Work, work, until the day we die.

Tutoring others during the winter break (see here), I barely had a moment to catch my breath. The Lunar New Year was technically a holiday, but in reality, it was just a different form of work—endless socialising and the exhaustion of travelling. No sooner had I settled back into my flat than I was throwing myself headfirst into teaching again. To be honest, tutoring is far from easy. When chatting with my mates who are also teaching assistants at the same agency, we all joke that getting through a lesson is an absolute nightmare: the students can’t remember what they’ve tried to rote-learn, their basic arithmetic is completely absent, key concepts are constantly muddled, and trying to hold a normal, flowing conversation is virtually impossible. To be fair, you can’t really blame them; if anyone’s at fault, it’s the educational environment they’ve been subjected to. Every family has its own underlying struggles. For various reasons, most of these students ended up taking alternative vocational pathways rather than facing the rigorous gauntlet of the standard university entrance exams. Some barely even managed to scrape through secondary school. Ultimately, they just want to secure a job, which is why they are willing to pay for our one-on-one sessions.

Initially, I worked as a teaching assistant at an agency, but I eventually decided to go freelance. This not only bumped up my earnings but also saved me a fair bit of lesson preparation time. I’d teach every day from 7:30 AM to 11:00 AM for 400 RMB. An hourly rate crossing the 100 RMB mark might seem quite decent, but when you factor in the students’ extremely poor foundational knowledge, I can frankly say I earn every single penny with a clear conscience. Honestly, it is incredibly hard-earned cash.

Getting back to the point, the new term has started, and I have to plunge straight back into my own academic commitments without missing a beat. It genuinely feels like I am perpetually busy. What I call “resting” is essentially just swapping to a slightly less taxing activity. If I’m exhausted from teaching, I’ll go home and unwind with a bit of Vibe Coding; if staring at the screen drives me up the wall, I’ll switch to tidying up the flat and doing the chores. When it comes to everyday drive and our finite human energy, I can acutely feel the gulf between different types of people. Some are naturally gifted, bursting with boundless energy. They churn out project after project, publish paper after paper, and maintain incredibly high productivity. It seems the only thing holding them back is the number of hours in a day, rather than any lack of stamina or motivation. Meanwhile, most of us are mere mortals like myself. Even if we desire that kind of lifestyle, our spirits are willing but our flesh is weak. Yet, seeing the sheer output of that first group inevitably brews anxiety, leaving us with no choice but to push our limits and treat ourselves as “practical perpetual motion machines” ¹.

The pressure-cooker educational system we’ve been put through since childhood has genuinely warped us. There’s a famous quote by a well-known intensive tuition teacher here: “How on earth can you sleep at your age?” Though originally meant to relentlessly tell off students nodding off in his lectures, it has subtly and profoundly conditioned our entire generation, driving us into a state that’s almost pathological. In life, there is no ultimate ‘finish line’. In primary school, you’re scrambling to secure a spot at a top secondary school; then you’re fighting to pass your GCSE-equivalents; later, you’re battling through the brutal university entrance exams. Once at university, the rat race continues as you desperately try to secure a master’s spot, a PhD, a stable civil service role, or simply a respectable corporate job. And even after you’ve finished your education and entered the workforce, you’re faced with endless promotions, performance metrics, and the daily grind of paying the bills. Work, work, until the day we die. Hoping to cross that final finish line and rest on your laurels forever? I’m afraid that’s simply impossible.

Despite knowing all this perfectly well, I still feel a dreadful sense of emptiness whenever I actually stop to rest. And so, I remain perpetually busy, endlessly working. I give my body the bare minimum of sleep it requires and use physical exercise to keep my hormones in check. My idea of a “break” is just switching to a lighter task that I enjoy. Having been so deeply conditioned by a high-stakes education system and relentless meritocracy, I suspect this way of living won’t be changing for a very long time.

Looking on the bright side, however, this recent stint of hard graft has meant I’ve earned enough to cover my own living expenses for the entire term. I’ve even got enough left over to buy my mum a new mobile phone for her birthday. Suddenly, being perpetually busy doesn’t seem quite so terrible after all.