Most days Chen Zi Jun starts her morning with Muay Thai or yoga, before exploring temples or markets in the stifling heat of northern Thailand.
It's a far cry from the relentless workload she has left behind in China, in her job as a video editor and director.
"The corporate culture for my previous company was relatively relaxed … [but] the work volume was too high," she tells the ABC from her apartment in Chiang Mai.
"You need to generate ideas, to write the scripts, to communicate with various departments and the customers, and then you will film it, edit it until the video goes online.
"I felt very tired, I kept on delivering, I didn't have time to rest or to learn something new — this type of work and life is not what I want."
Feeling "tired in her heart", Ms Chen decided to "naked quit" – a term coined by young Chinese social media users that means she left her job without another lined up.
She spent a year living in New Zealand on a working holiday visa, and after a brief period back in China, decided to try life in Thailand.
"If I made the same effort in exchange for less money, then I would rather quit my job to explore different types of work and lifestyle. I made good efforts, but I received less pay, so I decided I should explore different ways of making money and a different lifestyle," she says.
"When I was in New Zealand, I experienced a different lifestyle, when I came back to China, it was like I woke up from a dream.
"You would only know how much you can gain after you make the call."
Relentless work culture doesn't pay off
China's corporate culture, especially in the tech sector, is known for its relentless intensity.
The concept of 996 normalises the idea of working 9am to 9pm, six days a week.
In 2019, Jack Ma, the founder of Alibaba and one of China's richest men, said those who committed to 996 would be rewarded for their hard work.
While such expectations may have been more accepted by previous generations as China's economy rapidly grew, today's millennials and gen Zs don't see it paying off, says Fang Xu, a sociologist at the University of California, Berkeley.
"Early on … the burnout has tangible rewards, you got paid high and then … from a working class family, after a few years of chiku – or eating the bitterness – there is the possibility of rising up to upper middle class," she told the ABC.
"My cohort, born in the early 80s, graduated college in the early 2000s — that was the reality, lots of people in my generation did make the leap.
"But for the generation born in the early 2000s now graduating into the job market, the 996 work modes would not deliver that much material wealth."
Naked quitting is one of several trends among Chinese youth – such as "lying flat" – emerging as their frustrations with China's work culture and career prospects grow.
As a real estate crisis continues and the country's economic growth slows, the government has pointed to developing new advanced manufacturing industries to improve people's prosperity.
But at the same time, a record 11.79 million graduates are this year entering an exceptionally competitive job market plagued by high youth unemployment.
Dr Xu says this competitiveness is compounded by an expectation to allow work to seep into daily life.
"There's this new phenomenon they call work-life integration and just in a way, forget about your personal life," she says.
"Even though they have left the office, they are still supposed to be on call and work overtime at home and not necessarily ask for overtime pay.
"Also a widespread practice I've observed on the Chinese social media WeChat is people will use their personal social media account to do the PR work – if there is a product launch, if their company is featured in some local newspaper … all employees would post, repost, using their personal network to spread the news."
Traditional goals not for naked quitters
Ms Chen admits her decision to quit wasn't easy.
She didn't consult her family and worried about how a gap in her resume might look to future employers.
"After my graduation, I wanted to become an independent career woman like the ones on TV, I worked very hard," she says.
"I worried and felt lost, I know this job won't make lots of money, but I like the media, I wanted to try to achieve something.
"My parents, they have their expectations, they believe a girl needs a steady job, their traditional thinking is when you reach to a certain age, you need to get married and give birth to a child, you need to settle down – but my way of thinking is not like this."
Ms Chen has documented her naked quitting journey on her Xiaohongshu – China's version of Instagram.
In a post about her decision to quit, she says "I chose to let go and gave myself a fresh start" against a back drop of her hiking in New Zealand.
"[On my early posts] there were lots of comments, people saying, 'The environment wasn't good, and you shouldn't do naked quitting, you don't know what the future would be like … to have a steady income is the smartest choice.'"
Since then, she's created a list of 100 things she wants to do, including "not looking at my phone for a day", "reading 1,000 books", "getting a tattoo" and "cooking for my grandparents".
Ms Chen said she's managed to complete about a third of them so far.
Some followers tell her that her lifestyle looks like fun, and they too want to go on a working holiday in New Zealand – while others question how she'll return to normal life afterwards.
But Ms Chen has noticed a change recently.
"When I did my naked quitting two years ago, it was not very popular, [but] when I came back from New Zealand after a year, I found lots of naked-quitting bloggers on Xiaohongshu," she says.
"Lots of them were from the big tech companies … with good benefits, high salaries [but] still lots of people choose naked quitting.
"Maybe the working environment and culture are not good enough to keep them, so if the situation doesn't improve, naked quitting will become more and more popular."
Another naked-quitting influencer, Fu Shui Huo, details how he calculated how much money he'd need to provide for himself once he quits – calling it his revenge plan.
"When people are facing threats, the sense of urgency can unleash a lot of potential," he says.
"After calculating my expenses, I realised I needed to work for another year, so from now on, every day I'll focus on working hard and learning to accelerate my plan for revenge.
"If I can finish a year's worth of work in eight months, I'll endure four months less of suffering."
Mostly privileged young people naked quitting
Ultimately this option is only available to those who can afford it, says Lauren Johnston from the University of Sydney's China Studies Centre.
"If one is from a not well-off family then it's simply not possible to disengage, you have to take the best job, it might be below the job you want but you take the job you can get," she says.
"Those with the freedom to disengage, in the sense of lying flat or otherwise, tend to be the children of a generation of Chinese in Shanghai and Beijing and Guangzhou who did very well in in the 1980s, 1990s and 2000s.
"So there's lots of factors … and those who are disengaging are probably not strictly those who are the hungriest for social mobility, because they already have a lot of that from their parents and they're really the winners of China's success so far."
Dr Xu agrees, adding that as long as a work-life balance isn't possible, some young people will continue to disengage.
"Of course the young people would feel burnt-out," she says.
"They are in their 20s, they want to enjoy life or dating and trying to figure out what they want to do with their life, and at this personal growth phase, most of their awake hours are just work, with limited material return.
"[So] I'm not surprised young people — privileged young people — engage with naked quitting."
Ms Chen says she has received some pressure from family about what she is going to do next.
During her time back in China, relatives asked if she could try to go back to her old company.
"When they said that to me, I felt a lot of pressure," she says.
"I came here [to Thailand] because I wanted to think about my future – if I am in a bad state, confused, worried, or moping around all day, I can't make the right decision.
"Through Muay Thai, I'm exercising every day to keep myself in a good headspace, so I can make a better decision for my next step."
