Quarterly Journal of Speech

ISSN: (Print) (Online) Journal homepage: https://www.tandfonline.com/loi/rqjs20

So you choose to “Lie Flat?” “Sang-ness,” affective

economies, and the “Lying Flat” movement

Zixuan Zhang & Ke Li

To cite this article: Zixuan Zhang & Ke Li (2023) So you choose to “Lie Flat?” “Sang-ness,”
affective economies, and the “Lying Flat” movement, Quarterly Journal of Speech, 109:1, 48-69,
DOI: 10.1080/00335630.2022.2143549

To link to this article: https://doi.org/10.1080/00335630.2022.2143549

Published online: 11 Dec 2022.

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QUARTERLY JOURNAL OF SPEECH
2023, VOL. 109, NO. 1, 48–69
https://doi.org/10.1080/00335630.2022.2143549

So you choose to “Lie Flat?” “Sang-ness,” affective economies,

and the “Lying Flat” movement
a,b a
Zixuan Zhang and Ke Li
a
School of Translation Studies, Shandong University, Weihai, People’s Republic of China; bSchool of Foreign
Languages, Shandong Jianzhu University, Jinan, People’s Republic of China

ABSTRACT ARTICLE HISTORY

This study aims to analyze the affective economies that propel the Received 22 February 2022
viral circulations of the “Lying Flat” movement as a form of youth Accepted 27 September
counternarrative in contemporary China with a special focus on 2022
the historic specificity and social imaginary revolving around the
KEYWORDS
“Lying Flat” meme on Chinese social media. This study sees affect Lying Flat; affective
as social actions and historical constructs, exploring the economy; youth
sociohistorical conditions of the movement and an analysis of the counternarrative; internet
bodily experience in the “Lying Flat” meme. The transduction of subculture; Chinese social
such experience further propels the development of the “Lying media
Flat” movement. We intend, through this study, to offer a
detailed understanding of the uptake, circulation, and affect of
the recent youth counternarratives in China. Transduction of
affect across audio-visual resources in multimodality in this case
suggests that objects of emotions can simultaneously take on
varied forms, which propels wider circulations of affect that bind
collective identities of marginalized groups of individuals.

“躺平” (Tangping, Lying flat) is a verb phrase in Mandarin that originally refers to a
specific bodily movement with the first character “躺” (Tang) translated as “lying on
one’s back”1 and the second character “平” (Ping) as “flat, no tilting or rising and
falling.”2 As a popular subculture and internet meme, the term generally indicates “a
mental state where you either couldn’t care less about what others have done to you,
or wouldn’t show any responses or resistance, as a mentality of submission.”3 On
April 17, 2021, a blog post under the title “Lying Flat is Justice” published by the user
“A Keen Traveler” suddenly drew widespread attention from the public. The post was
quickly reported on and discussed across multiple media genres from traditional, main-
stream news articles to trending topics on social media platforms like Weibo. The pub-
lisher of the post, who was jokingly referred to as the “Master of the Study of Lying Flat,”
said in the post that “I haven’t been working for two years, just fooling around, and I felt
nothing wrong with that. . ..I just lie inside my house, or outside, just like cats and dogs
idling around. . ..only through lying flat, can human beings become the measure of every-
thing.”4 Although this post was later deleted, it certainly left its mark on the “Lying Flat”

CONTACT Ke Li sdulike@sdu.edu.cn School of Translation Studies, Shandong University, 180 Wenhuaxi Road,
Weihai, Shandong 264209, People’s Republic of China
© 2022 National Communication Association
 QUARTERLY JOURNAL OF SPEECH 49

subculture, and was even believed by many to be one of the “tipping points”5 of the public
deliberation of the dispirited culture among the younger generation in China.
The “Lying Flat” movement on Chinese social media champions a way of life of
limited desire and little motivation toward working hard and material gains. Studies of
the movement reside mostly in the realm of Chinese academia, where the root causes,
connotations, and effects of the movement are analyzed in a range of disciplines, includ-
ing sociology, psychology, and other or inter-disciplinary approaches.6 These studies
tend to converge on one common conclusion, that is, the movement itself is a form of
soft, youthful resistance to unwanted pressures concerning their careers and everyday
life in general. To choose to “Lie Flat” is to give up and run from responsibilities that
individuals are supposed to assume during adulthood.
However, what these studies have overlooked is that the “Lying Flat” movement and
the dispirited “Sang culture” (internet subcultures that reflect the reduced work-ethic and
a lack of self-motivation felt by young people) it represents effectively evoke nationwide
youth counternarratives to an intense and fast-paced corporate and social culture in con-
temporary China. The circulation of such counternarratives is sustained by the creation,
sharing, and reposting of countless memes, often in the form of audio-visual resources.
The movement of these objects, with the emotions they signify, intensifies the viral devel-
opment of dispirited internet subcultures in China’s digital space. Consequently, analyz-
ing the role of emotion and affect in the “Lying Flat” culture (as one of the most recent
and salient internet subcultures) on Chinese social media offers deeper insights into the
development of youth counternarratives in contemporary China.
As suggested by Ahmed in her concept of affective economies, “emotions do things,
and they align individuals with communities—or bodily space with social space—
through the very intensity of their attachment.”7 The “Lying Flat” movement through
affect binds the collective identities of individuals who are enmeshed in the contempor-
ary youth counternarratives in China. The viral circulation of the “Lying Flat” movement
is propelled by the emotions it evokes, accumulating affect as signs of the movement pass
by countless subjects in affective economies. A quick look at the lyrics of the cult-favorite
song “Lying Flat is King” by Zhang Busan8 offers a glimpse of the emotions that “do
things” in the circulation of the “Lying Flat” movement in China’s net space. The first
two lines are: “Working from nine to nine, six times a week. Your hair is falling out.”
Here, a rough interpretation of these lines can easily invoke an emotion of anxiety, as
the harsh work schedule often makes people anxious, reified by a change in the body
manifested through hair loss, a clear sign of someone who is under constant anxiety
and distress. The subsequent lines of “Lying flat is the antidote” and “Lying flat you
truly can’t be cut down” indicate that “Lying Flat” is a way to get away from anxiety.
It seems that anxiety may be one of the prominent feelings intertwined with the
“Lying Flat” movement.
Thus, in this essay, we argue that the affective economies of anxiety propel the rise of
the recent youth counternarratives in contemporary China’s digital space, manifested
through the circulations of the “Lying Flat” movement and the dispirited “Sang
culture” in general. We believe analyzing the role of anxiety in the “Lying Flat” move-
ment, particularly in the circulation, uptake, pushback, amplification, and effects that
revolved around this recent online subculture will highlight the role of affect in propel-
ling the development of youth counternarratives in contemporary China. Moreover, as
50 Z. ZHANG AND K. LI

the movement is essentially a meme culture, which requires multimodal analysis across
various audio-visual resources, we will also explore the transduction9 of affect across
these resources in the hope of adding to the existing literature of affective economies
with our attunement to multimodality. Specifically, we borrow the concept of transduc-
tion to conceptualize how affects move across diverse registers of relations. In the case of
the “Lying Flat” movement, we track how anxiety flows from the Lying Flat body to the
individuals’ appropriations of the bodily experience (to “Lie Flat”), and then to their col-
lective efforts in producing and circulating “Lying Flat” memes. As objects of anxiety,
such memes pass by countless individuals in a multimodal setting made possible by
the prevalence of social media and the internet in general.10
Before moving on to the analysis of the movement itself, we stipulate our conceptual and
analytical frameworks for this study. In terms of the conceptual framework, we approach
affect as social action led by groups of social actors because we are convinced that affect
does not circulate endlessly and mysteriously in flux but is often bounded by specific cul-
tural limits and norms.11 It is of great significance to delineate the cultural and social settings
on which the movement is grounded. As Wetherell suggests, affects should be located in
“actual bodies and social actors, negotiating, making decisions, evaluating, communicating,
inferring and relating.”12 The affective economies of anxiety embodied by the “Lying Flat”
online discourse does not just “inform public rhetorical and ethical actions.”13 Instead, it is a
kind of “public practices that constitute social relations.”14 The anxiety shapes the collective
identity of the “Lying Flat” community, especially of the “Lying Flat youth” (Tangping
Qingnian 躺平青年), in its often antagonistic relations with the current corporate and
social values in China. This anxiety neither resides in any one body or actor nor is
caused by any particular source, which justifies its viral circulations.15
We also analyze the circulations of anxiety in the movement from an ecological per-
spective. The ecological model of interconnectedness adds the ingredients of rhetorical
agency and brings “history and movement (back) into our visions/versions of rhetoric’s
public situations,” thus allowing rhetorical theorists to “more fully theorize rhetoric as a
public(s) creation.”16 The “Lying Flat” movement provides an illuminating case study for
the intersections of the local online affective network and the larger social, political, and
cultural context of China, as well as the kind of conflicted discourse of the identity of con-
temporary youth that such intersections create. The intersections between local affective
networks and their wider ecologies are places where identities of marginalized groups are
formed and negotiated. In other words, the uniqueness of their identities is not only the
result of the collective investment from actors within the local ecology, but also the way
how they are positioned toward wider ecologies. This relationality can be witnessed in
emotions, which, as the politicized circulation of affect, can act as “leads” that piece
together inquiries of rhetorical ecologies in digital public spheres. Thus, we aim to
demonstrate how affect is appropriated and circulated within rhetorical ecologies, par-
ticularly in the entanglement between the subjects’ social imaginary and the historical
specificity in which they are enmeshed.
With these frameworks in mind, we proceed to investigate the affective economies of
anxiety in the “Lying Flat” movement as both historical constructs and social actions.
For the historic specificity of the movement, adding history back into the analysis may
help us better trace the initial circulation and uptake of the “Lying Flat” movement. As
Wetherell says, “it is the history of affective practice over time and the history of its
 QUARTERLY JOURNAL OF SPEECH 51

