Chinese youth have become increasingly aware that life is not a standardized nautical chart, but a real voyage that demands constant recalibration. Image generated by AI

Recently, the term “Odyssey years” has gained traction on Chinese social media, resonating with a predicament many young people struggle to put into words. They have left their teenage years behind, yet stable careers, independent lives and a clear social identity still seem out of reach. Like the ancient Greek hero Odysseus, they find themselves on a long and uncertain voyage, with Ithaca—the homeland he struggled for years to reach—still somewhere beyond the horizon.

In 2000, American psychologist Jeffrey Arnett introduced the theory of “emerging adulthood,” defining the period from ages 18 to 25 as an exploratory phase that is neither adolescence nor full adulthood. Later, in 2007, New York Times columnist David Brooks coined the term “the Odyssey years” to describe the prolonged transition to adulthood experienced by America’s middle-class youth. Yet when applied to young people in China, the concept takes on different contours.

Recalibrated coordinates

“In the past, when we discussed the predicaments facing young people, we often focused on tangible issues such as a difficult job market, high housing prices, and the challenges of integrating into cities,” Lian Si, executive vice president of the Central School of Communist Youth League of China and a member of the expert committee for the National Medium- and Long-Term Youth Development Plan, told CSST in an interview.

Having led a team tracking the living conditions of young people for more than a decade, Lian has found that while these traditional pressures have not disappeared, new concerns have emerged. “Today’s youth are beginning to ask deeper questions: What kind of life truly suits me? Why must I follow a predetermined path of growth? And can sustained effort still secure a foreseeable future?”

Going to school, finding a job, buying a home, getting married and having children once formed a highly standardized life course, deeply embedded in the collective consciousness of Chinese society. As young people spend longer in education and experience more frequent career transitions, they are entering the workforce and starting families later. The once-rigid timeline is gradually losing its dominance.

He Guangye, an associate professor at the School of Social and Behavioral Sciences at Nanjing University, framed this shift in more precise academic terms: young people are moving from an “institutionalized linear track” to a “structured non-linear track.” The linear track involves a sequential progression through education, employment, marriage and childbirth, with each milestone largely shaped and regulated by social institutions. By contrast, a non-linear track allows for more diverse pathways and greater room for individual choice. Young people are now exploring new avenues for social mobility, career development and self-identity.

The “shore” has not disappeared; its coordinates have simply shifted, and new routes are being charted. In an interview with CSST, Xiao Guo, a selected graduate, shared his own story. After failing to gain admission to his preferred university through the national college entrance examination, he enrolled in a private undergraduate institution and majored in agriculture, a field widely regarded as offering limited employment prospects. Rather than dwelling on this academic setback, he proactively approached a rural entrepreneur from his hometown, secured funding and launched a small business. He later participated in provincial and national professional competitions, eventually ranking first in both the written and interview examinations and earning admission to a master’s program at a provincial agricultural university. During his second year of graduate school, he won a fully funded scholarship to study abroad. After graduation, he turned down a more comfortable job opportunity and returned to his hometown to work as a civil servant. When asked why, he gave a simple and candid answer: “I just want to come back and do something for my hometown.”

Lian’s research has found that the lifestyles of today’s Chinese youth are remarkably diverse, with significant differences across groups. Particularly noteworthy are young people who return to their hometowns to start businesses or seek employment. In recent years, a considerable number have returned to county towns and rural areas. They are not simply “retreating”; rather, they are finding new points of convergence among digital platforms, rural revitalization, local industries and family responsibilities. Some have used short videos to sell local agricultural products far beyond their villages; others have transformed intangible cultural heritage crafts into trendy products with broad appeal; still others are pioneering smart agriculture in the fields where they grew up. As Lian put it, young people’s mobility does not have to mean simply “moving up”; it can also mean “putting down roots.”

