Explainer | ‘Evil cultivation’ – once an immortality path, now used by China youth for bizarre life hacks
Ancient lifestyle choice rooted in Taoist culture is being adopted by young people to de-stress, fool the boss, get creative in the kitchen
From cooking barbecued pork with Yakult to trying Superman posture tricks, young people in China are embracing a lifestyle of xie xiu or “evil cultivation” to create bizarre life hacks to cope with stress.
The idea stems from Taoist culture, which provides deviant paths to immortality, describing those who reject orthodox practices and abandon moral codes.
In Chinese web novels, this lifestyle is usually the mark of villains.
Recently, however, xie xiu has been used by young Chinese as a humorous way of rebelling against convention.
On social media, videos under the hashtag xie xiu have already attracted more than 4 billion views.
The trend began with food influencers testing out unorthodox cooking methods they called xie xiu cuisine.
One netizen, who uses the name “Big Brother is Hungry”, boiled Cantonese-style char siu in Yakult, earning more than 200,000 likes.