This is Tom Jia. He’s a 28-year-old lifestyle influencer who calls himself a — Tangping, or “lying flat:” It’s a fast-growing lifestyle, rejecting social pressures to overwork and pursue material success. In China, young people face intense pressure to work grueling hours, buy a house and get married. Some are quietly rebelling and choosing to do the bare minimum, living a low-income, low-desire life away from the big cities. Tom’s role: making videos to teach them how and where to live an affordable, stress-free life. Before, Tom became a “lying flat” influencer with 400,000 followers, he was one of many young people feeling burned out by the big city grind. Tom was living in Shenzhen, one of the most expensive cities in China. In 2023, Tom quit his job, bought an R.V. and set out to scout China’s best cities for “lying flat.” He has turned this firsthand research into a video series and a spreadsheet that now includes over 100 cities. In this video, he’s introducing the fourth edition of this “lying flat” city guide. Each place Tom visits, he talks to residents, tours apartments and films the different neighborhoods. After that, he rates each city using a dozen different criteria, like public transit, affordability and how much nature you have access to. After China’s housing market went bust in 2021, the country entered into a prolonged economic downturn. That’s a big part of why “lying flat” became more popular. The collapse of the housing market left smaller cities like this one with a glut of empty apartments, making housing relatively cheap. Today, Tom is exploring this town, Haikou, at the request of his followers. Between streaming revenue and viewer donations, Tom’s “lying flat” influencer work now pays for about half of his monthly expenses. Tom’s new apartment, in the city of Kunming, includes a view of the mountains and costs a fifth of what he used to pay in Shenzhen.