Voyages and groundings

“Many young people are unable to ‘make landfall’ simply because the ‘shore’ itself has become blurred,” Lian observed. Structural shifts in the job market, mounting living costs, ever-intensifying educational competition, rising costs associated with marriage and child-rearing, and increasingly fragmented career paths have combined to push traditional milestones of adulthood further into the future.

Lai Desheng, a professor in the Department of Sociology and Ecological Civilization at the Party School of the CPC Central Committee (National Academy of Governance), attributed the employment pressures facing young people to both cyclical forces and structural changes in the labor market. The number of university graduates continues to rise even as hiring demand in some industries has slowed. Meanwhile, graduates from some universities may enter the workforce with knowledge that is overly theoretical or already out of date. As industrial upgrading moves faster than universities can revise their curricula, the mismatch between what students learn and what the labor market requires has become increasingly pronounced.

AI and the platform economy are adding new variables to this already complex equation, reshaping the employment landscape in the process. Lai pointed out that AI will create new jobs and give rise to entirely new professions. As public access to computing power expands and open-source large language models become more widely available, barriers to entry for individual R&D and business operations are falling significantly, giving rise to new forms of work such as “one-person companies” and micro-entrepreneurial teams. At the same time, AI is poised to replace substantial amounts of routine and repetitive cognitive and physical labor. For young people, new windows of opportunity are opening just as the risk of rapid skill obsolescence is growing. If education and training systems fail to keep pace with changing labor-market demands, many young people may find themselves “left behind by new technologies the moment they step off campus.”

Beyond employment, another less visible force is pushing young people into a frantic race: the “social clock.” He Guangye has observed that young people are increasingly expected to accomplish a series of life milestones—including educational advancement, employment, financial independence and marriage—within an increasingly compressed timeframe. Meanwhile, social media constantly places the “progress bars” of their peers before their eyes. Amid this relentless stream of comparison, individuals can easily lose sight of their own pace. The transition to adulthood, which should ideally leave room for exploration and self-discovery, is instead becoming a suffocating race. Some set sail, some run aground, and others struggle against waves of anxiety, unsure which direction to steer.

Making ‘drifting’ meaningful

As the cost of “making landfall” continues to rise, drifting can no longer be dismissed as merely a matter of mindset. Explaining structural headwinds away as simply a matter of “young people not working hard enough” fails to capture the complexity of their reality. Worse still, it can silence those who genuinely need support, leaving them to internalize their pressures and frustrations as personal failures.

Xiao Guo, the selected graduate, regarded his postgraduate years as the longest “Odyssey years” of his life. At the time, he was torn between pursuing a PhD and entering the workforce, caught in a cycle of anxiety and indecision. He eventually began working in a township, where his daily responsibilities included drafting documents, managing archives, liaising with villages and visiting residents. “Although I occasionally made mistakes,” he recalled, “it was precisely through this process that I gradually discovered myself.” In helping others, Xiao Guo told CSST, he was also gaining a clearer understanding of his own place and value.

According to the scholars interviewed, society’s task is neither to rush young people to end their exploration nor to insist that every ship navigate by the same chart. Instead, it should lower the costs of trial and error and career transitions, ensuring that a temporary pause or change of course does not become an irreversible setback. Lian proposed the concept of “nurturing youth.” In his view, the most precious qualities of young people are their adaptability, creativity, sense of trust and imagination for the future. What is most urgently needed today is to reduce the basic costs of growing into adulthood. Employment support systems should place greater emphasis on career transitions and protections for flexible employment. Housing policies should take into account the practical needs of young people as they enter adulthood. Education systems, meanwhile, should reduce excessive screening and overreliance on a single set of evaluation criteria.

The metaphor ultimately circles back to Odysseus himself, who drifted for 10 years, enduring storms, temptations and despair, before finally returning to his homeland, Ithaca. It carries particular resonance for today’s Chinese youth. They have not lost their ideals, nor have they abandoned their efforts. They have simply become increasingly aware that life is not a standardized nautical chart, but a real voyage that demands constant recalibration.