In Modern Day China

There are two newish youth movements,
'The lying flat movement'
and 'The let it rot movement',
both of which exist to protest
against the Chinese work ethic,
working nine hour days, six days a week.

It is clear to these protesting youths
how much the jobs they are offered 
draws them into cycles of work, debt
and attempted property ownership
where they never earn enough
to own the property they might choose
and they cannot stop their job owning them.

This makes their only real choice
to be to set their lives and selves
apart from work that does not work
with clear, if passively set, boundaries.

I admire them in their passive resistance.

There was youth-a-plenty
about the town I lived in
when I was their age,
but we were all pre-aged
into passivity to authority
through our education.

There was no movement, no group
identity with which I could resist
being taken in by the activities
that euphemised unemployment
that were common to those days.