A young Chinese woman who went viral last year because she lamented that “it is OK to be a loser” said she no longer considers herself a failure despite having had a particularly challenging year.
Last year, the 28-year-old woman, who goes by the name Wanwan, published a 17-minute late-night talk with her friend Chaochao – also a pseudonym – in which the two women who graduated from top Chinese universities in 2017 said they lived lives “full of failure”.
At that point in her life, Wanwan had held over a dozen jobs, none of which she found meaningful. She had also failed the postgraduate entrance exams and only had savings of 5,000 yuan (US$700).
Chaochao, who had a master’s degree, could not land a career as a scriptwriter and was cleaning tables at a hotpot restaurant to support herself.
In the talk, they called themselves “losers” but optimistically encouraged each other – as well as others who were down on their luck – by saying having nothing meant “a life full of choices”.
As the year passed, Wanwan tried to leverage her viral video into a career as an online influencer but quickly learned the unsteady income created anxiety, so she gave up that dream.
She would eventually land a job as a short video creator for a large internet company in Beijing but quit after two months because she got in a car accident and realised: “Dying on the way to work is a miserable way to go. I don’t want to die before experiencing the world.”
Wanwan is now jobless but has more money in her savings account – 50,000 yuan (US$7,000) – because of the video job.
She said she plans to do another late-night chat with Chaochao, who found a job writing scripts for children’s television and was about to pass her probationary period.
“We were losers but happy last year. This year, we had jobs but no smiles,” said Wanwan.
Wanwan said she no longer considers herself a loser. She said her last job made her realise that “the company culture did not work with my character” and “she had choices in her life” and did not have to accept terrible jobs just for money.
“I am not a loser,” Wanwan said.
“I am accepting my destiny as an ordinary person, and I will live happily ever after.”
