The Situation of PhD Students, Beijing Is About to Explode!! People from Before Simply Cannot Understand the Current Circumstances! The Weight of the Times! Qiqi Baba TALK "Refresh Your Mind 785" 20261001

This episode explores the widespread confusion and heavy life pressures permeating current society by sharing the real-life experiences and inner voices of several ordinary Chinese people. The content covers the dual anxieties of marriage and job hunting faced by older unmarried youth, the grassroots struggles of a full-time mother balancing childcare and food delivery to make a living, the employment predicament of a doctoral student in the 2026 autumn recruitment who applied to over 100 companies only to repeatedly face ghosting and setbacks, and a profound analysis of how poverty destroys personal energy and hope. The host points out that contemporary Chinese people generally bear meticulous, ubiquitous heavy pressure and pain.

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Hello everyone, welcome to Qi Qi Baba, I am Qi Qi.

Today is September 29, I was born in 1994 and I am 32 years old this year. I feel like my life is ruined; I have no work, no marriage, the disdain and disappointment of my parents and family, as well as my own helplessness and despair toward life. Efforts before achieving success are never seen; what they see is only your lack of enthusiasm for life and your apathy when advised by others. They will not know that at this moment you are already on the verge of a breakdown, what kind of torment your heart suffers every day, and the mindset of hitting a wall everywhere when looking for jobs. I think the person involved should be even more anxious than them. But today their words made me feel like I am worthless, and it seems I really am hopeless, aiming too high, afraid of hardship, and afraid of exhaustion—it seems all these describe me. Can you lower your standards for finding a partner? Can you lower your standards for finding a job? I can lower the standards for finding a job, but I really don't want to compromise on marriage. Although being alone right now is really exhausting and I can't see the end of it. Oh, I don't know how to advise you either, or how to enlighten myself. I, right now, I.

Myself, um, I feel like we have entered an era of universal confusion, just like the Age of Discovery in the past. It's not just because I recently quit my job, or because of platform algorithm recommendations; including my peers around me, my family and friends, almost no one says they don't feel workplace pressure. "I love my job" shows that this group of us is facing the same predicament. Because the education we received since childhood has actually been telling us the same correct path: get into a good university, find a good job, get promoted and get a raise, and become management. In fact, we should more or less recognize this meritocracy in our hearts, feeling that as long as we work hard enough, life will get better and better along this correct path. But is reality really that easy? First of all, stable jobs are getting harder and harder to find, let alone high pay, not to mention smooth promotions—a promotion is not necessarily something you can get just by working hard. Therefore, now we yearn for another kind of free life, which is being a self-media creator, developing side hustles, and making money to support ourselves. We don't ask for fame and fortune, high salaries, or glamour. But the problem is, in fact, the educational experiences of the past decade or so have all taught us to adapt to the first kind of life. Instead, many people don't know how to show their personality, and when doing self-media, they don't know what positioning they can do or what IP to build. In fact, their self-awareness is extremely vague, so right now neither path is easy to walk, and there are simply too many people caught in the middle in this gray state of great confusion. If this situation has become a mass phenomenon, then you cannot try to explain the mass phenomenon of this era by saying young people are too fragile.

Sometimes sadness is inevitable, but sadness is useless and cannot solve problems. I truly feel that every penny in this world is hard to earn, especially for full-time mothers like us who have to take care of children; earning every single penny is even more difficult. Today, delivering food, I was only on my fourth order, and Xigang assigned me an order to that place you can't enter. Because they were running an event recently, delivering there meant I had to walk 1.5 kilometers on foot. I didn't want to go deliver it because I had already suffered this loss the other day due to not knowing. Now that I know, I didn't want to deliver it, so I didn't. After not delivering it, they deducted six yuan from me.

Yes.

Later I kept delivering, right, kept delivering. Then order after order, I followed the navigation, and it navigated me there. Then I called the customer, and the customer said, "The place you delivered to is not at all um where I am. Why did you go there?" I said, "I don't know either, because I don't know the way, I just follow the navigation, and the navigation told me I have arrived at the destination." Later I told the customer, "Then how can I get to where you are right now?" Then they told me, um, and I followed along.

After walking, then I arrived.

After arriving, I found that my meal was dropped, dropped. So I went back to look for it, luckily I was lucky. Then I found that meal again, but when I headed back, I needed to contact the customer, and I found out—hey, the phone I was logged into had become like this.

In a deserted corner, listen.

Something went wrong, and then I couldn't contact the customer; the customer called me, and I couldn't contact them either. With no other choice, I could only choose to deliver this meal to them first. Although the meal was delivered to the customer's hands, I had no way to click to confirm receipt because the phone was in this state. Then I thought, I have another phone, I have several SIM cards, so I'll just change to another phone number. Then when I changed the phone number, it prompted me that the current rider has an order being delivered and cannot change the phone number. Hey, I thought again, if I went home, and then logged in again and clicked confirm receipt, would it prompt me that it was a fake delivery and then deduct my money? I looked around the shops and finally found a place that collected and repaired mobile phones, and he gave me that—the thing to change the SIM card.

Also.

