Perhaps East Asians Can Attain More Liberated, Unrestrained Lives

May 5, 2025

Written by Liang YU

A self-deprecating adage circulates across Chinese social media: "Koreans never sleep, Japanese never eat, Chinese never take vacations." Although a little bit exaggerated, this sentence reveals the “beautiful” East Asian mental states. Constrained by limited territories or massive populations, exacerbated by widening class divisions and wealth disparities, ordinary people find few opportunities to achieve success. Finally, this phenomenon causes higher social competition and overexertion, jokingly dubbed "East Asia's three overachievers."

In South Korea, the philosophy of "four hours to pass, five hours to fail" prevails - the belief that four hours' sleep ensures university admission while five hours brings failure. Under crushing academic pressure, students dare not rest. Cram schools blaze with light at midnight, students have no choice but to stick into paper mountains, as a result, their sleep ruthlessly compressed. When these youths grow up, Seoul's glitzy nightlife attracts them so much, with midnight gym sessions and iced Americanos gulped at dawn to restart the perpetual cycle.

Chinese society universally reveres the Confucian tenet that "all occupations are low, only study is exalted." Parents of underachieving students face familial shame, their children branded "futureless." A university diploma often represents an entire family's desperate upward thrust. What’s behind are bitter pills and endless tears, which will metabolize into generational inheritance.

Within East Asia's Confucian framework, Japan maintains the most strict and complex family rules, always hierarchy. Japanese women typically adopt husbands' surnames after their marriage, most automatically becoming homemakers responsible for childrearing and domestic duties. Major decisions remain the domain of elders and male patriarchs through rigid seniority systems. This culture would restrain the development of youths to some extent while breeding psychological negative emotions.

Although people are beginning to become aware of these problems and make conscious corrections, change does not happen overnight, the awakening of women's consciousness and the struggle for a higher quality of life still need to be continued.

In my eyes, many Chinese youths are now longing to the westward lives- not for other reasons, but for Europe's enlightened family dynamics, above-average wealth distribution, and lives which could embrace more choice and error. Online laments like "mom, life is in boundless wilderness" versus "my life walks on thin ice" reveal a generation yearning for spontaneous adventures, courageous self-determination, and luminous futures unshackled from family burdens.