Original link: https://www.latepost.com/news/dj_detail?id=1664
Bracelets, crystals, singing bowls, find a life coach, listen to monks singing
Lama Temple is the place with the strongest desire in Beijing. In the past holidays, more than 20,000 people made dents on the worship mats in front of the Buddha every day. The crowd moves through the 11 halls, shoulder to shoulder as they kneel. The days of burning smoke outside the temple are no longer wisps of smoke, but like gray veils, covering the faces who come to pray—most of them are the faces of young people.
A Ctrip data shows that since the beginning of this year, the number of ticket orders for temple-related scenic spots has increased by 310% year-on-year. Among them, half of the tickets after February were sold to people in their 20s and 30s.
Even on the morning of the working day after the festival, there was still a long queue at the gate of the French logistics department that turned several corners. The security officer yelled at the crowd, “Two hours to queue”, and those who wanted to “please” the bracelet still stood in the queue without hesitation. A boy carrying a hiking bag is hesitating for a while whether to choose a “wealthy” or a “smooth career”. He is about to graduate and has not found a job yet. A man squeezed out from the pile of people, with more than 10 small paper bags containing bracelets hanging on each hand. He has just been laid off recently, “Come to seek a career, and by the way, be a bracelet purchasing agent.”
33-year-old Misha wears a total of 6 bracelets on her left hand. According to the size of the beads, they are pink glass, eighteen seeds, moonstone, pink crystal, golden Pixiu, and garnet. She said it was her “weight of desire”.
Last fall, she broke up with her boyfriend who had been in love for many years. Since then, she has “begged” all the way from Lingyin Temple in Hangzhou to Jiming Temple in Nanjing and Jade Buddha Temple in Shanghai. While worrying about her marriage, she saw the news of Dalian Accenture layoffs. Misha, who is also an employee of a foreign IT company, feels in danger, and comforts herself by touching a lucky gold Pixiu on her bracelet.
Every morning at 7:00 a.m., a line of dozens or even hundreds of meters forms outside the walls of the Lama Temple. After nightfall, some young people enter the live house to listen to Japanese monk Yakushiji Kuanbang play and sing. The Great Compassion Mantra mixed with electronic music sounded, and the audience fiddled with the rosary beads in their hands, and it was more convenient to turn on the mobile phone and beat the electronic wooden fish. A woman who didn’t bother to bring her laptop to the scene said she wanted to take advantage of her Word and Excel documents.
There are more than 3 million posts about crystals on Xiaohongshu. People put colorful stones on the table, believing that white ones can remove sickness, purple ones can balance emotions, yellow ones can accumulate wealth, and gray moonstones can help sleep and lose weight. A woman puts 6 rough crystal balls on the window sill of her home every day, letting them bask in the morning and moonlight, and “purifies” the crystal balls with Brazilian wood smoke. Her mobile phone desktop and computer desktop are also all crystal. She hoped that she would be surrounded by this mysterious and beautiful substance.
The place with the most healers may be in Dali. People use crystals, singing bowls, dancing, drama, and even re-learn breathing and touch the skin to find inner peace.
The exploration of body, mind and soul has become popular. People “invite” bracelets and buy crystals, which are as natural as buying clothes and drinking a cup of milk tea, expecting these things to have a positive impact on their lives. Maybe it really works, and psychology explains it as a “placebo effect”-doctors give patients some useless pills, and some patients think that there is hope, and they will feel better and even really get better and recover.
People are interested in experiencing and even keen on these mystical activities because they are now within reach – as simple as buying a cup of milk tea. These physical and mental needs, no matter how individualized, can find corresponding commodities and be satisfied in the form of consumption.
American women’s mental health expert Pooja Lakshmin believes that crystals, health juices, massages, etc. are all fake self-care. She wrote in a New York Times article: “We live in a society where it is difficult to prioritize our own mental health and well-being. You do more of it, and you end up feeling better’—when in fact, their sole purpose is to get you to buy more stuff.”
The good thing is that at least there is still consumption—to divert people’s attention from the difficulties and challenges of life. Such as unemployment, stagnant income, meaningless work… Individuals are sometimes really helpless.
