[Big read] Chinese youths embrace alternative therapies for mental well-being

(All photos provided by Meng Dandan unless otherwise stated.)

Amid the botanical fragrances, the murmuring of a brook and the chirping of birds, the gentle and soothing voice of a sound therapist guides several youths lounging on sofas with their eyes shut. Immersed in the alternating sounds of singing bowls, gongs, rainsticks and handpans, those present gradually relax with some even drifting into gentle snores.  

This was the scene at a singing bowl sound therapy studio located in the east of Beijing’s Third Ring Road. The participants were anxiety-filled urban youths plagued by insomnia, and they were spending their lunch breaks in a 50-minute “lie-down” near their workplace to heal themselves through music and meditation.

This novel form of therapy, which is simple, convenient and ritualistic, is on the rise in China as it becomes deeply popular with young people living in first-tier cities.  

Thirty-four-year-old Liu Shan went for her first singing bowl sound therapy session a month ago. She has since felt less anxious and had better sleep. Liu is a livestreamer with nearly ten million followers and she often burns the midnight oil. This habit together with long periods of intense work once filled her with so much anxiety that she was unable to sleep for several days. She turned to meditation and acupuncture to alleviate her insomnia but failed to see rapid improvement. After she started singing bowl sound therapy, the quality of her sleep gradually improved. 

Liu told Lianhe Zaobao that she is more receptive to music, saying, “Instrumental notes are like mental massagers. The gong awakens my tensed and numb body, and I get to vent my emotions.”

Liu spent a considerable amount to find relief for her anxiety and insomnia. She goes for private therapy twice a week, paying 2,000 RMB (US$276) per session. She has spent close to 20,000 RMB in the last month or so.

While some spend money to sleep better, others seek emotional value in sound therapy studios to relieve unease. Thirty-five-year-old Shi Xiaoyu works in a state-owned enterprise. At the start of the year, she was mired in tense interpersonal relationships at work and nearly suffered an emotional breakdown. 

When interviewed, she shared, “The pressure from workplace interpersonal relationships was so oppressive that I often felt breathless, and I was desperate for self-healing.”

After engaging in singing bowl sound therapy, she found that the sound waves produced by musical instruments such as singing bowls, gongs and rain sticks resonated with her body, allowing her to “let down my guard, remove my mask, and immerse in a safe and pleasant surrounding to relax my mind and body”. She described herself as being transformed from a “bubbling, red and oily mala hotpot” to a “clear and transparent bowl of water”. 

Not only that, Shi has also found something to her delight. She spent 1,600 RMB on a monthly pass “to relax in the healing centre whenever I have time”. Additionally, she spent a further 9,800 RMB to enrol in two training courses and intends to do part-time or even full-time spiritual healing work in future.

Besides singing bowl sound therapy, other novel forms of therapy that urban Chinese youths are embracing to alleviate pressure include aromatherapy, sound bed therapy and Buddhist meditation therapy. The price of such therapies ranges from 200 RMB to several thousand RMB. For example, a 50-minute “lie-down concert” of sound therapy in a group setting costs 200-300 RMB per person, while premium treatments cost hundreds to thousands, or even tens of thousands of RMB. 

Such treatments are not cheap and their popularity boils down to the large number of people who are suffering from anxiety and depression. In recent years, China is experiencing an economic downturn along with widespread “involution”. A growing number of its youths are suffering from anxiety, depression and insomnia, as the “996” work culture, mainstream shaming of “lying flat”, and the erosion of sleeping hours by mobile phones and the internet take their toll.  

A survey report published by the Chinese Academy of Sciences Institute of Psychology in 2023 on the mental health of its citizens found that 10.6% and 15.8% of the population were at risk of depression and anxiety respectively. This means that slightly over one in every ten individuals is at risk of depression, while one in every six to seven individuals is at risk of anxiety. Additionally, youths were found to be the high-risk group for depression, with as many as 24.1% of those between the ages of 18 and 24 at risk. 

Anxiety and depression often result in insomnia, which in turn worsens anxiety and depression. According to the 2024 White Paper on the sleep health of Chinese residents, their overall quality of sleep is unsatisfactory, with an overall sleep score of 75, as 22% of respondents received poor sleep scores of 70 or below (a lower score denotes poorer quality of sleep).

During therapy, some begin to explore their inner selves to learn the cause of their anxieties while venting their pent-up emotions.

Shi Xiaoyu began her self-reflection after achieving better-than-expected outcomes through her therapy. She said, “I am easily contented and satisfied, and my relationship with my family is good. As a Beijing local, I also do not face the same pressures as those from other places who come here seeking a better life. At the same time, I do not have excessive material desires, so why am I still anxious?” 

After some soul-searching, she realised that the mainstream view that young people should not allow themselves to “lie flat” was the cause of her frequent bouts of anxiety. She shared, “Societal expectations, such as what is expected of a 35-year-old, what they should be like, I am slowly settling on an appropriate pace and state that suits me.” 

Liu Shan’s justification for spending huge sums to resolve her insomnia is to “get back to my livestreaming channel”. After stopping work for more than a month, her channel has lost a considerable number of followers. 

Liu admitted that even though she is over 30 years old, she continues to risk insomnia and anxiety to compete with livestreamers who are attractive and much younger than her to provide greater material security for her family. She said, “With the poor economy, what better option do I have?”

Both Shi Xiaoyu’s “lying flat” and Liu Shan’s “involution” are representative of the state of anxiety among Chinese youths today. To relieve pressure and reduce anxiety, those from the middle class, like Shi and Liu, can afford to spend on commercially available solutions for self-healing. But in reality, there are also low-income, young people who have been plunged into anxiety after losing their jobs. Some of them head to remote temples in forests to seek mental support and engage in self-healing.