entanglements with other social practices and social formations that create value to
affect.”17 As for the case of the “Lying Flat” movement, we will include discussions of
the recent burst of the dispirited “Sang culture” on Chinese social media and its connec-
tions with the excessive affective burdens from neoliberal order and traditional social
and cultural values in contemporary China. We will then focus on the most salient
group of actors in the movement—the “Nineties’ Generation” and the historical, social,
and cultural contexts in which they are enmeshed, because members of this population
are sometimes forced to become “affect aliens” 18 due to mounting living pressures.
When seeing the affective economies of anxiety as social actions, we focus on the symbolic
attachments to objects in the networked environment. The linkages of such objects,
according to Ahmed, “may already be in place within the social imaginary.”19 Thus, we
will explore how anxiety shapes the social imaginary of the “Lying Flat youth” as a circulat-
ing and dynamic ecology of discursive and material processes, events, and enactments to
trace the pushback, amplification, and effects of the “Lying Flat” memes. Specifically, we
will first focus on the bodily position and movement presented in various “Lying Flat”
memes and then in the way in which the “Lying Flat” body acts as the border object
that solidifies the collective identity of the “Lying Flat youth” and “Lying Flat” community
in general. We then track how the bodily experience transduces into a sense of “below-
ness”20 that signifies the anxiety in the “Lying Flat” movement, and how the “belowness”
is appropriated by individuals in the movement in China’s digital space, reified by a
number of memes, pictures, and videos. We also offer a glance at the most recent develop-
ment of the “Lying Flat” movement; anxiety is still omnipresent in the movement regard-
less of the fact that the phrase “Lying Flat” has been given new interpretations by
mainstream media. With these concepts in place, we now move to our analysis of how
the affective economies of anxiety contribute to the viral circulations of the “Lying Flat”
movement in the public space of China and in Chinese social media in particular.

Historical specificity: affective burdens of the Nineties’ generation in the

emergence of dispirited subcultures
The burst of “Sang-ness”
As a symbolic term of the helplessness of young people who live in urban areas in China
and find themselves struggling to make ends meet, “Lying Flat” seems to be a way for
them to escape or shy away from the mounting pressures they face. In line with our
central argument that affect is a historical construct and the affective economies of
anxiety propel the rise of recent youth counternarratives in China, the “Lying Flat” move-
ment did not burst onto the scene of Chinese social media suddenly as the instant result
of a blog post. The movement shares its roots with multiple internet subcultures of a
similar nature. This dispirited sentiment toward life began to gain popularity as a subcul-
ture generally known as the “Sang culture 丧文化” (demotivation)21 on Chinese social
media in 2016, reified by a popular internet meme called “Ge You Slouch 葛优躺” (or
Ge You-esque lying with other similar variations, see Figure 1). The source of the
picture in the meme dates back even further, coming from a scene of a classic sitcom
in China named I Love My Family aired in 1993. The picture itself is rather forgettable,
given the enormous number of television shows produced thereafter. However, the rise
52 Z. ZHANG AND K. LI

of the “Sang culture” emerged as a kairotic moment for young people to “re-represent”22
this scene and pushed the “Ge You Slouch” meme into circulation, mostly on social
media. Afterward, memes of a similar nature appeared almost every year on the internet
and propelled a new breed of internet cultures, including the “Diaosi culture 屌丝文化”
(a rough equivalent of “loser”);23 the “Foxi culture 佛系文化” (Buddha-like, living with
no desires);24 “Neijuan 内卷” (roughly translated as involution, a metaphor for fierce
domestic competitions);25 and in 2021, “Lying Flat.”
Judging from these recent meme cultures, one can easily sense the “Sang-ness” that
has dominated the recent online discourse on Chinese social media, which partly led
to the rise of the “Lying Flat” movement. Yet what contributes to these quick successions
of dispirited cultures in recent years in China is somehow overlooked. From a historical
standpoint, the “performativity,”26 or the ability of discourse to produce affect through
repetition of these memes, is, on the one hand, futural in that they have led to the
birth of the “Lying Flat” meme as the consequentiality they spark in the world.27 On
the other hand, these meme cultures are also historical results, or as termed by
Ahmed, “sedimentation” of the past.28 Thus, “Lying Flat” and all the other memes men-
tioned are neither mere ephemeral sites of public discussion nor discursive phenomena
that appear out of nowhere and circulate randomly and endlessly in flux. What strings
them together is an implicit sense of anxiety that gains “stickiness” in their repetitions
and relations to other signs. In other words, the term “Lying Flat” emerges as a result
of a series of preexisting memes brimming with “Sang-ness” and anxiety. Take the

Figure 1. A screenshot of the popular sitcom I Love My Family aired in 1993 in China, which was later
transformed as the viral “Ge You Slouch [葛优躺]” meme.
 QUARTERLY JOURNAL OF SPEECH 53

word “Diaosi” for example. The word itself comes with broader connotations, which are
often used as a way of self-deprecation or self-mocking. A Diaosi is often a “Qiong ai cuo
穷矮搓” (poor, short, and ugly),29 a stark contrast to “Gao fu shuai 高富帅” (tall, rich,
and handsome) or “Bai fu mei 白富美” (porcelain-faced, rich, and beautiful).30 In
other words, Diaosi represents people who are plain-looking, under-privileged, and in
relatively poor economic conditions, a common representation of the “Lying Flat
youth” (as they claimed themselves). Imagine the following narrative when the other
buzzwords we have just mentioned are combined:
A Diaosi was forced to participate in the nationwide Neijuan since they need to work to
survive. Yet without any outstanding attributes (social status, wealthy family, or attractive
appearance), they struggled to secure a decent job with a steady and satisfying income,
thus they choose to adopt a Foxi lifestyle and keep expenditure and material desire to a
minimum, but as countless more have suffered a similar fate and they are in no possible pos-
ition to catch up with the ones who “made it,” they cannot handle the anxiety and choose to
lie flat.

This short story sketched the life path of a “Lying Flat youth” and the way that the
affective economies of anxiety move between signs of the said memes and ultimately
lead to the happening of the “Lying Flat” movement. However, one may argue, and right-
fully so, that the story is merely fictional and cannot seem to justify whether anxiety has
shaped the “Sang-ness” in recent online cultures on Chinese social media. A closer look at
the cultural and social settings conditioned by the historic specificity of contemporary
China may offer more evidence. The emergence and prevalence of “Lying Flat” as an
internet meme and of the “Lying Flat” community does not appear by chance in a
network but is made possible in particular historical moments.
Like any other movement, “Lying Flat” emerged in a sociohistorical context with
characteristics that grant it historical specificity. Specifically, the social and historical con-
ditions of China in the last few decades served as the prerequisites for the emergence of
the movement and the rise of “Sang cultures.” A closer analysis leads us to believe that the
factors contributing to the historic context of the movement are twofold. On the one
hand, China’s embrace of a market-oriented economy has inevitably resulted in the
rise of neoliberalism in the country. Ever since the introduction of the Reform and
Opening-Up policy in 1978,31 the economic status quo in the country has undergone
drastic changes, exemplified by its meteoric rise in various economic indicators and
the general improvement of people’s living standards. Entry into the World Trade
Organization facilitated the country’s integration with the world economy. This trans-
formation has resulted in a shift of China’s economic structure from a pure plan-
based one to the socialist market economy.32 Consequently, a quasi-free market was
born with traces of neoliberal orders, particularly economic liberalism. Under such cir-
cumstances, money and wealth have become major standards that define an individual’s
success in life, forcing people to work tirelessly and thus, resulting in rather unhealthy
corporate cultures. And economic growth also often means an increase in living
expenses, especially considering current worldwide inflation.
The “Lying Flat” community is enmeshed in this historical context. To get a taste of
the mounting pressures faced by the younger generation of China, one only need to take
a look at the rise in housing prices, which brings a pressure of living that was not often
54 Z. ZHANG AND K. LI