Then I changed the SIM card for that phone, and finally logged in, and clicked delivered.

Full of worries, full.

I feel like my mindset is already very good.

I just.

However, encountering these things, all accumulated together, makes me feel: why is being a mother so hard? If I were not a mother, if I didn't have to take care of children, then I could choose many jobs. I wouldn't have to endure the scorching sun, brave the rain, and brave the wind to deliver food so hard; I could also find a slightly more relaxed job, get a slightly higher salary, and not be like this. But... why does this society treat moms...?

I am.

So.

Corner.

Coco.

Think about it.

I have been trying very hard to live my life. When I encountered problems, I didn't shrink back or get sad; instead, I was always thinking about how to solve them. But when I finished all these things and calmed down, standing from the perspective of a stay-at-home mom, I felt that being a mother is truly such a difficult thing. And wanting to be a hardworking, positive, and upward-striving mother is even harder, because there are so few jobs for us to choose from. If we stay at home, we feel anxious and suffer from internal friction; if we go out to do something, every job is truly not easy. It's not that the work itself is difficult, but that the things we stay-at-home moms can do are not easy, because we have to take care of our children, and our time and other aspects are all restricted. It's really so hard.

But.

What else can we do? We have been in this role for several years now; it's impossible to be defeated by just these little things. I'm very hungry, I haven't eaten for several hours. Now I'll finish the biscuits I bought this morning, and then go home.

No matter what.

How is it? Life is still.

Phone rings.

Still have to face it optimistically.

I know.

Because being sad is useless.

People living life are always...

Sometimes sadness is inevitable. But sadness is useless; it cannot solve problems.

's world will in an in.

It will be fine after it passes. Or in the end, I will still be optimistic.

We.

Face life positively.

In the days of.

Still will persist, persist in running.

Finished.

Because I have no other choice.

Even if I have no fixed abode, even if I face wind and rain, I must still smile and say I am okay.

Hello everyone. I would like to share my current job-hunting status as a PhD student in the 2027 graduating class participating in the autumn recruitment. As of now, from August until today, I have submitted my resume to about 100 companies, and I have only received interview invitations from two of them. The first one was a semiconductor company in Wuhan; I won't go into specific details. After submitting my resume and completing an online assessment, the HR called me to schedule a technical interview. When the time came, I logged into the meeting room, only to find that no one was there—the HR hadn't joined. I waited for about an hour and a half, and still, no one showed up. I immediately sent an email to the HR saying that no one was in the room and I couldn't find the interviewer, but I received no response. I realized then that I had been ghosted by the HR. The next morning, I sent another email, but still, no one replied. Okay, that was my first interview experience—just inexplicably ghosted by HR. Today, I had my second interview. I had applied to a semiconductor company in Hangzhou. After applying, I went to their offline presentation and direct-offer recruitment fair today. Today made me feel like my life is truly miserable. First of all, I arrived quite early, and since I was really interested in the position, I sat in the very front row, right in the middle, sitting right next to the HR. Later, after we submitted our resumes, the HR placed them in front of the technical director, who was sitting right next to me. He was looking through everyone's resumes. During his presentation, while he was screening the resumes, I witnessed the first moment that made me feel miserable: my major is Electronic Information, but the position I applied for was more materials-oriented. I watched him personally pick my resume out of the Electronic Information pile and toss it into the pile for Chemistry and Materials. That wasn't even the worst part. Then came the second point that made me feel miserable: he had to screen a subset of people from the many resumes to conduct on-site interviews and issue offers today. I personally watched him toss my resume into the pile of people who wouldn't be moving on to the interview stage. I felt like I was about to break down, witnessing this director discard my resume twice right in front of me. Of course, he didn't know I was the one sitting next to him; perhaps there were just too many excellent candidates. I thought that was the peak of my misery, but at the very end, there was a lucky draw session. The technical director was giving out a large red envelope for everyone at the recruitment fair to grab, and whoever was the luckiest would win a DJI gimbal. The HR started creating a group chat for everyone to join, and the director would send out a number of red envelopes corresponding to the number of people in the group. For example, if there were 100 people there, he would send 100 envelopes to ensure everyone got one. Whoever had the best luck would win the DJI gimbal. When it was my turn to grab one, and the results were announced, my world collapsed—I only got 1.5 yuan. But the director had sent out nearly 1,200 yuan in total, and there were only 80 people there. Everyone else got at least 20 or 30 yuan, while I got 1.5. I carefully checked the red envelope record, and I was the person who grabbed the smallest amount on the spot. I felt like my world was collapsing. It's one thing not to get the job, but to have such terrible luck with the red envelope? It's truly unbelievable. Anyway, having participated in these two rounds of interviews out of the 100 companies I applied to, my experience is that the 2027 autumn recruitment, even for PhDs, is just too difficult. Not to mention the current job-hunting situation for master's and PhD students in general. I'm not trying to create anxiety, but this is the reality. I've applied to 100 positions in these two months, and only two invited me for an interview. One ghosted me, and the other rejected me right to my face. I even grabbed the smallest red envelope. Who understands? Who understands my mental state right now? Be like.

