Why Some Young People in China Pretend to Be Birds

To become a bird, pull an oversize T-shirt over your arms and torso. Hide your legs. Let your hands stick out like claws and your empty sleeves flap like wings.

Now use your claws to grip some kind of railing. Take a selfie and upload it to social media with a chirpy caption.

Some young people in China are pretending to be birds as a way of dealing with the pressures of working, studying or looking for jobs after graduation, among other familiar challenges. Sometimes they just want a break from being human at a moment when their futures feel uncertain in the face of slowing economic growth.

“Birds can fly free and aimlessly in the sky,” said Wang Weihan, 20, a finance student in Shanghai who pretended to be a bird in his dorm room. He said the social media trend expresses “the innate desire within every person for freedom.”

Birds are unburdened by China’s sluggish economy, high cost of living and soaring rates of youth unemployment. They have no need to study hard or to find a job after graduation in a country where the number of graduates — nearly 12 million last year — has quadrupled since 2004.

Birds don’t need to grapple with the fear that China’s boom years, which improved the lives of successive generations, might be behind them.