experienced by previous generations.33 This epitomizes the social conflicts between an

unhealthy workplace culture of incessant competition and personal well-being and the
current cultural values of a restless chase for material gains in China. On the other
hand, Chinese traditional values often stress the concept of the “big family,”34 which
involves closer kinship. Yet this leads to great peer pressures because parents usually
use high-achieving children (or “other people’s children”)35 as examples to belittle
their children if they fail to meet the parents’ expectations, including landing decent
job positions, having a good income, or getting married at the “proper” time. Only
after fulfilling these expectations, can the children be considered “successful,” and
those who do otherwise may come under ethical scrutiny from not only their parents,
but also the “big family.”
Such traditional values also take heavy toll on the affective burden of youth in China in
general. Consequently, the signs from the “money-first” neoliberal order and constant
comparisons with successful peers represent youth’s predominant affective states
toward the general social and economic environment of contemporary China. These
affective states are rife with anxiety and distress. In Wong’s interpretation of Ahmed’s
concept of affective economies, he suggests that affect “flows from the social, the struc-
tural and the economic inward so that what we are able to feel and sense in the first
place is always already conditioned by the social environment.”36 In the case of the
“Lying Flat” movement, as the signs of such anxieties (housing prices, employment
opportunities, and even “other people’s children”) continue to circulate in the public
space, they accumulate affective values. The objects around such signs become sticky,
saturated with affect, and emerge as sites of personal and social tension.37 Eventually,
these signs have come to embody the anxiety of the “Lying Flat youth” to the visible
and looming threat from a combination of neoliberal ideologies and traditional values.

The “special” generation

The general social context may partly explain the viral circulations of the “Lying Flat”
movement and the affective economies of anxiety of the “Lying Flat youth.” However,
it only explains part of the story. Remember we say that the movement itself is a kind
of youth counternarrative, then, who are these youth in such a counternarrative in
China? Moreover, as the Chinese economy has taken off long before the emergence of
the “Lying Flat” meme or the “Sang culture” in general and the traditional values in
China mentioned above have long existed in Chinese history, why did such dispirited
cultures and the anxieties that they transduce suddenly surface at a specific time juncture
in a short span of roughly five years? Apart from the prevalence of digital media,
especially social media, another plausible explanation lies in the age group that pushes
these internet subcultures into circulation and the issue of appropriation, or the act of
making sense of affective experience of the general dispirited internet cultures. As
Hauke Lehmann, Hans Roth, and Kerstin Schankweiler suggest, “[c]ollective processes
of affecting and being-affected tend to sediment historically in generic forms and for-
mulas, which in turn can be appropriated and cross-faded in order to produce various
articulations of dissent, commonality or belonging.”38
Reasons why the “Sang-ness” burst onto the scene of the social media do not solely
reside in the anxiety from the threat of neoliberal and traditional values in China, but
 QUARTERLY JOURNAL OF SPEECH 55

also in how anxiety is appropriated by the specific age group (as a collective) with the
historic specificity in which they are enmeshed. Circling back to the original posts that
advocate the “Lying Flat” lifestyle, one can easily notice that the majority of the people
supporting this movement are mostly workplace newbies in their 20s or early 30s,
who are or were seeking to climb the corporate ladder. Most of them were born in the
1990s and are often referred to as “Jiuling hou 九零后”39 in China.
Consequently, the historic specificity of the “Jiuling hou (or the Nineties’ Generation)”
may be the missing jigsaw puzzle piece that contributes to the emergence of the “Lying
Flat” movement. Born in a time when the initial results of the “Reform and Opening-Up”
of China began to emerge, and growing up during China’s entry into the WTO, the
“Nineties’ Generation” enjoyed relatively better living standards in their upbringing in
comparison to their parents, who often struggled to make ends meet in their adulthood.
The difference in living conditions partially results in different levels of intolerance
toward harsh working schedules and conditions. For example, the drastic decrease in
the number of young migrant workers40 suggests that young people often opt for job pos-
itions with better working environments, rather than doing hard physical labor such as
“Banzhuan 搬砖” (lifting bricks in a construction site).41 Economic development and the
subsequently improved living standards that the “Nineties’ Generation” enjoyed have
provided them with basic living materials (food, accommodation, and clothes are
often paid for by their parents) to choose not to work as hard as their parents. Yet, iro-
nically, the cost of living that came with the economic development has also limited their
ability to seek further improvement in their living standards, so they either have to accept
their “fate” and lie flat or put in greater efforts than their parents to rise on top in the
“Neijuan.”
Apart from their social and historical circumstances, the role of the “Nineties’ Gener-
ation” as the “digital natives” (the most prominent age group that embraced the wide-
spread application of the internet) and the direct recipient of the country’s stringent
demographic control policy further differentiated them from their previous generations.
The “Nineties’ Generation” was the major age group who first experienced the prevalence
of the internet. As research from the Cyberspace Administration of China have shown,
the number of internet users in China skyrocketed from four million in 1999 to four
hundred million in 2010, and the major age group of that population is people born
in the 1990s.42 The digital literacy43 of the “Nineties’ Generation” becomes a prerequisite
for them to start or join the “Sang culture” on Chinese social media (or any “culture” for
that matter). Another—perhaps more distinctive—marker of this group comes from the
single-child policy,44 which heavily influenced the cultural, educational, and family struc-
tures of those who were born in the 1990s. Being the single child in the family, the
“Nineties’ Generation,” who often appear to be vastly different from their parents or
older generations, are often attached with labels such as “lost, spoiled, or unique.” Essen-
tially, as the “special” generation emerging from the single-child policy, the clash of ideol-
ogy and values between the “Nineties’ Generation” and previous generations is often
manifested as the pursuit of individualism versus the stress of collectivism based on tra-
ditional values in China. Under such circumstances, the living and working pressures are
often perceived as less tolerable. In other words, it is the difference in appropriation of
signs of work and life by the “Nineties’ Generation” compared to previous generations
that has led to the varied emotions toward excessive affective burdens from the economic
56 Z. ZHANG AND K. LI

realities and social values in contemporary China. Thus, different affective economies
from the ones experienced by previous generations are propagated.
From this point, we propose that the historic specificity of the affective economies of
anxiety in the “Lying Flat” movement can be viewed as a triple-layered amalgamation.
Culturally, traditional values of Chinese society denote a series of hypothetical expec-
tations on the children from their parents, and peer pressures from relatively closer
kinship and “other people’s children” require heavy affective burdens undertaken by
the youth. The rising neoliberal order of contemporary China further exacerbated the
affective labor they have to undertake with harsh and relentless work schedules and a
“money-first” corporate culture. Finally, the historic placement of the “Nineties’ Gener-
ation” resulted in their general inclination of adopting a different approach to appropri-
ate pressures from work and life. The combination of these social and historical factors
have led to the accumulation of anxiety that later propelled the circulation of the “Lying
Flat” movement and the “Sang culture” in general.

Social imaginary: The body in distress meets memes of self-deprecation

Delineating the surface of collective bodies
Due to the historic specificity of the “Nineties’ Generation,” the “Lying Flat” movement
has quickly received huge amount of public attention after its initial circulation. Discus-
sions of the term took place in various genres of media platforms, ranging from social
media platforms like Weibo and Zhihu (a Reddit-like social media platform in China)
to the more traditional, mainstream news agencies such as China Daily and the
People’s Daily. In this section, we will explore the role of the “Lying Flat” body in
various “Lying Flat” memes and how the bodily experience intensifies the anxiety that
propels the development of the “Lying Flat” movement by creating a boundary
between the “Lying Flat” community and the outside world.
As memes and images of the “Lying Flat” body circulate in the digital space in China,
the essence of this term has percolated into various social dimensions, resulting in more
generalized connotations than it was originally intended to express. Basically, everyone
can “Lie Flat,” but the nuanced connotations that the term represents vary from figure
to figure. Apart from the young people suffering from the “996” (working from nine
in the morning to nine in the evening and working six days a week) workplace
culture,45 people from other professions and groups can also “Lie Flat,” whether willingly
or not. Buck-passing government officials are “Lying Flat” as a way to shrug off respon-
sibilities, entrepreneurs can “Lie Flat” after failing to start up new companies, and young
college lecturers can “Lie Flat” in the face of their huge workload and the minimal income
they get in return. The “Lying Flat” culture has seemingly transformed from its original
connotation as an expression of the anxiety and helplessness of the younger generation
into a philosophy of life that symbolizes a sense of non-conformity from the groups or
individuals within this dispirited culture. Basically, when people “Lie Flat,” they either
adopt a relaxed lifestyle by working less diligently (for example, to be “Foxi”) or they
simply stop working altogether (which is extreme and rare).
At the first glance, it seems that there are different emotions at work among these
varied forms of “Lying Flat” from different groups of people mentioned above. Yet
 QUARTERLY JOURNAL OF SPEECH 57

