3 posts tagged with "Alienation of Modern Workplace"

After retiring, Lao Li's favorite thing every day was to open his tablet after dinner and browse Taobao. He wasn't looking to buy anything; he just felt that the whole world seemed to be contained in that small screen, with new things happening every day, which was quite lively.

Before the Spring Festival this year, an advertisement popped up on the Taobao homepage: "Get your Spring Festival Gala Cloud Performance Certificate and become part of the hundreds of millions of viewers!" Lao Li's eyes lit up. The Spring Festival Gala was the taste of the New Year from his youth. He tremblingly clicked on it, and a cartoon character appeared on the page, wearing a festive red mandarin jacket and holding a golden certificate that read "2025 Spring Festival Gala Cloud Performance Certificate."

Li Wei’s room was like a deep well, the only window facing the towering gray wall of the next building. Every morning, she would get up in the dark, put on makeup under the pale light of her desk lamp, and then rush to her cubicle in a downtown office building.

Lately, Li Wei had become fascinated by a strange pastime: in the afternoon, while others were resting or napping, she would set up a huge reflector, letting it, like a giant mirror, reflect the sparse sunlight from the rooftop into her room.