Twenty-four-year-old Lin Yu was a groomsman for the first time.
He carefully prepared a formal suit: a dark-colored, neatly styled shirt and trousers. He'd never had the same enthusiasm for dressing up when he was job hunting. His college roommate, who lived in another city, was getting married and had specifically told him, "Don't wear your ever-present sports jersey." Lin Yu teased his roommate about his mature demeanor but solemnly agreed.
Wearing the mature clothes, Lin Yu felt a strange, yet delightfully troubled feeling. Others' weddings, his own self-imposed norms—for this college graduate, life seemed to be settling into a normalized routine.
Lin Yu belonged to what society interpreted as the "egocentric" generation. The tide of consumerism had swept them from childhood to adolescence. At the same time, they lived in a rapidly changing era, a time when idealism had faded, requiring them to undergo a rocket-like transformation from naivety to sophistication, from ignorance to shrewdness in the shortest possible time.
Their adolescence was destined to be shorter than ever before.
Frustrated by reality and their own shortcomings
, the expansion of university enrollment after 2003 led to a sustained surge in employment, and the cost-effectiveness of studying altered the traditional function of higher education. The ivory tower of yesteryear was shattered by a chaotic value system, wavering between de-idealization and maintaining a detached spirit. The meaning of cultivating elites was lost, and as society lamented that Chinese universities had become vocational training grounds, lacking practical application, a widespread sense of disparity resonated with this generation. "Graduation equals unemployment" was not an exaggerated panic, but a harsh reality that most people had to face.
In contrast, there was another point of reference: the arrogance and unearned wealth of the "second-generation officials" and "second-generation rich." Ordinary young people didn't even need to get information from the internet or newspapers, because their peers among the "second-generation officials" and "second-generation rich" might be right beside them. The social value judgment that "only status can change status" was deeply ingrained in their still-developing value system.
"Even if you complete your studies step by step, there's no guarantee of a good future. For ordinary people, this is an era where you've already lost at the starting line," said Lin Yu. Perhaps it was this mindset that led him to choose to "drift along."
In his second semester of freshman year, Lin Yu failed a course. When the school sent the transcript home, he and his parents didn't think much of it. The family hadn't yet cooled down from the joy of their son being admitted to a top university in Beijing. In 2006, the devaluation of university degrees and the difficulty of finding employment were hot topics in society, but this didn't affect the excessive expectations for higher education in a western county town; entering university was still a mythical future. Amidst waves of envy and congratulations, Lin Yu was sent to Beijing by his parents.
Like a curse, he failed more and more courses. The boy, on whom high hopes were placed, became addicted to online games and football. The fact that many students at the school couldn't obtain dual certificates further increased his sense of security, automatically shielding him from his inner anxieties. "Judging from the failure rate at that time, there were quite a few people; some even dropped out before four years were up," Lin Yu tried to find the reason for his mindset at the time. "I don't mean, look, there are others worse than me; there must have been a relatively common underlying factor influencing us."
By the time he realized the collapse was out of control, graduation was just around the corner. "When I realized I couldn't get both certificates, I started to give up entirely. I felt all my efforts were in vain." He gave up any chance to salvage the situation and left the school with only a graduation certificate. "On the day of parting, everyone said it was nothing, but everyone knew what it meant." Despite
the illusory reversal
, Lin Yu had considered alternative paths, which he called a comedic entrepreneurial plan. He constantly revisited classic football comebacks. In the 2004-2005 Champions League final, Liverpool faced AC Milan. AC Milan, having scored three goals in the first half, seemed to have the victory firmly in their grasp. However, Liverpool scored three goals in the second half and ultimately won the championship through penalties. Every time Lin Yu watched this match, he was filled with excitement, worshipping it like a religion. He began to stubbornly believe that his life would only be related to football. He
noticed that many people still wanted to return to school to play football after starting work, but there wasn't a good venue, competition, or information platform. This might be a business opportunity; he could create a website similar to a football league. This idea rekindled his long-dormant passion, and he began sketching website pages and templates on paper. After a month of focused effort, he realized that his so-called creativity was nothing but empty talk. He couldn't clearly explain his target audience or profit model to others. The joy that football brought him was worlds apart from the value he could convert into. "Interest is one thing, reality is another," Lin Yu said.