one thing that binds them together is the bodily movement of what the term suggests
(quite literally, to lie flat), as the polar opposite bodily experience to that of “Stand
Upright.” When people claim to “Lie Flat,” apart from lying on one’s back in a completely
flat bodily position, they covertly demonstrate their refusal to “Zhanli 站立,” or to “Stand
Upright,” which is in stark contrast to “Lying Flat.” As suggested by Lehman, the discreet
process of affecting and being affected with regard to bodily experience influences the
process of abstraction,46 which relates to the abstract sphere of exchange involving col-
lective affective references. The bodily experience presented in countless “Lying Flat”
memes, together with the rise of “Sang-ness” and the historic specificity of the “Nineties’
Generation,” may offer clues to how the affective economies of anxiety gain valence
during the circulations of such memes.
A quick look at the memes of “Lying Flat” on the internet reveals the continuity of
bodily positions in these memes, which is lying down on the ground instead of standing
straight (see Figure 2). Even Zhang Busan, the creator of the song “Lying Flat is King,”
performs the piece while lying down on a couch. This may not seem to be a particularly
keen observation as the term literally denotes such bodily positions, but abstractions
from such bodily experience may invite more in-depth implications. As Ahmed suggests,
“[e]motions shape the very surfaces of bodies, which take shape through the repetition of
actions over time, as well as through orientations towards and away from others.”47 The
stark contrast between “Lying Flat” and “Standing Upright” actually represents the differ-
ence between “doing nothing” and “doing something.” Looking back at the historic
specificity of the “Lying Flat” movement, choosing to “Lie Flat” often turns out to be a
choice that one is forced to take when it is too difficult to “Stand Upright.”
Essentially, the “Lying Flat” body itself has become an object representing the collec-
tive identity of the “Lying Flat Youth,” and circulations of “Lying Flat” memes have
become signs of the affective economies of anxiety in the movement as they pass by
countless individuals. As Ahmed suggests, “the slide between figures constructs a relation
of resemblance between the figures: what makes them alike may be their ‘unlikeness’
from ‘us.’”48 The body that lies down in a completely flat bodily position emerged as a
border object that delimits the collective identity of the “Lying Flat youth” From their
perspective, dare we say, to adopt a bodily position or to perform a bodily movement
of “Lying Flat” means that one chooses to escape from the threat of anxiety of excessive
affective labors from neoliberalism and traditional values. To stand upright indicates that
one chooses to deal with the threat of anxiety from such labors (or is unaffected by it) and
may potentially become one of those who pose such a threat to “us.”
The bodily position of “Lying Flat” delineates the surfaces of the collective bodies of the
“Lying Flat youth.” As Ahmed suggests, “the individual subject comes into being through its
very alignment with the collective,”49 and the symbolic representations of such bodily
experience solidify the collective identity of the “Lying Flat” community and create a
visible boundary between them and the outside world. They also serve as means of abstrac-
tion of the individuals in the community through metamorphosis and metonymic slides
between figures and objects relevant to this movement on Chinese social media. Yet,
apart from demarcating the group identities between those who “do nothing” and “do some-
thing,” the “Lying Flat” body also implies a sense of self-deprecation that often goes unno-
ticed. Thus, in the following section, we will conduct a closer analysis of the symbolicity of
the term and the transduction of the “Lying Flat” body in various audio-visual resources.
58 Z. ZHANG AND K. LI

Figure 2. Examples of “Lying Flat” memes found on the Chinese Search Engine–Baidu

Resistance with self-deprecation

The collective identity of the “Lying Flat” community, represented by the bodies that “Lie
Flat” and the anxiety it signifies, has caused heated discussions on whether the youth in the
country should take on such an identity or not. These discussions usually epitomize ideo-
logical differences between the young and the old, the privileged and the under-privileged.
The term “Lying Flat” and the bodies that “Lie Flat” have been transduced across multiple
audio-visual resources, giving birth to a breed of memes marked by resistance to anxiety.
Ever since the “Lying Flat” movement has gained momentum, it has faced its fair share
of criticism, particularly from established individuals of elder generations. On May 28,
2021, Professor Li Fengliang from Tsinghua University commented on Weibo that
“‘Lying flat’ is highly irresponsible, you have failed your parents, even more, you have
failed countless hard-working taxpayers [if you Lie Flat].”50 Yu Minhong, founder and
CEO of New Oriental, a conglomerate in the education industry, said on May 30,
2021, that “young people should not ‘lie flat’”51 and entrepreneurs of his generation
should inspire the fighting spirit of the younger generation. Other celebrities and
media outlets have followed suit, condemning the attitude that comes with the “Lying
Flat” meme. The most glaring example of all is an article published by Nanfang Daily,
a mainstream news press in China, with the title “‘Lying Flat’ is shameful, what is the
justice in doing it?”52 as a direct response to the blog post “‘Lying Flat’ is justice.” The
report said, “language will affect people’s mind and actions, if one were submerged
 QUARTERLY JOURNAL OF SPEECH 59

into the ‘Sang culture’ linguistic frame for long enough, it is inevitable for one to pick up
negative emotions…some young people, who should have been energetic and positive,
keep making strange comments like ‘I’m almost a wreck’ or ‘what’s so wrong of being
a ‘salted fish’ [idiom referring to an idler, or worse, a loser].”
By defining “Lying Flat” as “shameful,” this article evoked fierce responses from young
people, particularly the “Lying Flat youth.” Apart from the tactically designed discourse
strategies to fend off the lash from the “mainstream” ideology, the “Lying Flat” commu-
nity also resorted to other resources in proving their rationale to “Lie Flat,” and nearly all
the resources seem to focus on the daily struggle of ordinary citizens, particularly the
under-privileged living conditions they have to endure. In this regard, one particular
video uploaded to Bilibili that recorded the daily commuting routine of young white-
collar workers caught the public attention.53 The uploader of the video, who works in
the city center of Beijing, has to live in Yanjiao, a relatively small city outside the
capital. She leaves home every morning at 5:00 and embarks on her painstaking
journey of multiple changes of buses, subways, and even bicycles, to get to her workplace.
A round trip like this costs her more than six hours on a daily basis, and she is not alone,
as can be seen from the video itself and the comments below. The distance, the condition
of traveling she has to endure, and the contrast between the glamour of a mega city and
the desolation of the place in which she lives, do not just reveal the hardship she endures
but more importantly, act as the embodiment and symbols of the struggle of the people
who choose to “Lie Flat.” The journey typifies the misalignment between the social ima-
ginaries of the “Lying Flat” community and the social realities they have to endure.
The viral circulations of the video of commuting offer good examples of how audio-
visual resources are adopted to propel the spread of the “Lying Flat” movement in the
online space of Chinese social media. More important, the circulations of the video
reveal how the most mundane and quotidian practices can catalyze social actions once
they are aligned and entangled with social imaginaries of collective identities. As
Poovey suggests, “a social imaginary is not simply a theory developed by specialists.
Instead, it is at least partly generated by ordinary people for use in everyday life, and
it reveals itself in stories, myths, and commonplaces as well as theoretical narratives.”54
We cannot assert how this video is appropriated by its viewers, but judging from the
“most liked” comments of the video, one can clearly detect a strong sense of anxiety
and the sentiment of wanting to escape from the threat of such anxiety. This felt
anxiety justifies the rationale of the youth to “Lie Flat” and prompts the emergence of
a plethora of self-deprecating metaphors (one genre of symbolic devices typically associ-
ated with the “Lying Flat” culture) adopted by the youth to ridicule the criticism against
them.55 These metaphors and memes serve as “emotional incubators”56 that allow par-
ticular feelings and representations to circulate, gain valence among the “Lying Flat”
community, and permeate through the local affective networks through social media
and quotidian activities. Actually, the use of self-deprecating memes has always
accompanied the development of the “Sang culture” in China with notable examples
including “Shechu 社畜” (corporate slaves, referring to employees who are heavily
exploited and treated like animals);57 “Dagongren 打工人” (migrant worker or laborer
in big cities, suggesting cheap labor);58 and the long-existing “Beipiao 北漂” (underpri-
vileged young people who leave their hometown to work in Beijing, implying a sense of
homelessness). These memes seem to indicate a sense of “belowness” 59 due to the lack of
60 Z. ZHANG AND K. LI