There are more and more products that cater to the needs of body and soul. In Lama Temple, bracelets are displayed, exhibited, and marketed like tea drinks, and new ones are released every once in a while. Incense ash glass and incense ash half sugar are the latest hits, with prices ranging from 290 yuan to 1,080 yuan. A young man went there three times in half a year, spent more than 5,000 yuan, and brought back more than a dozen bracelets. Later, he found the same style at a street stall in Panjiayuan, only selling for 60 yuan.
Hangzhou Yongfu Temple has opened a “Ci Cup Coffee” in the scenic spot. The American style it sells is called “Di Fan”, the latte is called “Ting Xue”, the Fu Rui Bai is called “Fu Rui”, and it also launched a coffee blind box called ” “Follow the Fate”, the price is around 30 yuan.
Crystal healer Sun Xiya’s crystal prices range from a few hundred yuan to tens of thousands of yuan, and it is rare to encounter bargaining—although the price is clearly marked, the items that are entrusted with “religious” needs are not simply commodities. There are no pricing rules and no industry standards in the market, but people are enthusiastic. The Crystal Healing Camp organized by her team costs 1980 yuan for two nights, and the supply of more than 30 places is in short supply. She said that more than half of the people who opened spa, yoga, and singing bowl studios like to launch crystal healing projects to generate income.
Sun Xiya found that the two types of customers who have come to buy crystals most often since the outbreak, one is employees of major Internet companies, and the other is medical workers. “The former is really under too much pressure, and the latter is facing life and death every day.” .
In the second half of last year, when the real estate industry exploded continuously, Sun Xiya met a frustrated real estate businessman. As soon as the other party opened his mouth, he would buy 10 amethysts and pile them all together. “He wants too much. He wants to calm his anxiety and stress, and he also wants financial resources.” This is not something that 10 crystals can do, and Sun Xiya declined the order politely.
Chai Xiaolang, 28, is a life coach with more than 2,000 clients. According to her definition, a life coach “lets people understand themselves better by listening and asking questions, and stimulates more potential in life and workplace, so as to find a better life plan.” Among Chai Xiaolang’s clients, some feel that work is meaningless The executives of major Internet companies are also young people who are trapped by their studies and employment and can’t see the way forward. In the past two years, Chai Xiaolang has more and more clients. Most of them are at a turning point in their lives and feel trapped in the present.
Chen Meng is an employee of a metaverse company, and she is keen on using mindfulness, meditation, and singing bowls to relax herself. Once, she experienced a gong bath on a hill beside the West Lake in Hangzhou. A sound therapist beat a few gongs and a few singing bowls, reciting the confusing and calming Pali language from his mouth. Chen Meng lay flat on the yoga mat, and she described her experience in this way——
Sometimes I feel like I am floating in space, the contours of my body are disappearing, sometimes it feels like a light rain, the music and myself are the ripples in the pond.
After the 40-minute gong bath was over, she picked up her mobile phone immediately, and the work rushed to her face. Colleagues reminded her to write the weekly report, and the leader asked her to sort out the materials, even though she had already asked for leave that day. The healing activity “medicine effect” is short-lived.
In the consecration room of the Lama Temple, more than 20 young people who were placed in batches knelt on the futon devoutly. Sometimes there are too many people entering at one time, and there are not enough futons, and the aisle is full of kneeling. People held the bracelets they had bought in their hands, and closed their eyes to listen to the teachings of a master in a crimson cassock. The latter recites a certain verse next to a statue of a bodhisattva.
After the ceremony, the master gave the final advice, “Don’t put everything on the consecrated bracelet.”
placebos and painkillers
In the morning, in a courtyard in Sanya, Sun Xiya was meditating with a cylindrical black tourmaline in her hand. She heard birds chirping, heard the breeze blowing through her hair, and felt the water rippling slightly in the swimming pool behind her. The thousands of talking selves in my mind also fell silent at that moment.
Sun Xiya once suffered from anxiety disorder. Every day when she woke up, her heart was pounding, and at night, thousands of herself would be talking in her mind. A former director of a stem cell medical therapy program, she believes crystals can aid in the healing of anxiety disorders.
Moved by the story, she was approached by some anxiety sufferers, including a young man who couldn’t swallow when he was nervous, and said he too wanted to “bond” a crystal.
Wang Bei is also a life coach. After graduating from Peking University with an MBA, she also established a jewelry brand. She wrote her resume on Xiaohongshu, and received many consultations on life choices, but the most common question was “Should I take the MBA exam”. “Everyone seems to think that after I get an MBA, I can find my destination in life.”
