5 hours ago
4
Somewhere in Zhejiang province, China, a woman is living my dream. She gets up in the morning and then, almost immediately, goes back to bed. She lies prostrate all day long, scrolling, eating some food, opening some packages, showering at 2am, then snoozing again. As a longtime sleep enthusiast – and the mother of a child who thinks that 5am is a good time to start the day, all systems go – I think this sounds like bliss.
The woman in Zhejiang is known as @jiawensishi – and also “rat person”. I am not being rude; that’s what she calls herself. There are lots of rat people out there: it’s a whole trend in China. You might have heard of the “lying flat” movement a few years ago, when young people lazed around displaying symptoms of mild depression, and some thinkers, including the novelist Liao Zenghu, theorised that it was a passive-aggressive resistance movement, rebelling against the demands of materialism and capitalism. Well, “rat people” are a rodenty reboot.
You may be a rat person if you lack any desire to climb the career ladder as well as any desire to do, well, anything except for eating, sleeping and scrolling. Moving to the UK is, apparently, a risk factor for going full rodent. According to the South China Morning Post, “Chinese students studying abroad in the UK are among the most visible examples of rat people. Faced with grey, rainy skies and high living costs, many of them choose to stay indoors, avoiding social interaction to conserve their mental and physical energy.”
It is a principle of the 21st century that if something can be monetised, then it will be monetised. And despite the fact that rat people are supposed to be rebelling against the demands of hustle culture, a fair few seem to be leaning into it. A cartoon character called Big Rat, the unofficial mascot of the movement, has been slapped on merch and reportedly brought in over one million yuan (US$140,000) in sales. According to Bloomberg, “One influencer named Wang Yutong has already started using the ‘rat person’ idea to promote a skincare product.”
The crypto kids are going to get in on this and we’re going to have a RatCoin soon, aren’t we? You can stay in bed all you like, but capitalism doesn’t sleep.