wealth, high social status, or decent educational backgrounds. The “belowness” dispersed
from the self-deprecating memes mirrors the “belowness” of the “Lying Flat” body to the
“Standing Upright” body as the border object that binds the collective identity of the
“Lying Flat” community. After being appropriated by those who are placed within the
historic specificity of the “Sang culture,” such “belowness” of the body has become a
signifier of anxiety, which intensifies during its circulations and displacements
between objects.
Looking back at the debate on “Lying Flat” as shameful practice and the subsequent
fierce responses, it is clear that the label “belowness” transduced from the “Lying Flat”
body is subjugated. The claims of shame imply that being under-privileged is not a mis-
fortune or something to be sympathized with, but rather a disgrace. The attacks on the
body and the collective identity of the “Lying Flat youth” it represents propels further
resistance to the threat of anxiety. In this regard, one particular meme stands out,
namely “Ge jiucai 割韭菜,” which roughly means cutting Chinese chives as a way of har-
vesting them.60 The meme itself combines the sense of “belowness” of the “Lying Flat”
body, the quotidian practice of common people, with the anxiety of imagined threat
from pressures of excessive affective burdens in one package.
As one of the most common crops in China, “Jiucai 韭菜” has long existed in many
Chinese cuisines, making it an easily recognizable object in the quotidian practice of
many Chinese people (especially those living in the north). With basic knowledge of agri-
culture, one would know that the traditional method of harvesting Chinese chives is to
cut them with a sickle, leaving the roots intact so that they could be reaped again next
year. This simple and long-standing agricultural practice was later adopted as a metaphor
describing the behavior of large financial institutions exploiting private investors in the
stock market. Basically, the former are the ones holding the sickle while the latter are the
ones being reaped. This metaphor has become so prevalent that its original meaning as
an agricultural practice has faded, to the extent that its metaphorical implication of
exploitation has taken over its agricultural one as the main connotation of the term.
In other words, the sense of being exploited indicated by the term has long been
rooted in the social imaginary of many Chinese people. As a typical sign representing
the pressure from corporate practice, this meme has become particularly prominent in
the “Lying Flat” circulation, with the bodily movement (mentioned in the previous
section) added to this trope (see Figure 3).
This cartoonish sketch shows a sickle trying to cut down the chives. Instead of being
reaped like they usually are, the chives all choose to lie sideways in an almost flat position
so that they can remain unscathed from the cutting motion. The caption states that “the
chives that Lie Flat cannot be easily cut down.” In this sketch, the sickle represents the
hand of the corporate and the privileged, and the chives are the common and underpri-
vileged youth who often appear as the victims of exploitation. By choosing to “Lie Flat,”
the chives escape from the threat of the sickle. In other words, by adopting a “Lying Flat”
bodily position, the youth dodge the threat of the anxiety posed by the neoliberal order.
The “Lying Flat” body, in this sense, transduced from corporeal experience from the sub-
jects of the movement (“Lying Flat” youth) to inanimate objects and the relevant motions
that often accompany such objects in the quotidian practice of the Chinese people and, in
turn, their social imaginary. It is this combination of body, emotion, culture, and social
values that gives vicerality to self-deprecating memes in the “Lying Flat” movement and
 QUARTERLY JOURNAL OF SPEECH 61

the “Sang culture” in general. These signs have been ‘sticky’ enough to attract users’ focus
in the never-ending stream of content on social media.61 Since the youth produce, circu-
late, and engage in such self-deprecating memes, the images and objects within these
memes carry immense rhetorical and emotional force to propel sociopolitical actions.
The “Lying Flat” movement may appear as the helpless sentiment of the younger gen-
eration in the face of the traditional “paradigm of success.” In reality, it is a mismatch
between young people’s self-deliberation and the materiality within which they are
enmeshed. The “Lying Flat” movement and its anxieties and “belowness” signified by
the “Lying Flat” body, have become a space for the social imaginaries of young people,
and are fueled by the affective economies of anxiety that form the basis of their collective
identities, influence their way of interpreting political realities, grant valence to particular
values and beliefs and propel political responses and social actions in reflexive and his-
torically specific ways.

Absurdity and self-healing: Evolving circulations

Based on a cultural milieu and shared anxiety, the “Lying Flat” movement has been
able to spread like wildfire on Chinese social media. Ever since the blog post of “A
Keen Traveler” burst onto the scene of China’s online space, the “Lying Flat” move-
ment, as part of the “Sang culture,” quickly propagated through its viral circulations
on Chinese social media driven by the affective economies of anxiety, which is
reinforced by the transduction of “belowness” across audiovisual resources. The preva-
lence of digital technologies and the digital literacy of the “Nineties’ Generation” also
facilitate the general accessibility to the “Lying Flat” meme and susceptibility to the
“Sang-ness” that comes with such a movement. In other words, the anxiety “passes

Figure 3. A sketch showing a sickle’s failed attempt to cut down chives that choose to Lie Flat with the
caption “the chives that lie flat cannot be easily cut down.”
62 Z. ZHANG AND K. LI

by” the subjects and creates a whirlpool of intensifying emotions that propel the con-
tinuous circulation of the movement.
As the term has become more mainstream, it is inevitable that new interpretations
of the term are introduced, diluting the sense of anxiety it signifies. As Laurie Gries
suggests, rhetoric moves in “non-linear, inconsistent, and often unpredictable
ways,”62 and the phrase “Lying Flat” also has transformed in terms of its implications
during circulation, driven less by anxiety but more by a sense of simply “doing
nothing.” From our observation, the “binding” effect of the word does not necessarily
become a “blockage” and stops the word from moving or acquiring new meaning.63 As
the term has become increasingly mainstream, the meaning it stands for is both
unitary and diversified at the same time. This may seem to be a rather self-contradic-
tory statement, but a closer look at the actors who adopt this term may offer certain
explanations. On the one hand, usage of this expression from mainstream media
usually denotes the simple, less “harmful” version of the phrase, which, as just men-
tioned, is basically a replacement for “doing nothing.” The applications of the term
in this sense cover a range of topics, including education,64 housing,65 or even
sports.66 All seem to have dissolved the sense of anxiety that is generally implied by
the phrase. On the other hand, mention of the “Lying Flat” meme on Chinese
social media and video platforms reveals generally diversified and entertainment-
oriented intentions, represented by the inclination of using the meme as a satire of
social realities. As a result, a new breed of memes that revolved around “Lying Flat”
are being produced. Differing from the “chives” trope mentioned earlier, this new
type of meme signifies less the anxiety among youth and more use of the meme
itself as a source of entertainment, often in the form of audiovisual resources.
Instead of acting as signs of anxiety, these resources often strike people with the
absurdity they display. In other words, rather than adopting or spreading the meme
as a means of revealing one’s struggle (intentionally or unintentionally), creators of
these audiovisual materials are simply “lying flat for the sake of ‘Lying Flat.’”67
Does the new “meaning” acquired by the phrase “Lying Flat” necessarily mean the
gradual irrelevance of the affective economies of anxiety in pushing forward the circu-
lation of the “Lying Flat” meme? A recent trendy video on Bilibili might suggest other-
wise. With the lengthy title “Returning to My Village for Three Days: My Second
Uncle Cured My Internal Mental Friction,”68 the video depicted the life of the uploa-
der’s second uncle (or Erjiu 二舅 in Chinese),69 who is a common villager living in the
remote countryside. He suffers from leg disability due to a medical accident in his
childhood, which cost him the opportunity to receive a better education and
“success” in life. However, he remains positive and lives his life to the fullest,
though most of his life remains grounded in a small and unknown village. The
video depicting the uncle’s story quickly gained a huge following on the video platform
with more than 38 million views and five million likes. Though the video does not
mention the phrase “Lying Flat” directly, the suffering of the protagonist and the
internal mental friction of the video’s creator align with the anxiety of those who
wish or choose to “Lie Flat.” Seeing the uncle dealing with his difficulties is appro-
priated by many viewers of the video as overcoming the anxiety from the pressures
they face in daily life. As such, anxiety still “does things.” The video, through its
black humor depicting the life struggle of a common and underprivileged individual,
 QUARTERLY JOURNAL OF SPEECH 63

symbolizes the intention to make peace with the anxiety and the process of self-healing
of many young people in contemporary China. Maybe circulations of the “Lying Flat”
meme have attached it with new meanings and multi-faceted implications, or maybe
such meanings and implications have already been included in this meme from the
very beginning, only to be reified during its circulations. However, one thing is
sure, the affective economies of anxiety are always present in its emergence and pro-
cedural development in China’s online space, though it has become less visible and
traceable due to the dilution of both the unitary and diversified meaning that accom-
pany the term today.

