The county town has changed, and young people have changed their minds

Coffee shops, script-killing games... my hometown county is becoming more and more "unexpected". When the internal competition in first- and second-tier cities intensifies, and the consumption content and consumption methods in county towns are becoming more sophisticated, whether to return to the county town is becoming a choice, rather than a second choice after frustration. How will young people choose?

Open Dianping.com or Weibo, and you will find that "unexpectedly" has become one of the key words in the 18th-tier county town in the past month.

"I didn't expect there would be hand-brewed coffee in Gu'an", "I didn't expect Daxinhua to be so fashionable", "I didn't expect that my hometown would have a half-hour delivery"... Through coffee shops, script-killing, daytime coffee and night drinking, many young people who work hard in first- and second-tier cities have been subjected to a double visual and cognitive shock after returning home for the Spring Festival.

The border between the county and Beijing, Shanghai and Guangzhou is melting in that cup of latte art. One netizen couldn't help but sigh: "My hometown county is developing secretly behind my back."

In fact, for a long time, the focus of public opinion has been on Beijing, Shanghai, Guangzhou, large factories, and young people, while small cities in the fourth and fifth tiers have long been hidden in the dust. When the internal competition in the first and second tier cities intensified, they collided head-on with the refinement of consumption content and consumption methods in the county towns, and the concept of a good life was "aligned", so that many young people began to live in Beijing, Shanghai, and Guangzhou, but their hearts were in their hometowns in the county towns, and some people took the initiative to choose stability.

After all, the end of all hard work is a life that you can truly control.

01「Unexpectedly」

There are two internet-famous coffee shops with unique characteristics in Hegang, one is called "Next Door" and the other is called "An Wen". The names of the shops are in line with the tone that young people like, casual, unpretentious, and seeking stability.

"Next Door" has two floors in a busy area, and its overall style is the literary style commonly seen in first- and second-tier cities. This is somewhat different in Hegang, which is like a well-ordered "giant factory".

The average house price in Hegang is only 2,000 to 3,100 square meters. Here, a cup of American coffee from Mixue Ice City's coffee brand "Lucky Coffee" costs only 7 yuan. But a cup of dirty iced coffee next door costs 35 yuan, and a regular berry iced American coffee costs 28 yuan, and the average customer price is directly on par with first-tier cities.

Despite the high prices, the cafe was so popular during the Chinese New Year that there was no vacant seat. "It's not easy for Hegang to have a cafe like this." "The first thing I did when I returned to Hegang was to rush into the cafe. I didn't expect that there would be such a place in Hegang. The quality is no different from any big city."

I asked the young owner of this store how her life was going, and she modestly said that it was okay.

The boss is a professional barista who returned to Hegang from Harbin in 2019 and opened his own shop. From the decoration of the shop and the listing on Meituan to the selection of coffee beans, this coffee shop is very different from the old coffee shops in Hegang. For example, the coffee beans and milk they use must be purchased from Harbin.

It seems that in Hegang, where the population is already aging, it is difficult for a young coffee shop to operate. But in fact, the young people who go home for the holidays and the tourists who come to Hegang for "pilgrimage" are enough to support the operation of such an Internet celebrity coffee shop.

The young person in front of me told me that people in Northeast China love the system, but the upgrading of consumption demand in county towns has provided her with a job option other than being a civil servant in her hometown.

No brand retailer is willing to miss this opportunity. Starbucks, which was originally a label for the petty bourgeoisie in high-end cities, has also begun to become a label for the consumption capacity and living standards of county towns. In Dangtu County, Anhui Province, next to Starbucks may be the down-to-earth Aunt Dumplings and Hometown Chicken.

A local young person checked in at Starbucks and left a comment on Dianping.com, "In the past, you had to go to Ma'anshan City and Wuhu City to find Starbucks, but now you can buy it in Dangtu County. It's great!"

The demographics represented by Starbucks have become blurred, but this has not affected Starbucks' expansion in county towns. In the past three years, more and more county town integrated commercial complexes have introduced Starbucks.

The China County Report produced by Southern Weekend mentioned that fundamentally, if county towns want to become an equal choice with big cities, they need to have similar products and services as big cities. When the "third space" advocated by Starbucks enters the county town, its coffee taste and social value are also connected to the county town's consumption system, allowing people living in the county town, especially young people returning home, to have a life experience comparable to that of big cities.

The decline of Starbucks and other companies also coincides with the growth momentum of county economies in the past few years.

In April 2022, the 21 Data News Lab compiled and sorted out the economic data of 337 cities at or above the prefectural level (including states, regions, leagues, and Hong Kong, Macao and Taiwan are not included) across the country, showing that the total economic output of the top 30 cities reached 48.9 trillion yuan, and the national contribution ratio reached 42.75%. This means that the remaining nearly 60% of the total economic output is contributed by the remaining 307 cities. The potential of small and medium-sized cities is being released, and county construction has been given the important engine to expand domestic demand.

