Hello, I’m Cheng Qing. Welcome to Relief for Life: Forty Introductions to Buddhism.

Earlier we explored Buddhism’s understanding of suffering. This episode returns to contemporary life and its real love and pain.

News that four young people attempted suicide together at Zhangjiajie shocked many and exposed neglected lives. Three jumped from a cliff; a young woman who was stopped nevertheless died after taking poison beforehand.

Reports suggested all had left poor hometowns early for difficult migrant work. Repeated family crises and rising pressure may finally have destroyed their confidence in life.

Years ago, a young Hunan migrant worker in Guangdong disappeared after leaving a note:‘A lifetime of toil without success; exhausted, not knowing where to go; unable to escape poverty or find a path, establish a career, or support my parents—is this not tragic? What use is merely not dying?’”

The words draw on Zhuangzi while adding the young man’s own lament:‘Unable to establish a career or support my parents.’It expresses the hardship of countless people today. Sadly, he grasped Zhuangzi’s sharpness but not the freedom behind his insight.

After decades of rapid growth, hidden corners still contain suffering from deprivation. Basic subsistence may be possible, yet society’s wealth remains an unreachable dream. Grueling labor cannot buy the desired life. Young people joke about factory assembly work, but repetition consumes body and mind and leaves a dim future. Ideal lives appear close on short-video screens, making reality more bitter.

What of urban professionals and the new middle class? Before graduate school I edited finance at a Pudong newspaper. Early in Shanghai’s development, white-collar incomes were strong, housing remained attainable, and the future seemed bright. Twenty years later we hear complaints about 996 schedules, fear of layoffs by technology giants, and anxiety over mortgages.

Middle-aged people online fear unemployment, bodily decline, and crushing family responsibility. Career worries combine with concern for children. Some emigrate, yet adapting culturally and psychologically abroad is difficult even with financial freedom. To many, merely having that choice already looks enviable.