Sigh.

Yes, life must go on. The job hunt must go on! I am currently by the lake at our student center. After being busy for two days, I feel even more exhausted than when I do all kinds of workouts. I suppose, um, in a little while I will just continue looking at some information online. Hang in there, Class of 2027 autumn campus recruiters! Hang in there, Class of 2027 autumn campus recruiters! Bye-bye! Don't get discouraged! Don't get discouraged! Don't get discouraged!

For the past two years, I've always heard people say the macro environment is bad, but I always felt it had nothing to do with me because when the macro environment was good, I didn't catch any trends or accomplish anything either. But this year, I really feel like this macro environment is affecting me. Although I feel like I might naturally not be suited for office jobs—I worked in offices for nearly ten years before, but I couldn't stick with any job for very long. I basically changed jobs every year, and I grew sick of every industry I worked in. But back then, whenever I wanted to find a job, um, within one to two weeks I could basically find one that could keep me fed. Yet recently, I've been submitting resumes for two weeks and haven't gotten a single interview notification; completely no one is paying attention to me. It gives me the feeling that this society simply doesn't need me anymore.

What to do? Being poor is actually very tiring, and this kind of tiredness isn't the kind that goes away after you sleep and rest for a bit; it's the kind that seeps out from your bones. You do it from morning till night, day after day. And I think many people currently underestimate the extent to which poverty destroys a person. I always see people online saying, you're poor because you don't work hard, you're poor because you don't change, as if poor people don't know they need to work hard. But in reality, people suffering from material scarcity often have much worse executive functioning—not because they are lazy, but because their energy is completely drained by the very act of staying alive. Take me in Shenzhen, for example. My first internship was in Houhai, which is in Nanshan, and the place I lived was just one subway station away from the company. But because the Nanshan station gets so crowded, I usually had to push my way in for two or even three trains before I could get on—people were crammed against people, pressed tightly together. In the summer, by the time I got off, I was already drenched in sweat. Back then, every day the thought of having to squeeze onto the subway made me want to die, let alone the fact that most people have to commute for over an hour and transfer multiple lines. Add that to eight or nine hours of work, and the whole day is just gone! You get home to do laundry, cook, clean, and shower, right? Then you lie down and play on your phone for a bit, and the day is over. If you ask someone what plans they have or how they want to improve themselves, they don't even get enough sleep. What kind of life planning are you going to talk about with them? I think the scariest thing about poverty is that it consumes all your energy on trivial matters. Buying a piece of clothing that costs a few dozen yuan requires comparing prices back and forth, switching apps, switching platforms, and agonizing for half a day. Going out for a meal also requires calculating over and over: is this cheaper, or is that set meal cheaper? In the end, you decide not to eat out at all to save money. Your brain simply has no capacity to think about the future; you can only use it to calculate how not to overspend today. After a long time, a person gets trapped in it! The poorer you are, the less energy you have to think long-term, and the less you think long-term, the poorer you get. So this state will turn a person into someone who is extremely lacking in self-confidence. When friends invite you out, or colleagues invite you out, your first reaction isn't happiness; you're afraid—afraid of spending money, afraid that you won't be able to afford your share, or thinking, oh, if I exceed my budget, I'll have less to live on this month, right? So you don't want to go. Over time, you turtle up, and in the end, you'll find there isn't a single person left to talk to. That kind of loneliness, that feeling of being excluded, is even harder to bear than poverty itself.

I especially agree with the viewpoint that many pains in the world are fictional—they might be products of human imagination or values. But only poverty, only being poor, is solid and real. It is something weighing down on you, something you have to face every time you open your eyes. It is not like those illusory pains where changing your perspective might help you figure things out. Poverty does not give you a chance to change your perspective; it only reminds you over and over again that you have no money, you are no good, you are not worthy. That is why I never urge others to find contentment in poverty. Money is certainly not everything, but right now, not having money makes it utterly impossible to do anything. I will only tell you: if you can still move and still have strength, before you are completely drained, fight with all your might to think of other ways to make money, because poverty is the only kind of pain you cannot reconcile with through your mindset.

You see, my friends, what many Chinese people are feeling right now is a kind of fine, dense pain. I don't know if everyone can understand this? It's not that they are facing some major catastrophe in life—I'm talking about the majority of ordinary Chinese people, it's not that they've encountered some huge disaster or anything—rather, it's that kind of dense, pervasive pain in everyday life that never lets them rest for a single moment, universally present in most ordinary Chinese people today. Alas, I feel this kind of pain is more agonizing than any other kind. I think this might also be why the mortality age among post-90s youth isn't necessarily getting pushed back much, while their numbers are so high; it's because the heavy pressure of this society is constantly piling up without a moment's pause. And truly, it's not the kind of thing human beings can bear. Slowly, you actually start to develop thoughts of wanting to leave, and so on; or even if you tell yourself that you need to persevere, your body is already overburdened. Your instinct, your genes, your very foundation are simply powerless to bear it. Alright, that is all for this episode. If you would like to support me, please join the membership channel. I also really hope to chat with everyone in real-time during the next member live stream. That's it for this episode, see you next time.