McKinsey predicts that by 2030, more than 66% of China's personal consumption growth will come from lower-tier markets, especially county towns.

In the past, this part of the market has long been occupied by local traditional supermarkets, commercial pedestrian streets with second- and third-tier brands, small commercial plazas, and counterfeit goods. However, now, the outdated business model is difficult to match the desire of county residents to upgrade their consumption. Developers with a keen sense of smell have taken advantage of the situation to bring many county towns into the era of shopping malls.

As of 2021, 40 of the 380 Wanda Plazas in China are located in counties. Of the more than 100 Wuyue Plazas operated and under construction by Sunac China Holdings, 22.2% are located in third-tier and lower cities.

Shopping malls have brought about lifestyle changes in county towns. There are Uniqlo and Pop Mart in shopping malls in Changsha County, Hunan, and there is almost no difference between them in the same second-tier cities. In shopping malls in Feixi County, Anhui, people’s "takeout" may not be meals, but may also be a new mobile phone from the mobile phone retail store in the shopping mall. The destination of a milk tea takeout order may be an "escape room" store in the shopping mall.

The active consumption in the county town has in turn attracted more and more young people to return to their hometown county town to open shops. YGG used to work in a foreign company, but he resigned last year and returned to his hometown Lu County, Sichuan to open a bakery. To open a shop in a county town, you have to solve everything from decoration to purchasing equipment by yourself. In order to adapt to the ecology of the county town, YGG's shop changed from the original Japanese retro style to the red brick style.

This kind of affordable aesthetics can even become a fashion. When you walk into a hot pot restaurant in Changsha County, Hunan Province, you will see that the decoration of the restaurant is like an unpainted rough house, deliberately exposing the original building walls and cement floors. There are only low tables and stools in the restaurant, similar to the style of Wenheyou in the 1970s and 1980s. This kind of decoration has been popular on social media for a while, and some people named it "Syrian style."

02 "Pseudo-first-tier cities" in Spring Festival photos

From the perspective of young people returning home, more photos of county towns that resemble consumption scenes in "first-tier cities" are circulating on social media. Many people think that brands, business formats, and lifestyles that are only available in first-tier cities are rapidly penetrating into county towns.

This Spring Festival, Li Lele, whose family returned to his hometown, Xinhua, Hunan, from Beijing, was struck by the "Western style" of his hometown, which "seamlessly connects with life in Beijing."

In this Hunan county town with a permanent population of nearly 1.2 million, in addition to the largest supermarket complex Walmart, there are also many chain consumer brands such as Starbucks, Luckin Coffee, and Pizza Hut.

She still remembers when Walmart opened many years ago, that county girl saw the imported goods on the shelves and felt like she had opened the door to the world; two years ago, when Yuanqi Forest sparkling water was very popular in first-tier cities, she would occasionally go back to her hometown and place an order directly through Meituan to stock up a box, which would be delivered to her door in as fast as half an hour.

"I've been at home for 10 days, and I've ordered takeout three times, one of which was on New Year's Eve. And that doesn't even include the long-missed special snacks." Li Lele said that the streets were crowded this year, and she was too lazy to go shopping, so she relied heavily on online shopping. Before going to her aunt's house to play mahjong, she placed an order on her mobile phone, and with a delivery fee of only 6 yuan, four cups of Luckin Coffee were delivered to her doorstep half an hour later.

Friends and relatives drank lattes, played mahjong, and roasted fires. The sense of happiness included the long-awaited family affection and the familiar yet unfamiliar satisfaction of "living a first-tier city life in a county town."

The riverside area of ​​her hometown has been beautifully renovated, with fashionable buyer collection stores and the nightlife that young people in big cities like. She remembers that Xinhua's nightlife was rich before, but it was mainly barbecue and bar-hopping, and was relatively rough.

A number of fitness centers for children have also emerged in the county, and the curriculum arrangements are almost the same as those in first-tier cities. When her sister takes her children to physical education and roller skating classes, she goes to the nearby Pizza Hut to kill time.

During her trip home, Li Lele took a lot of photos in the county town, which looked like a "first-tier city". The only complaint was the consumption level. She visited a small fresh-style bakery in her hometown. A particularly small tiramisu cost 40 yuan, which was more expensive than Beijing.

Her family may be more accustomed to such prices than she is. For example, her relatives and friends usually pay four figures for winter clothes in physical clothing stores. After some "interviews", she solved the case: county residents generally have less mortgage pressure, and the cost of education and training courses is much cheaper than in first-tier cities. They have more money to spend on "quality life".

In the eyes of sociologists, "quality of life is not just a by-product of production, it defines and drives new production processes."

