Why are office cadres born in the 1980s afraid of returning to their hometowns to celebrate the New Year?

Firstly, I am afraid that celebrating the New Year will cost a lot of money, and secondly, I am afraid that others will laugh at me if I am unsuccessful.

We don’t want to go home, we are afraid to go home. It’s because when we go out and work hard, we don’t become who we imagined we would be. Because we are disappointed in ourselves, we are also afraid that our family will be disappointed in us. Imagine if you become famous abroad, you can return to your hometown like Liu Qiangdong and Gao Yuanyuan in the news. You can build roads for villagers and bring benefits to the elderly. All you will win is praise from the villagers. They are still proud of you. Are you still afraid of going home?

No one goes out to work hard not to pursue a better life or to become a better version of themselves. Although the standard of success is not just fame or wealth, houses and cars, we must admit that this secular standard is still too strong, and not many people can truly transcend this bondage and only pursue spiritual freedom. We long for poetry and distance, and we also hope for a house and bread.

But the reality is tough. China's rapid development has also brought the pain of transformation. Faced with the problems of being unable to obtain household registration, high housing prices, and increasingly difficult class mobility, young people have become "empty nest youth." Due to material difficulties, we rent houses in basements far from the city center, in shabby villages in the city or suburbs, and we are getting poorer. We were lonely, with few friends and no spare time entertainment. Our days are lonely, monotonous, and boring. However, many difficulties in real life finally bring us a sense of empty nest and belonging... We are disappointed with reality and ourselves. We are afraid to go home because we are afraid of failure.