Decide to fully live the Year of the Rabbit

6. The history of Zhongguancun, China’s Silicon Valley, explained. (Wired $)

7. A Chinese state-owned bank in Hong Kong is attracting new customers from the mainland with the opportunity to be vaccinated with mRNA. (Financial Times $)

lost in translation

The new year is for new changes, and as Chinese tech publication Baobian has reported, many Chinese Big Tech workers are leaving the industry and reflecting on how they ended up doing “bullshit jobs.” unnecessary.

Even though the country’s tech industry is relatively young, these companies, like their Western counterparts, have grown into gigantic corporations laden with bureaucracy and low efficiency. One of the main sources of frustration for staff members is the feeling that they are spending months working on insignificant product changes that could be vetoed at the last minute. For example, making a simple UI design change requires two weeks of opposition research, and there is little originality in the final product. Some workers also feel like they are losing their personal purpose while helping the company optimize its money-making machines.

Luyi, who has worked for Tencent, Alibaba and ByteDance in different positions, felt she was chasing abstract numbers based on unreliable data analysis and ultimately getting nothing. Last year, she finally decided to quit the tech industry and went to work for an art gallery in Beijing. “When I successfully organize an art exhibition, there is an immense sense of accomplishment. I can get a lot of positive feedback from the scene,” she said. It’s the feeling she missed when she worked in Big Tech.

One more thing

To celebrate the change from the Year of the Tiger to the Year of the Rabbit, a zoo in western China held a ceremony on Friday in which a tiger cub and a rabbit were placed on the same table. But the video was quickly cut off when the tiger grabbed the rabbit’s neck, the correspondent started screaming in panic, and the scene descended into chaos. Fortunately, the rabbit would have been unharmed. Otherwise, it would have been a terrible omen for the new year.