Chinese millennials with a dim view of their career and marriage prospects can wallow in despair with a range of teas such as “achieved-absolutely-nothing black tea”, and “my-ex‘s-life-is-better-than-mine fruit tea”.
While the drink names at the Sung chain of tea stalls are tongue-in-cheek, the sentiment they reflect is serious: a significant number of young Chinese with high expectations have become discouraged and embrace an attitude known on social media as “sang”, after a Chinese character associated with the word “funeral” that describes being dispirited.
“Sang” culture, which revels in often-ironic defeatism, is fuelled by internet celebrities, through music and the popularity of certain mobile games and TV shows, as well as sad-faced emojis and pessimistic slogans.
It's a reaction to cut-throat competition for good jobs in an economy that isn't as robust as it was a few years ago and when home-ownership - long seen as a near-requirement for marriage in China - is increasingly unattainable in major cities as apartment prices have soared.
“I wanted to fight for socialism today but the weather is so freaking cold that I'm only able to lay on the bed to play on my mobile phone,” 27-year-old Zhao Zengliang, a “sang” internet personality, wrote in one post. “It would be great if I could just wake up to retirement tomorrow,” she said in another.
Such ironic humour is lost on China's ruling Communist Party.
In August, Sung Tea was challenged for peddling “mental opium” by the Communist Party's official People's Daily, which described sang culture in an editorial as “an extreme, pessimistic and hopeless attitude that's worth our concern and discussion”.
“Stand up, and be brave. Refuse to drink ‘sung tea’, choose to walk the right path, and live the fighting spirit of our era,” it said.
China's State Council Information Office did not reply to a request for comment for this story.
The intensifying censorship clampdown on media and cyberspace in the run-up to the Communist Party congress, held once every five years, extends even to negativity, with regulations issued in early June calling for “positive energy” in online audiovisual content.
Later that month, some young netizens were frustrated when Bojack Horseman, an animated American TV series about a half-man/ half-horse former sitcom star, and popular among the “sang” generation for his self-loathing and cynicism, was pulled from Chinese streaming site iQiyi.
A spokesperson at iQiyi said the decision to remove Bojack Horseman was due to “internal process issues” but declined to give further details.
Social media and online gaming giant Tencent Holdings has gone on the counter-attack against “sang” culture. It has launched an ad campaign around the Chinese word “ran” - which literally means burning and conveys a sense of optimism - with slogans such as “every adventure is a chance to be reborn.”