Conclusion
Ever since that first blog post of “Lying Flat” entered the public space of deliberation,
the meme, as initially a bodily movement, has become a symbol of anxiety for individ-
uals or groups who are overburdened by the affective labor from the neoliberal order
and traditional values of contemporary China. The “Lying Flat” community, largely
consists of workplace newbies such as the “Nineties’ Generation,” affected by
anxiety, who use the “Lying Flat” body and its transduction across audiovisual
resources reified by self-deprecating memes to form their collective identity as the
“Lying Flat youth.” The prevalence of the “Lying Flat” movement is not only the
epitome of the widespread social anxiety resulting from the increasingly fierce compe-
titions, but also marks a crucial turn of social and cultural values in contemporary
China during its process of class solidification. It is not just about giving up the
unhealthy lifestyle of being overly hardworking and lowering self-expectations to
relieve mental pressures but a seemingly contradictory combination of social
anxiety, self-healing, and resistance from Chinese youth.
From an ecological standpoint, we have traced here how the affective economies of
anxiety propelled the circulation, uptake, pushback, amplification, and effects of the
“Lying Flat” movement. We see affect as social actions, which though they may not be
meticulously orchestrated, are still reflected in both the digital space and the quotidian
practice of everyday life. As Hokka and Nelimarkka suggest, “affect does not just float
around, but there are actual bodies and social actors who negotiate, evaluate and com-
municate when images are circulated,”70 which is part of the reason why we often
present the prevalence of the meme as an online movement. The “Lying Flat” online dis-
course and the more general “Sang culture” should be seen as historical constructs and
social actions across the affective, discursive, social, political, and digital dimensions.
Investigating how affect influences online social movements in contemporary China
allows for a more nuanced understanding of how and why the “Sang cultures” emerge
in China and develop as well as their potential repercussions in the social space of the
country. Moreover, this study partly reaffirms the feasibility of adopting the theory of
affective economies in the analysis of other discourses beyond the right-wing discourse
in Ahmed’s studies. By approaching the “Lying Flat” movement with affective economies,
the study may offer a renewed approach to explaining the rising and viral developments
of youth counternarratives in contemporary China’s digital space. The country’s unique
social context—characterized by a mixture of neoliberalism, socialism, and traditional
Confucianism values—offers ample research topics that may lead to exciting and
64 Z. ZHANG AND K. LI

insightful findings in rhetoric and communication studies. Thus, we sincerely hope that
rhetorical studies on internet subcultures of China do not solely reside in the domestic
realm of the country.
It is from the analysis of the “Lying Flat” movement that we hope to foreground
the role of rhetorical affect in propelling the rise of online subcultures through con-
structing collective identities of marginalized groups in localized online ecologies. It is
no secret that public deliberations on group identities have become increasingly dis-
persed and decentralized. The intersections between local affective networks and larger
ecologies are places where such identities are created, shaped, and negotiated. Our
study highlights the role of rhetorical ecology, as a threshold concept, in decoding
the process of the becoming of affective publics and counterpublics in the digital
public sphere, and scholarship of this approach will benefit from the inclusion of
concerted analysis of multimodal resources from both the digital and quotidian,
and authoritative and vernacular rhetoric. Taking multiple forms of resources into
consideration would greatly enhance the scope of studies from ecological perspectives
by further clarifying the interplay between historical specificity and social imaginaries.
We have also demonstrated the importance of seeing affect as social actions,
particularly in today’s youth participatory politics. As scholars continue to seek to untan-
gle the uniqueness of how youth jointly constitute publics of their own, the digital,
sensory, and bodily rhetoric that saturate youth participation in the digital public
sphere may, as suggested by this study, offer a good entry point for such academic inter-
est. We have displayed the potential of seeing memes (and other online audio-visual
resources) not only as sources of internet entertainment or playful activities, but also
as social actions that are both tension-creating and tension-alleviating for collisions
between mainstream and marginalized ideologies and identities. As can be demonstrated
from the “Lying Flat” movement, the sharing of memes has both solidified and dissolved
collective identities of the youth.
Another, perhaps more important finding of this study, is our perception of objects of
emotions. An object does not necessarily possess only one quality as either material or
abstract, but can take on both qualities simultaneously during their circulations across
disparate registers of relations (for example, the “Lying Flat” body). This metamorphosis
of objects enables the transduction of affect, which facilitates how affective economies can
be imagined and visualized, particularly in multimodal settings. How the transduction
may take place, apart from digital media’s intervention, lies in the entanglement of indi-
vidual appropriations and socio-cultural context. As such, more localized theories of
affective economies may be needed, since the historical specificity of subjects and the cul-
tural specificity of objects can lead to varied interpretations of emotion, affect, and social
actions. Such locatedness may contribute to the conceptual accuracy of affective econom-
ies in the future.

Notes
1. For the definition of the character “躺,” see “Tang 躺” [Lie], Cihai 辞海, accessed January 6,
2022, https://www.cihai.com.cn/search/words?q=%E8%BA%BA.
2. For the definition of the character “平,” see “Ping 平” [Flat], Cihai 辞海, accessed January 6,
2022, https://www.cihai.com.cn/search/words?q=%E5%B9%B3.
 QUARTERLY JOURNAL OF SPEECH 65

3. For more information on the term, see “Tangping 躺平” [Lying Flat], Baidu Baike 百度百
科, last modified December 9, 2021, 11:15, https://baike.baidu.com/item/%E8%BA%BA%
E5%B9%B3/24123069. See also AFP Beijing, “China’s Disenchanted Youth ‘Lie Flat’ to
Cope with Modern Life,” France24, March 6, 2021, https://www.france24.com/en/live-
news/20210603-china-s-disenchanted-youth-lie-flat-to-cope-with-modern-life; Elsie Chen,
“These Chinese Millennials Are ‘Chilling,’ and Beijing Isn’t Happy,” New York Times,
July 3, 2021, https://www.nytimes.com/2021/07/03/world/asia/china-slackers-tangping.
html.
4. In order to retrieve information of this web-post, we have resorted to Hu and Zhang’s study
on this issue. See Hu Fanzhu 胡范铸 and Zhang Hongqian 张虹倩, “‘Tangping’ yuqing:
yanxing fenlie zhong de shehui jiaolu he ziwo zhiyu ‘躺平’舆情: 言行分裂中的社会焦虑
和自我治愈” [‘Lying Flat’ public opinion: social anxiety and self-healing in the split of
words and deeds], Qingnian Xuebao 青年学报, no. 4 (2021): 53.
5. Malcolm Gladwell, The Tipping Point (New York: Back Bay Books, 2002), 12.
6. For example, see Cai Qi 蔡骐 and Zhao Jiayue 赵嘉悦, “Jushenxing renzhi, kuaquanceng
qinggan yu xiucihua kangzheng: dui meijie huayu ‘tangping’ de yizhong fansi 具身性认
知、跨圈层情感与修辞化抗争:对媒介话语“躺平”的一种反思” [Embodied recognition,
cross-circle emotion and rhetorical resistance: reflection on the ‘Lying Flat’ media dis-
course], Chuanmei Guancha 传媒观察, no. 5, (2022): 42–48.
7. Sarah Ahmed, “Affective Economies,” Social Text 22, no. 2 (2004): 119.
8. For more on this song, see Zhangbusan 张不三, “Tangping shi wangdao 躺平是王道”
[Lying Flat is the way], YouTube Video, 2:51, June 12, 2022, https://www.youtube.com/
watch?v=corZx0a1yRU.
9. Casey Boyle, James J. Brown Jr., and Steph Ceraso, “The Digital: Rhetoric Behind and
Beyond the Screen,” Rhetoric Society Quarterly 48, no. 3, (2018): 257–258.
10. There are multiple reasons why we choose to adopt the concept of transduction in our
analysis. First, as discussions of the “Lying Flat” movement mostly reside in digital public
sphere, we find the theoretical underpinning of transduction particularly suitable for the
analysis, which is the multisensory, embodied, and pervasiveness of digital practices.
Second, transduction means the way in which a signal moves across disparate registers of
relations; this suggests affect is not simply “out there” and traveling endlessly in flux, but
exists in relationality and in our orientations towards others and objects, and it also involves
a sense of metamorphosis, which is suitable for our analysis of how anxiety can transform
from human bodies (the “Lying Flat” body) to the more abstract appropriations (below-
ness), and then to memes of various genres. Third, transduction cannot be easily located
in any one subject or object, which is similar to Ahmed’s conceptualization of emotions
as something that a subject does not “have”, but are created through relationality. See
Boyle et al., “The Digital,” 257–258.
11. Margaret Wetherell, Tim McCreanor, Alex McConville, Helen Moewaka Barnes, and Jade le
Grice, “Settling Space and Covering the Nation: Some Conceptual Considerations in Ana-
lysing Affect and Discourse,” Emotion, Space and Society 16, (2015): 58.
12. Margaret Wetherell, Affect and Emotion: A New Social Science Understanding (London:
SAGE, 2012), 159.
13. Shui-yin Sharon Yam, “Affective Economies and Alienizing Discourse: Citizenship and
Maternity Tourism in Hong Kong,” Rhetoric Society Quarterly 46, no. 5, (2016): 2.
14. Lily Wong, Transpacific Attachments: Sex Work, Media Networks, and Affective Histories of
Chineseness (New York: Columbia University Press, 2018), 8.
15. Ahmed, “Affective Economies,” 124.
16. Jenny Rice Edbauer, “Unframing Models of Public Distribution: From Rhetorical Situation
to Rhetorical Ecologies,” Rhetoric Society Quarterly 35, no. 4 (2005): 9.
17. Wetherell, Affect and Emotion, 159.
18. Sarah Ahmed, The Promise of Happiness (Durham: Duke University Press, 2010), 42.
19. Sarah Ahmed, The Cultural Politics of Emotion (Edinburgh: Edinburgh University Press,
2004), 66.
66 Z. ZHANG AND K. LI