Everyone is afraid of being left behind. In January of this year, at a salon held by Wang Bei, an entrepreneur of a chain beauty agency talked about his blind expansion of stores during the epidemic, resulting in tight capital chains and wondering whether he could sustain it. She couldn’t sleep all night and cried all the time. Not long ago, Wang Bei returned to Peking University to give an entrepreneurial sharing session. The students kept asking her about the growth of the jewelry brand, how much it sold, and how big it was. “I seem to be facing a classroom of investors.” She couldn’t figure it out, are even the students so anxious? Everyone wants to know the result more than the process.
Chen Xiaohe called the life coach because she escaped a crisis once, but failed to escape twice. In the past, at two online education companies, she was responsible for the fastest growing business. After the “double reduction”, she joined Tencent. It’s just that the big factory is also shrinking. In the first two months, she had no daily tasks and no output. “Education seems to have become the worst industry.”
Chen Xiaohe said that 99% of her spiritual world is work – if there is a problem with work, then there is a problem with the whole life.
She was anxious, broke down, watched the short video until dawn, continued to cry, and finally decided to seek help from a life coach.
35-year-old Zhang Minxia works as a director of a major Internet company. She feels the temple has sheltered every major turn in her career. In 2015, Zhang Minxia decided to join the Internet industry. She made a pious wish to accept the offer in front of the Buddha, and then it came true.
“At that time, we could just rely on natural growth.” When Zhang Minxia joined the company, she felt that the working atmosphere was relaxed. When growth is good, little details don’t matter. Before changing careers, Zhang Minxia was doing data analysis and was always required to do a double check with accuracy to 5 decimal places. But in the big factory, she wrote the code and made a mistake of two decimals. Colleagues said, what does it matter?
After the company moved to a brighter new building, there were more and more workstations, regulations became clearer, and procedures became more formal. Like the Internet industry in those years, it arrived first, and then iterated until the optimal version was found.
In the years when the platform competed for users, Zhang Minxia stayed until midnight every 618 and Double Eleven. Leaving get off work at 3:00 am and getting up three and a half hours later to prepare for a morning meeting at 9:00 am.
Everyone was immersed in the excitement of an era of growth, and all the wishes Zhang Minxia made in the temple were answered.
“In those few years, everyone was still making papers from the perspective of the officer, and the past two years began to be mixed with meaningless papers.” Zhang Minxia accepted the price of growth-longer working hours, endless meetings, everything in a big factory. The credo of efficiency first.
At one point, she had to write three weekly reports, her own, the boss’s, and the boss’s boss’s. The same thing was written three times in different tones. That means her weekend is over. Zhang Minxia received calls to change the weekly newspaper at friends’ gatherings, at dinner tables in her hometown, and when she was still under anesthesia just after surgery.
She senses that the growth is coming to an end, or is over. In a recent big promotion, a colleague printed a portrait of the King of Growth and pasted it in the meeting room to worship, and another colleague also replaced the group portrait with a portrait of the King of Growth. They don’t care whether the image in Buddhism itself has anything to do with growth.
The company’s business and management structure have been constantly changing in the past six months. In the first quarter, one of Zhang Minxia’s colleagues has changed four bosses. Zhang Minxia described Dachang’s volume as “a kind of meaningless fine-tuning”. Today, some of her colleagues raise green plants and fish that attract wealth, and some even make water curtains at the workstations, implying that flowing water generates wealth. Colleagues have delved into Feng Shui at the workstations. She understands that these are escapes.
“For the lives I didn’t live”
Liu Yichun, an employee of Dachang, feels that she is very good at her job. Her last job was also in a big factory. In two and a half years, she was promoted from P4 to the head of an M-level organization, and she herself was ground into a screw that is highly suitable for a big factory——
In order to be able to deal with all the boss’s questions at the meeting, she will spend a week preparing in advance and rehearsing over and over again. She often returns home after 12 o’clock in the evening and continues to work until four or five o’clock. Even on weekend mornings, she has a cup of coffee and a cup of tea on her desk—to wake her brain up alternately to make sure she finishes writing the thousands-word weekly report.
There are two types of books neatly stacked on her bookshelf, one is reference books, similar to “Seven Habits of Highly Effective People”; the other is to help self-exploration, similar to “Out of Control” and “Gap Years Late”.