It is hard to say whether she is happier, living in a first-tier city with no worries about food and clothing, or her sister who also has no worries about food and clothing in her hometown. Her sister's family runs a small business in addition to their main jobs, and they often go to beauty salons for maintenance or go dancing. "My sister's cosmetics are much better than mine. Before she left, she gave me a bottle of La Mer Essence Water, while she usually uses Chanel facial cleanser..."

In his book Japan's New Middle Class, Ezra Vogel proposed that the rise of the Japanese middle class has created a social order: stable jobs, regular working hours, family-centeredness, and emphasis on education. In the eyes of Li Lele, a Beijing middle-class, the above social order may have been realized in the county even earlier.

Sometimes, her old mother couldn't help but complain, "You are all in your thirties, but the girls in your hometown are all fair and tender, but you are so skinny." She knew that her mother actually felt sorry for her daughter's hard work in the fast-paced life in Beijing.

03 Young people who have changed their minds

Terry Clark, a sociologist at the University of Chicago, believes that the integration of consumption scenes constitutes "the city as an entertainment machine."

For Chen Yang, who grew up in Dangtu County, Anhui Province, there were only two choices for "entertainment" destinations: a 40-minute bus ride to Wanda Plaza in Ma'anshan, or a 20-minute high-speed rail ride to Nanjing. She would go to escape rooms, KTVs, or handicraft workshops with her friends.

Dangtu has a population of only 400,000 and is only 17 kilometers away from Ma'anshan City, and is also close to Nanjing. Despite the convenient transportation, the above entertainment can only be carried out during festivals.

"After going to college, I found that there is still a big gap between the county and the big cities outside. There are still too few choices. For young people, I feel that there is not enough for us to explore." However, in the past two years, Chen Yang has discovered that entertainment venues such as escape rooms, script-killing games, and archery halls have appeared in Dangtu County. In her opinion, this is an attempt by the county to move forward. It "has been keeping up with the trend of the times and meeting the needs of young people."

The takeaway business in the county town has almost reached the same level of convenience as that in first-tier cities. Dangtu has been building new real estate projects in the past two years, and some communities do not have convenience stores. Chen Yang and her family have become accustomed to placing orders on Meituan or RT-Mart supermarket apps. There is even a special takeaway street near her home, where takeaway merchants provide online celebrity food such as fried chicken and milk tea to young people in the county town.

When the epidemic prevention policy was relaxed in December 2022, pharmacies near the community could no longer buy Fenbid and Contac. As the "young person" in the family, Chen Yang used Meituan to buy medicine for the first time and grabbed a few boxes of Fenbid. Not long after, she received the "reassurance pill" in a paper bag.

The convenient lifestyle provided by the county's economic development has made many young people want to go home. Chen Yang has already considered going home to take the civil service exam after graduating from graduate school.

Almost none of her older cousins ​​considered going home. After graduation, their first choice was Shanghai or Nanjing, and then Ma'anshan. One of her sisters became a teacher in Ma'anshan, with an annual income of 150,000 yuan, which was considered to be well-off in the local area.

But for Chen Yang, having a stable job similar to that of a civil servant in a county town is also a good choice. Although the salary level may be different from that in big cities, convenient transportation and increasingly abundant commercial facilities can bridge the gap between the living conditions in county towns and big cities. When she went home for the Spring Festival this year, she unexpectedly found that the county town where she lived had a subway and a light rail.

In its research on county economies, Black Ant Capital found that the employment opportunities brought about by China's economic development have given county residents sufficient income, allowing them to basically own a house and a car. They also have more leisure time.

Chen Yang also found that when living standards and various facilities are upgraded at a speed visible to the naked eye, the cultural and entertainment life in the county may not be so "refined" in a short period of time. For example, Chen Yang found that the same script-killing store in the county was just a few rooms with a few tables, "similar to a mahjong hall"; but in big cities, the script-killing store owner will decorate different rooms differently and let customers enter different rooms according to the type of script. Higher-quality consumption focuses on consumption scenarios and experiences, but in county cities, due to cost constraints, these two aspects are greatly discounted.

But that's the two sides of the coin.

Even if there are still imperfections, young people with clear life goals will not be easily shaken. Especially the post-00s generation, they know better what they want, what they have to pay, and what they can get, instead of blindly following the order of their predecessors.

Working hard in a big city or settling down in your hometown is essentially a difference in life philosophy and choices, and has nothing to do with whether you are ambitious or not.

In other words, whether or not to return to the county town has become a multiple-choice question rather than a second-best option after failure.

(At the request of the interviewees, Li Lele and Chen Yang are both pseudonyms)

Author: Koren; Editor: Sun Jing

Source: NoNoise (ID: forjingyijing), there is too much noise, let's add something valuable