"Actually, I just projected the football comebacks onto real life, mutating into a kind of morbid arrogance and gambling mentality," Lin Yu dissected himself. He felt that this was also the source of his rebellious youth mentality. Academic failures and the fear of unemployment could be released in the pleasure of browsing the news online while cursing the injustices of society and the system. This was a common growth experience for his peers. The massive influx of online information brought them into contact with society prematurely. The noise and chaos presented on the computer screen were far more dramatic and attractive than real life. Paying attention to others was like taking a painkiller to temporarily forget one's own predicament.
The comebacks in football were not real life, and Lin Yu began to wake up.
A classmate promised to introduce Lin Yu to his small company, with low requirements and a monthly salary of 2,000 yuan. However, after waiting for more than a month, nothing came of it. Lin Yu decided to return to his hometown to learn small business from his relatives, thinking he still had some value in terms of "strength." However, he quickly dismissed the idea. His relatives' lottery shop only earned 10 cents per ticket sold; the restaurant owners around him had to get up before dawn, and everyone had to be shrewd and resourceful. This was his first real encounter with the realities of the lower class. "It turns out that manual labor isn't something everyone can do," Lin Yu began to feel that he didn't belong to this group. "It wasn't like in novels, with all that determination and hard work. Although I didn't have a clear idea, I felt I should do something."
According to the Ministry of Education's regulations, university students who receive a certificate of completion can retake the exams within two years to obtain a graduation certificate. With only six months left, Lin Yu decided to pick up his books again. He began to re-evaluate the importance of education in this society. His roadmap gradually became clearer: although he wouldn't get a degree certificate, with a graduation certificate, he could take the postgraduate entrance exam, and the new degree would wash away the stain of being a graduate with only a certificate of completion. He desperately wanted to escape his inferior status and return to the ranks of young people considered normal by society.
However, luck seemed to have vanished after the college entrance exam. He buried himself in his studies at home, took the train to Beijing for the exam, and made up for each failed course, only to fail in the last one. A score of 55 sealed his utter failure.
Lin Yu said, "There were many conflicts with my family during that time. Sometimes I would sit and stare blankly, not knowing what I was thinking." Only then did he truly open his wounds and examine the mistakes he had made. He couldn't understand what price he would have to pay to make up for four wasted years.
Lin Yu returned to Beijing and started making resumes and looking for jobs. He hoped to rise again from where he had fallen. Although his resume was almost devoid of content on a single page, he was finally learning to break free from his parasitic existence. A month later, a small company hired Lin Yu with a monthly salary of 3,000 yuan. He told his parents the news calmly.
"In any case, I've regained that long-lost sense of routine. Even though my classmates are almost finished with their master's degrees, do you think they wasted their time?" Lin Yu no longer insists on his "education is useless" theory. Although he still rents a bed and has to commute two hours to work every day, he knows that at 24, he is finally no longer an "outlier." Occasionally, he wonders if societal pressure, family expectations, and his own future are things that youth should bear.
This is no longer an era where youth is capital. The empiricism of the industrial assembly line demands that everyone mature quickly. In a fiercely competitive society, youth that makes mistakes is swiftly and ruthlessly discarded, making "being yourself" seem both useless and absurd. When power and wealth in China are solidified into the material possessions inherited and enjoyed by the current "second generation," the horizontal disparities among them far surpass those of any previous era. Only those with specific lineage and inheritance possess the leisurely ease and the capital to indulge themselves. For an ordinary young person, falling behind at one step leads to falling behind at every step—that is their most realistic path forward. The so-called "comeback" is nothing more than a self-comforting fantasy.
(By Zhang Moning)
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