“To see the life I haven’t lived, to make up for it.” Liu Yichun said.
When the pressure was too great, Liu Yichun suffered from bulimia. Every night, she went to a 24-hour convenience store, took a portion of each dessert on the dessert shelf, and packed a whole bag. Go home and take out a bunch of salty food, mix it up and eat it together. At the end of the meal, his stomach looked like it was protruding, his waist was twice as big as usual, his tongue couldn’t taste the taste, and he continued to eat while holding back his nausea.
Until July last year, Liu Yichun met life coach Chai Xiaolang by chance, and felt that there was a gap in her impenetrable life. She was attracted by Chai Xiaolang’s “Recruitment for a 10-day, 9-night Xinjiang Showdown Tour” posted in Moments, 15,000 yuan per person, only the destination, no fixed plan. The phrase “If you and Kant saw the same starry sky together” on the poster always slipped into her mind from time to time. She wanted to go, but her rationality made her dare to ask for 3 days leave first.
On the grassland, Liu Yichun realized how different he was from his traveling companions.
“The big factory has disciplined me too well,” she said.
One morning, she packed everything up five minutes early and was ready to go. As a result, when I turned around, I found that the five girls in the same group were sharing each other’s lipsticks and eye shadows, and applying makeup slowly. When they walked to the entrance of the scenic spot, everyone found that no one had bought tickets or made a strategy. Everyone was stunned and did not recover. She had already bought everyone’s tickets.
Several people climbed the mountain together, and she always walked in the forefront. When she turned her head, the others fell behind and turned into small black dots. Only one girl can catch up with her, and that is an entrepreneur of cross-border e-commerce.
“Later I found out that this is their living condition, but Dachang taught me rules and efficiency.” Liu Yichun said.
In big factories, deadlines never wait for anyone. Even if it is a clock-in at 9 o’clock in the morning, people will rush out tens of meters at the elevator door at 8:50. The boss checks the workplace at 9 o’clock, but he can’t get the elevator in the morning rush hour. “At that time, even if you climb more than ten floors, you have to climb up.” Liu Yichun couldn’t count how many times he climbed up to the 13th floor.
Everyone is in a hurry. In winter, on the way to the meeting room, Liu Yichun often saw people walking forward while taking off their down jackets and putting away their bags. When they arrived at the door of the meeting room, there were still people holding computers to meet the newly arrived leaders. Dachang has been training her all the time, time is precious, so when she asks for leave, she has to ask herself if it is necessary. Once, she had gastroenteritis, and the doctor advised her to take a two-week break. She only took two days off to devote herself to the new business of the department.
In summer in northern Xinjiang, the grass is soft, wild flowers are in full bloom, and the clear sky is as smooth and clear as a mirror. On the grassland of the river valley, the “Travel Group” set up a canopy, lit a bonfire, and quietly stared in a daze around the fire. Suddenly, someone suggested that everyone read poems together. Facing the vast sky, several people chanted sentence by sentence until night.
Liu Yichun picked up her mobile phone and mustered up the courage to send a message to the leader, “I am reading poetry on the grassland now, and I will take a few more days off, so I won’t be coming back.”
Others, say hello wherever they go, with villagers, tourists, and even vendors at pancake stands. She didn’t understand why she was associated with those people, which is really hard to understand when your mind is full of efficiency and goals. In Dachang, the most important thing for everyone is not “personality” but “function”. One face can always replace another.
After the trip, the company organized a team building, and Liu Yichun suddenly didn’t want to live a fully prepared life—he picked up his handbag and went out, which only contained a mobile phone and tissues. During the team building, she was thrown into the water by the team members. Without panicking, she even sat in the water for a while. “In the face of a sudden situation, I can take it easy.” She told Chai Xiaolang: “My heart began to loosen a little bit. I don’t have to live a tight life anymore. You opened a gap for me.”
But it was just a gap, strong professional inertia and big factory habits pulled her. Back in Dachang, she excitedly called on the team members to find other possibilities in life, but the method was a bit boring: holding meetings.
In January of this year, as soon as the stock was vested in the account and the year-end bonus was not issued, Liu Yichun resigned naked. She ran to the farm in Thailand to bask in the sun, only to find that the Dachang clock made her always the first to wake up on the farm. She still pursues high efficiency. She filmed the vlog that day, edited it that day, and uploaded it that day. “Are you going to practice vlogging?” a friend asked her.