20. Ahmed, The Cultural Politics, 97.

21. The “Sang culture” often refers to a rising Internet subculture of young people (particularly
those born after the 1990s and 2000s) expressing their depression from their daily lives,
study, career, or relationships, using pessimistic words, language, or images to reveal
their anxiety, helplessness, or even despair. The “Ge You tang 葛优躺” [Ge You slouch]
mentioned later in the article is one of the most representative Internet memes in the
“Sang culture.” For more on this term, see “Sang wenhua 丧文化” [Sang culture], Baidu
Baike 百度百科, last modified October 14, 2022, 14:34, https://baike.baidu.com/item/%
E4%B8%A7%E6%96%87%E5%8C%96/19892924?fr=aladdin.
22. Paul A. Prior and Julie A. Hengst, “Introduction: Exploring Semiotic Remediation,” in
Exploring Semiotic Remediation as Discourse Practice, eds. Paul A. Prior and Julie
A. Hengst (London: Palgrave Macmilan, 2010), 2.
23. The word “Diaosi 屌丝” [Male genital hair] was later partly replaced by “Feichai 废柴”
[Useless firewood] due to its nature as profanity, both words are still in use today and
can be roughly understood as “losers” in English. See also “Diaosi wenhua 屌丝文化”
[Losers’ culture], Baidu Baike 百度百科, last modified June 8, 2022, 09:21, https://baike.
baidu.com/item/%E5%B1%8C%E4%B8%9D%E6%96%87%E5%8C%96/357503?fr=aladdin.
24. A term surfaced on the Internet at the end of 2017 depicting a low desire state of mind. See
“Foxi 佛系” [Buddha-like culture], Baidu Baike 百度百科, last modified July 5, 2022, 19:33,
https://baike.baidu.com/item/%E4%BD%9B%E7%B3%BB/22257892.
25. Apart from its meaning as fierce domestic competitions, “Neijuan” also stands for “more
efforts, less returns.” See “Neijuan 内卷” [Involution], Baidu Baike 百度百科, last
modified January 10, 2022, 20:34, https://baike.baidu.com/item/%E5%86%85%E5%8D%
B7/54275161. The popularity of this term may have directly led to the rise of the “Lying
Flat” movement in China.
26. Ahmed, The Cultural Politics, 92–94.
27. Laurie E. Gries, Still Life with Rhetoric: A New Materialist Approach for Visual Rhetorics
(Boulder, Colorado: University Press of Colorado, 2015), 3.
28. Ahmed, The Cultural Politics, 92–93.
29. A term that has surfaced around the emergence of “Sang culture” in China. Often con-
sidered as a rough equivalent of “Diaosi 屌丝,” this term represents those who are under-
privileged and plain-looking, as the polar opposite of “Gao fu shuai 高富帅” (male) and
“Bai fu mei 白富美” (female). For more on this term, see “Qiong ai cuo 穷矮搓” [Poor,
short, and ugly], Baidu Baike 百度百科, last modified September 29, 2022, 21:38, https://
baike.baidu.com/item/%E7%A9%B7%E7%9F%AE%E6%90%93/6727536?fr=aladdin.
30. See also “Gao fu shuai 高富帅” [Tall, rich and handsome], Baidu Baike 百度百科, last
modified December 8, 2021, 15:52, https://baike.baidu.com/item/%E9%AB%98%E5%AF%
8C%E5%B8%85/5487667; “Bai fu mei 白富美” [White, rich, and beautiful], Baidu Baike
百度百科, last modified July 26, 2019, 17:03, https://baike.baidu.com/item/%E7%99%BD
%E5%AF%8C%E7%BE%8E/9462281.
31. For more on this Policy, see: Long Xinmin 龙新民, Zhongguo Gongchandang lishi zhongyao
shijian cidian 中国共产党历史重要事件系列辞典 [Dictionary of Important Historic
Events of the Communist Party of China], Zhongguo Gongchandang lishi xilie cidian 中
国共产党历史系列辞典 [Dictionaries of the History of the Communist Party of China]
(Beijing: Zhonggong dangshi chubanshe 中共党史出版社, 2019), 398.
32. The socialist market economy generally referred to a hybrid form of socialist social insti-
tutions and market economy, which granted a relative sense of freedom to the market,
but the operations of the market are still under strict state supervision. For more on this
term, see: Zhang Guangjie 张光杰, Zhongguo falv gailun 中国法律概论[An introduction
to laws in China] (Shanghai: Fudan University Press, 2005), 250.
33. The average price of residential commodity houses in China nearly increased five-fold in less
than 20 years. The increase is even greater for major cities locate on the relatively more
developed eastern region of the country. For more information, see “Guojia shuju 国家
 QUARTERLY JOURNAL OF SPEECH 67

数据” [National data], National Bureau of Statistics, accessed July 11, 2022, https://data.
stats.gov.cn/adv.htm?m=advquery&cn=C01.
34. The “big family” value is a result of the traditional family forms in China with all family
members living together (grandparents, siblings, cousins, etc., hence the “big family”),
which greatly values intimacy and connections between family members. The
influence of the “big family” value is still persistent in modern Chinese society. See:
Yang Juhua 杨菊华 and He Zhaohua 何炤华, “Shehui zhuanxing guocheng zhong
jiating de bianqian yu yanxu 社会转型过程中家庭的变迁与延续” [Changes and con-
tinuations of families in social transitions], Renkou Yanjiu 人口研究 38, No. 2,
(2014): 36–51.
35. Also known as “Bierenjia de haizi 别人家的孩子” in Chinese, a popular internet meme that
generally stands for peers who outperforms you in educational background, career develop-
ment, or physical attributes. For more on this term, see “Bierenjia de haizi 别人家的孩子”
[Other people’s children], Baidu Baike 百度百科, last modified April 16, 2022, 22:59,
https://baike.baidu.com/item/%E5%88%AB%E4%BA%BA%E5%AE%B6%E7%9A%84%
E5%AD%A9%E5%AD%90/5972691?fr=aladdin.
36. Alvin K. Wong, “Towards a Queer Affective Economy of Boys’ Love in Contemporary
Chinese Media,” Continuum 34, no. 4, (2020): 5.
37. Ahmed, The Cultural Politics, 11.
38. Hauke Lehmann, Hans Roth, and Kerstin Schankweiler, “Affective Economy,” in Affective
Societies: Key Concepts, eds. Jan Slaby and Christian von Scheve (Abingdon, Oxford: Rou-
tledge, 2019), 150.
39. See “Jiuling hou 90后” [The 90s generation], Baidu Baike 百度百科, last modified January 2,
2022, 17:21, https://baike.baidu.com/item/90%E5%90%8E/1992490?fr=aladdin.
40. The latest report on migrant workers published by the National Bureau of Statistics revealed
a general decrease of the 16–20 age group (from 2.6% in 2017 to 1.6% in 2021) and the 21–30
age group (27.3% in 2017 to 19.6% in 2021) in the age structure of the entire population of
migrant workers in China. For more on this information, see National Bureau of Statistics,
erlingeryi nian nongmingong jiance diaocha baogao 2021年农民工监测调查报告 [Report of
Survey on Migrant Workers 2021], April 29, 2022, http://www.stats.gov.cn/xxgk/sjfb/
zxfb2020/202204/t20220429_1830139.html.
41. A term often appears in internet memes as doing exhausting and boring work with scanty
income. See “Banzhuan 搬砖” [Lifting bricks], Baidu Baike 百度百科, last modified Febru-
ary 24, 2021, 07:25, https://baike.baidu.com/item/%E6%90%AC%E7%A0%96.
42. The most recent report on China’s internet development from the Cyberspace Adminis-
tration of China revealed that a major population of this group are people of the “90s gen-
eration.” See China Internet Network Information Center, The 47th China Statistical Report
on Internet Development, February 3, 2021, http://www.cac.gov.cn/2021-02/03/c_
1613923423079314.htm.
43. Douglas Eyman, Digital Rhetoric: Theory, Method, Practice (Ann Arbor: University of
Michigan Press, 2015), 45.
44. After initial turbulences in its implementations in the 1980s, the single-child policy was in
full force in the 1990s. See “Dushengzinv zhengce 独生子女政策” [Single-child policy],
Baidu Baike 百度百科, last modified November 9, 2021, 09:48, https://baike.baidu.com/
item/%E7%8B%AC%E7%94%9F%E5%AD%90%E5%A5%B3%E6%94%BF%E7%AD%96/
12604254#reference-[20]-11957490-wrap.
45. “Jiujiuliu gongzuozhi 996工作制” [996 working system], Baidu Baike 百度百科, last
modified June 3, 2022, 10:32, https://baike.baidu.com/item/996%E5%B7%A5%E4%BD%
9C%E5%88%B6/19940031.
46. Lehman et al., “Affective Economy,” 140.
47. Ahmed, The Cultural Politics, 4.
48. Ahmed, “Affective Economies,” 119.
49. Ibid.,128.
68 Z. ZHANG AND K. LI