Lu Feifei, who is 27 years old, lost her white-collar job in public relations after her company in Shanghai closed down last year. Without a source of income, she headed home to stay with her mother in Fujian.

Lu’s original intention was to head home and “lie flat” for a few days among loved ones, but “little did I expect my mother to be even more anxious than me when she heard that I lost my job”. Lu shared during our interview, “She could not accept my unemployment, and I was also distraught. Every day together was like a mental ordeal for both of us.”

So, she had no choice but to return to Shanghai. The persistently high unemployment rate afflicting Chinese youths last year meant that Lu was unable to find a new job quickly, and this compounded her anxiety. At her friend’s recommendation, she went to a temple located in the suburbs of Shanghai to participate in a voluntary Buddhist meditation retreat. Lu found temporary respite from the pressure she was under through the mandatory prayer sessions, chanting of Buddhist sutras and manual labour.    

This shows that among young people in China, the demand for self-healing is not limited to those from certain classes.

The natural question to ask next is: to a certain extent, the young people of any era have to deal with survival, interpersonal relationship and work pressures as part of growing up, so why has this led to widespread anxiety among the young people in China today?  

Managing director of Max Planck Institute for Social Anthropology and former Oxford University professor of social anthropology Xiang Biao told Lianhe Zaobao that young people in China today have to deal with mental stress, the like of which has not been seen in the last 40 years, and which is the cause of widespread anxiety among them. 

He said that in the last four decades, both the Chinese economy and society developed rapidly. Together with the wealth-generation myths of the internet era, Chinese society developed a highly optimistic belief that as long as one worked hard, one would live a very good life, and keep upgrading to bigger houses and newer cars. But the anticipated recovery in the economy following the end of the pandemic did not materialise, and economic growth has slowed due to transformation pains. 

“The previous pressure that stemmed from hopes for work, and the current pressure arising from a fear of being eliminated from the competition due to a lack of work opportunities”, these pile up to make anxiety widespread among young people. 

Xiang also highlighted that Chinese society failed to keep pace with the country’s rapid economic progress to become more accepting of diverse values, and this has also contributed to the widespread anxiety plaguing its youths. 

He said that getting into a good university and living a white-collar life in first-tier cities have become a goal for the whole of Chinese society. If everyone in the country believes that only that counts as a good life, then such homogeneous thinking will be out of touch with reality. This homogeneous social consciousness is essentially that of a small number of elites, but it has caused most people to be unhappy with their current lives, thereby causing anxiety.

The huge number of anxious and depressed people in China provides plenty of commercial opportunities for novel forms of therapy such as singing bowl sound therapy, making them known to more people as they move from niche to mass market. 

Li Yan, founder of Yiyan natural therapy studio in Beijing, told Lianhe Zaobao that more people are coming to her on their own accord for sound therapy. After the Covid-19 pandemic, her clients expanded from those working in stressful jobs in IT or finance to include students, teachers and healthcare workers.

She said, “In the past, even after listening to our introduction, explanation and recommendation, the other party may still not be open to giving it a try. But now we are seeing customers who are very motivated to experience our methods even without much introduction and explanation on our part.”

To Li, novel therapies such as singing bowl sound therapy are becoming more widely accepted because an increasing number of people are prioritising their mental well-being. In addition, the widespread “involution” in Chinese society has left many fatigued and looking to unwind. While quite a number of people have substantial material wealth, their mental states may not match up, leaving them without peace of mind and requiring spiritual support and comfort. 

Xiang believes that the rise of therapy forms such as singing bowl sound therapy and Buddhist meditation among Chinese youths is not entirely driven by anxiety, instead “it can be seen as a form of catch-up development” after a lack of attention in this area.

He analysed that Chinese society is highly monotonous in life organisation and very materialistic as compared with other societies. He said, “For example, Islamic prayers, church prayers in Christianity, yoga meditation in India… putting aside the religious aspects, these practices are like a form of meditation that allow adherents to focus their attention.” 

Xiang went on to explain that meditation-like activities are a very important part of human culture, and due to various reasons, this has been severely lacking in Chinese society for a long time. 

He added, “Those with such needs were once thought to be ill, problematic or even dangerous. In fact, it was even imagined that such activities have ideological links, so they were not developed much. With economic transformation, China has to switch from material-based to human-centric production, and such activities will become an increasingly important part of life.” 

The development prospects of the therapy industry have made more people aware of different therapy types, such as singing bowl sound therapy. Li Yan said that those who visit her studio are not limited to those looking for personal healing, but also include people who wish to learn more about the industry as they plan to become singing bowl sound therapists, start similar businesses, or go into relevant areas like the research and development of healing products, and production of healing videos.    

In its forecast of business trends in China for the decade ahead, renowned consulting firm Bain & Company pointed out that the personal well-being economy will develop further. It also expects Chinese consumers to become more mindful of their mental health and they will explore new channels to get emotional support, build real social connections, and engage in self-healing through substitute companionship and destressing.  

As healing becomes a hot topic among Chinese youths, there are more than five million posts and more than 660,000 relevant products that can be found on Xiaohongshu. In first-tier Chinese cities, physical healing spaces are also sprouting like mushrooms after a rain. In the high-rise business districts of Beijing, all sorts of healing spaces are already replacing gyms as the standard amenity.    

As growth in the wider economy slows and it becomes harder for businesses to turn a profit, some companies in China are opting for healing activities during team-building sessions. A therapist who prefers to be unnamed said that she has received several times more team-building requests for healing-related themes this year than in previous years.

She shared, “How do companies that performed badly and gave out much reduced employee performance awards boost staff morale? They organise a number of healing activities during team-building… This provides emotional value to the employees and also costs less.”

This article was first published in Lianhe Zaobao as “中国青年遍寻疗愈 只为能好好睡一觉”.

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