She went to Wuhan to travel with her friends again, but the two missed the high-speed rail. They all drank a little wine that day, and a friend said to a driver, “5000 yuan, I can’t go.” The two spent 5,000 yuan and drove for 12 hours to Wuhan. She finds such an adventure fun.
When talking about Dachang, Liu Yichun was the first to say thank you. “The logic and model I rely on now come from big factories. It has established my relationship with society, let me know where I am, and I have been respected.” The second thing I want to say is, “It is too difficult to break free. “. She found a new job, but it was still a big factory.
But at least she started to think about her own life. Liu Yichun occasionally slipped out of the company during working hours to look at the sky in a daze. Recently, she wanted to write “Why I Want to Leave Dachang”, but she didn’t know how to write it yet.
where is the meaning
Li is the one who has left Dachang—she became a life coach after leaving Sina Weibo, and the studio is named “Life Transformation Lab”. Indeed, she has attracted many people who share her desire for change.
Li Zhengzeng worked hard for three years in order not to be a standard factory worker. Others are 996, she is 965, others work overtime and work for a long time, she will go home when the time comes, and become a fashion blogger and photographer. Every weekend, she ran to every corner of the city and turned off her mobile phone. But that’s all appearances. In order to get promoted and get a higher salary, she reads books on project management and takes classes in software applications. Suddenly for a week, she lay in bed and didn’t want to do anything, and she didn’t want to go out on weekends.
“Something is wrong, I have no energy,” she said.
After Li Zheng resigned, he was learning to be a life coach and received some online consultations. The price was 899 yuan per hour, and the account was less than 20,000 yuan per year. When she went to Yunnan, she met a Taoist master, and under his guidance, she entered Taoism and began to practice Taoism. One morning after entering the teacher’s school, Li was walking by the edge of Fuxian Lake and cried a lot. When I cried, I felt the dark shadow in my heart dissipate.
There are few people like her who are willing to completely break away from the track of the past, and most people are still struggling.
Zhang Minxia still often goes to Lama Temple, where she can see her truest self. Once, she planned to seek health for herself and her husband. When she arrived at Faliu Logistics, she involuntarily chose a bracelet representing her career——this “true self” surprised her.
Sun Xiya, a crystal healer, often encounters greedy customers who ask to buy a bigger and brighter crystal after “bonding” with one crystal. She told the guests that one piece of crystal is enough, “it is just an auxiliary tool, and people need to heal themselves in the end.”
From the beginning of this year, Zhang Minxia felt that external things cannot be changed, so it is better to pay more attention to herself, “In the end, I still have to digest those meaningless feelings by myself.”
She seeks meaning in life that work cannot provide. One day, Zhang Minxia heard birdsong and thought it sounded good, so she recorded it and sent it to her colleagues. Some people in the group share their pets. In short, tacitly avoid talking about work, like a group therapy. The group members are all those who, like her, have been in Dachang for 7 or 8 years. We have worked hard together, experienced a period of rapid growth, and fell into confusion together when the growth rate slowed down.
Chen Xiaohe, an employee of Tencent, replaced his life coach who had been with him for seven years. Instead of being healed, she fell into self-doubt. She began to seek help from psychological counseling, and also began to learn yoga, foreign languages, and dancing, trying to make her life no longer 99% work. One morning, she ignored a message from her leader and slept for another three hours before replying. She felt better.
Liu Yichun is still swinging between being an employee of a big factory and a more relaxed and free life. She has recently become obsessed with playing drums, and her body and mind are stretched when playing drums. But the teacher in class felt that she hadn’t let go yet, and asked her to go back and have a drink before going.
One night, in a tavern in Wangjing, the lights flickered, reflecting the tiredness and drunkenness on people’s faces. Liu Yichun ordered a cocktail with red cherries on it. After a few mouthfuls, she relaxed and half body fell on the sofa.
She is currently considering a job in Sanya. She felt that maybe things would be better in another place.
“I want to go to the tropics, I feel that there will be more passion and vitality.” Her eyes always stopped on the red cherries, as if they were the ripening sun in Sanya.
The characters in the article are all pseudonyms except Sun Xiya and Chai Xiaolang
This article is transferred from: https://www.latepost.com/news/dj_detail?id=1664
This site is only for collection, and the copyright belongs to the original author.