50. See “Qinghua jiaoshou Li Fengliang cheng ‘tangping jibu fuze, duibuqi fumu,’ tangping cuo-
zaina? 清华教授李锋亮称“躺平极不负责, 对不起父母,”躺平错在哪?” [Professor Li Fen-
gliang from Tsinghua University: “Lying Flat is highly irresponsible, you have failed your
parents,’ what is wrong with ‘lying flat’”?], Netease 网易, May 30, 2021, https://www.163.
com/dy/article/GB86T9HI0542OOFV.html.
51. See: “Yu Minhong cheng nianqingren buneng tangping, bei wangyou chaofeng 俞敏洪称年
轻人不能躺平,被网友嘲讽” [Yu Minhong mocked for saying “young people should not Lie
Flat”], Guancha 观察者网, May 31, 2021, https://baijiahao.baidu.com/s?id=
1701253584688416368&wfr=spider&for=pc.
52. Wang Qingfeng 王庆峰, “‘Tangping’ kechi, nalaide zhengyigan? ‘躺平’可耻, 哪来的正
义感?” [“Lying Flat” is shameful, what is the justice in doing it?], Nanfang Daily 南
方日报, May 20, 2021, https://epaper.southcn.com/nfdaily/html/2021-05/20/content_
7944231.htm.
53. For more of this video, see Zaixiaxiaosu 在下小苏, “Cong Yanjiao dao Beijing: meitian
tongqin liu xiaoshi shangban, ni neng jianchi duojiu? 从燕郊到北京: 每天通勤6小时上
班, 你能坚持多久?” [From Yanjiao to Beijing: spending six hours on daily commuting,
how long can you keep doing it?], Bilibili Video, 10:55, May 18, 2021, https://www.
bilibili.com/video/BV1qB4y1F7y5?from=search&seid=897363663977896246&spm_id_from
=333.337.0.0.
54. Mary Poovey, “The Liberal Civil Subject and the Social in 18th Century British Moral Phil-
osophy,” Public Culture 14, no. 1 (2002): 131.
55. For example, one well known response from the “Lying Flat” community is the question
“how can I keep on fighting if my ‘blood bar’ is empty?” The “blood bar” metaphor is a
popular internet meme in China originally referring to the in-game health bar of video
game characters. If the ‘blood bar’ is empty, then the character would presumably be
dead, this was later adopted to real life scenarios where someone is feeling low and is on
the verge of collapsing. See “Xuecao yikong 血槽已空” [Blood bar is empty], Baidu Baike
百度百科, last modified April 4, 2022, 18:23, https://baike.baidu.com/item/%E8%A1%
80%E6%A7%BD%E5%B7%B2%E7%A9%BA/22210124.
56. Yam, “Affective Economies and Alienizing Discourse,” 8.
57. A term originated from the Japanese phrase “Shachiku しゃちく,” initially referring to
office workers who are heavily exploited by their companies, now more generally represent-
ing young people with weak economic foundations and have to endure extremely long
working hours. For more on this term, see “Shechu 社畜” [Livestock of the company],
Baidu Baike 百度百科, last modified April 27, 2022, 08:22, https://baike.baidu.com/
item/%E7%A4%BE%E7%95%9C.
58. A term now generally functions similarly as “Shechu.” See “Dagongren 打工人” [Laboror],
Baidu Baike 百度百科, last modified April 30, 2022, 20:22, https://baike.baidu.com/item/%
E6%89%93%E5%B7%A5%E4%BA%BA/54050409.
59. Ahmed, The Cultural Politics, 97.
60. See “Ge jiucai 割韭菜” [Cutting Chinese chives], Baidu Baike 百度百科, last modified
August 31, 2021, 16: 53, https://baike.baidu.com/item/%E5%89%B2%E9%9F%AD%E8%
8F%9C.
61. Susanna Paasonen (2016) “Fickle Focus: Distraction, Affect and the Production of Value in
Social Media,” First Monday 21, no. 10, (2016), https://firstmonday.org/article/view/6949/
5629.
62. Laurie Gries, “Agential Matters: Tumbleweed, Women-Pens, Citizen-Hope, and Rhetorical
Acatancy,” in Ecology, Writing Theory, and New Media: Writing Ecology, ed. Sidney
I. Dobrin (New York: Routledge, 2011), 79.
63. Ahmed, The Cultural Politics, 91.
64. “Shuangjian zhengce xia, buke jigou liangle, jiazhang ganyuan tangping ma? 双减政策下,
补课机构凉了, 家长甘愿躺平吗?” [Training centers are done for under the new double
reduction policy: will parents choose to Lie Flat?], Tencent News 腾讯新闻, August 7,
2021, https://new.qq.com/rain/a/20210807A0ADSO00
 QUARTERLY JOURNAL OF SPEECH 69

65. Yang Bingke 杨冰柯, “Lanweilou fengxian ruhe huajie? Fangqi buneng tangping 烂尾楼风
险如何化解? 房企不能躺平” [How to dissolve the risk from unfinished buildings? Housing
enterprises should not ‘Lie Flat’], Sina Finance 新浪财经, July 14, 2022, http://finance.sina.
com.cn/chanjing/cyxw/2022-07-14/doc-imizirav3363091.shtml.
66. Xu Shaolian 许绍连, “Yangxing kunrao zhongguo nanlan, guoji saichang de ‘tangping’
chuandile shenme xinxi? 阳性困扰中国男篮, 国际赛场的“躺平”传递了什么信息?”
[Troubled by positive Covid results, what message did they deliver from ‘Lying Flat’ in
the international arena?], Tencent News 腾讯新闻, July 15, 2022, https://view.inews.qq.
com/wxn/20220715A07OGZ00?.
67. A good example of this kind of audio-visual material is a video uploaded to
Bilibili showing a man traveling around on a cart made out of bed (as we would
like to call it, his “bedmobile”), so he can go anywhere without having to get up.
For more of this video, see Zhujianqiang jqsg999 猪坚强jqsg999, “Henbaoqian! Nimen
yi zhezhong fangshi renshi wo 很抱歉!你们以这种方式认识我” [Sorry! That you
get to know me in this way], Bilibili Video, 0:29, June 16, 2022, https://www.bilibili.
com/video/BV1eU4y1X7p8?spm_id_from=333.337.search-card.all.click&vd_source=88b40
32a1345e733622dd9e1c5df6db7.
68. For more of this video, see Yige caixiang 衣戈猜想, “Huicun santian, erjiu zhihaole wode
jingshen neihao 回村三天, 二舅治好了我的精神内耗” [Returning to my village for
three days: my Second Uncle cured my internal mental friction], Bilibili Video, 11:26,
July 25, 2022, https://www.bilibili.com/video/BV1MN4y177PB?spm_id_from=333.337.
search-card.all.click&vd_source=88b4032a1345e733622dd9e1c5df6db7.
69. Chinese culture has a complicated family tree system. Erjiu 二舅 here means your mother’s
second oldest male sibling. 二 means second and 舅 means maternal uncle, hence the
“second uncle.”
70. Jenni Hokka and Matti Nelimarkka, “Affective Economy of National-Populist Images:
Investigating National and Transnational Online Networks through Visual Big Data,”
New Media & Society 22, no. 5, (2019): 6.

Notes on contributors
Zixuan Zhang earned his M.A. in Translation and Interpreting at Newcastle University in Novem-
ber 2015, and is currently pursuing his Ph.D. degree in rhetorical studies at Shandong University.
He is also a lecturer at the School of Foreign Languages of Shandong Jianzhu University. His
research interests are in rhetoric, media discourse, and cognitive linguistics.
Ke Li, is a professor at Shandong University. He earned his Ph.D. in rhetorical studies from Shang-
hai International Studies University. He was a visiting scholar at University of Colorado Denver
from February 2015, to February 2016. His research interests are in rhetoric, cognitive linguistics,
and basic linguistic theories of English and Chinese.

Disclosure statement
No potential conflict of interest was reported by the author(s).

ORCID
Zixuan Zhang http://orcid.org/0000-0002-2969-8735
Ke Li http://orcid.org/0000-0001-9637-8910