiping on your phone and looking for the next short video that you may or may not enjoy yeah i noticed from the recent topics on roundtable that maybe there's a tendency already that people have grown rather sick of you know short videos
and smartphones and they've grown very perhaps this what might add extra stress or burden on their eye side or their eye health and now they're looking for something more real and fun you know i think now people find perhaps staying at home in the evening and watching tv or watching your drama or whatever
for hours after work is not fulfilling anymore so people want to get out and they want to learn something fun and it's the night schools that have taken up that role to fill the void which is really unexpected for me and also apparently these night schools offer really affordable tuition yeah they have offers
of trial classes which is a really great idea because for people who you know may not want to commit for you know three or four months or however long a program might be and they might not know that they're interested in tango right but they want to give it a shot have you ever taken a dancing class
limey not at all i thought not not even for free i thought so i just wanted to confirm but yeah those types of things are available so you can take a class a trial class for as cheap as 9 .9 yuan for example that's about a dollar 30 a dollar 40 per class so you can do it on a class by class basis if you
want and there's proof that this is popular because the search volume for the keyword trial class has increased over 350 month on month on demand service platform matron yeah well there might be a catch here and that is unfortunately on the course providers that is you know for trial classes or the trial
product of any sort usually they come in free or at a dirt cheap price like you just mentioned and the intention is that oh you've had a sniff of this you're gonna love it sure and then you'll pay for the actual thing but these smart young people sometimes they're only here for the tasting yeah i mean i
i once took a one -day norwegian food cooking class oh it wasn't in beijing it was in korea but i just found it by scrolling online and i thought well i'm not doing anything today and i didn't do the daiju thing i didn't go online and advertise that i'm going to norwegian cooking class i went by myself
and i think it was fifteen dollars or twenty dollars or something like that but it was there was a norwegian person to teach you i don't know if they were i don't know who they were but anyway they taught me how to make some norwegian food and it was really fun really enjoyed the afternoon now these
options are available on the platform like you mentioned earlier mei tuan and i think it's good for whoever that's running these courses to come up with free trials or affordable trial courses because when people are booking their trials you leave data on these platforms and the more trial courses you
can offer the more data you show and perhaps that would help attract more people to your course of course the only cost is that when you are doing these trial courses you're not exactly making money but who's to say i mean even influential very successful businesses they spent big money on making their
services known and promoting their products so that to me is a form of promotion yeah i was teasing you before about the dance class the reason i brought it up is because my wife has been pushing me to take latin dance oh so we went one night to a latin dance like event that was happening and i tried
i tried that's that's the point right i tried well if isn't my wife pushing me to do that perhaps i'll do it yeah i mean it's not like i want to learn the dance it's more like a relationship maintenance kind of yeah i don't think i have a career as a latin dancer in the future but but at least i tried
yeah and that's the point right is that young people are out there they're trying these new classes to try to find a new hobby it's it's really wonderful and aside from these things young people are finding new ways to enjoy their free time and enough people doing it it will become a trend bathing centers
that offer fantastic facility of bathing but it's a public area and also sometimes offering you spas and massages of all sorts and apparently people can even go for a buffet so tell me how popular is this bathing trend well young people aged 25 to 35 take up over 50 of customers in bathing centers in cities
such as beijing sha and wuhan and xian and data from may 20 in august 2024 showed that the search volume for bathing increased by 40 on the platform and the search for keywords related to bathing and accommodation has grown hundreds of times and the search for bathing and buffet has also tripled and in the beginning
of 2024 the bathing service in northeast china became popular after many people from south china enjoyed it i have to say that the kind of cultural shock is at play here because coming from southern china we are used to taking baths at home and not even baths with showers at home and individual booths
there was not exposure no contact with other people you know so and then moving to shanghai and to my university years and my first shock of my campus life was going into a public bath and then everybody takes off their clothes and walks naked into you know the shower that was mind -blowing so and then
it took me a few more years to know that in fact in northern even more northern part of the country is apparently a culture for people to hang out in shower robes and they don't just take showers because that could only take five 10 15 minutes there are a bunch of activities that can do like play marjan and have snacks
and buffet sometimes they snack and they go to take a bath and they compact it to they have more snack and they continue eating and then play marjan i don't know is that it's an occasion rather than than daily routine it was a culture shock to me too this is a part of the common culture in korea well
there's two types there's sauna or sauna which is only the different hot and cold tubs and then they have jim jilbang which is the hot rooms and then the common areas where you sit and eat food and there's restaurants there and yeah when i first went to a sauna the public bath house that was a very
it was a very very shocking experience for me in canada we don't have anything like that but you know you quickly adjust to it and it's very relaxing it's a great way to spend the day so this culture then for young people in china this would be something perhaps that the older generations would comfortably
do but younger people would shy away from i guess in the past it was but now young people are leading to charge and these are an upgraded version of you know the traditional bath houses sure you get a buffet too oh yeah the old day is much more humble now fancy from these playful connections to relaxing
retreats 2024 showed us that the chinese youth are all about keeping it light fun and meaningful and here's to carrying the vibe into 2025
