Do you think you’re still young and have a long life ahead?

This is the first time you're facing social pressure.

It's also the first time you've truly understood the principle of "yesterday's causes, today's effects."

All outcomes are the result of gradual accumulation over the past few years.

Now is the first major crossroads in your life:

Go to high school

The bare admission score for Zhenping No.1 High School in 2023 was 510. Your score this year is 489, while No.6 High School's cutoff is 472.

Whichever high school you attend, you need to score no less than 670 on major exams to have a chance at a decent university.

At Zhenping No.1 High School, you need to rank in the top 100 of each phase exam.

At Zhenping No.6 High School, you need to rank in the top 5 of each phase exam.

At other high schools, you basically need to be first or second in each phase exam.

Three years after starting high school comes the college entrance exam (Gaokao), which is even harder than the high school entrance exam (Zhongkao) you just experienced. The Zhongkao is just about ranking within the county to get into high school (about 26 middle schools, each with 500 students, totaling 13,000 students, but only 7,800 seats available; the rest go out to work or attend vocational schools—like your brother Li Yuan, who went to a vocational school). The Gaokao is about provincial ranking to get into university (1.36 million candidates; top-tier universities in Henan admit only about 8,000 students, which averages to fewer than five per high school across the province's roughly 1,700 high schools. Poor schools admit almost none, while top schools admit many).

Don't go to high school

Entire industries are shrinking. Food delivery, taxi driving, and assembly-line manufacturing are all pushing toward automation and robotics. In the financial sector, top universities like Tsinghua and Peking University barely hire anymore—and that's ignoring the domestic and international suppression this sector faces. Even though A-shares hover around 3,000 points, too many people are losing more than 30%; nothing reflects market conditions better than actual capital changes. The internet industry has long passed its peak and entered a stable phase characterized by layoffs, team downsizing, and efforts to boost per-capita efficiency and profits. In education, declining birth rates mean a wave of school and tutoring center closures is just a few years away (in some places, it's already begun). High-tech fields (which require matching degrees from reputable universities—think new energy, new materials, biomedicine, and medicine) demand at least a bachelor's, and increasingly a master's or PhD (since last year, master's degrees have become the baseline). The remaining low-education options are agriculture, food service, hospitality, related services, and construction.

Among these, declining population and fewer homebuyers mean housing sales will slacken, so construction (construction workers, designers, renovators) will shrink first. In services like auto repair, the trend toward integrated manufacturing-production-sales-after-sales models (seen in companies like Midea, Haier, NIO, TCL, and BYD) means education becomes a threshold. Market-wide replacement and car-wash shops are shifting toward exclusive, education-required integrated services. The sectors where low-education entry isn't yet severely squeezed by market contraction are mainly food service and agriculture. But agriculture will eventually compete with the U.S. in international export markets, and land consolidation and intensive (large-scale, mechanized) farming are inevitable. Accompanying deep-processing industries will also start requiring educational credentials. Doesn't the gaming industry need professional skills? Don't short-video companies need them? Even sales roles—traditionally thought of as not requiring technical ability—now demand at least a bachelor's, sometimes from 211 universities. What's left? Jobs with low barriers but strong technical requirements, high physical labor output, and personalized service solutions.

For example: chefs, welders, hairdressers (hairstyling design), and plumbers/electricians (which actually also require some education). Aside from these skill-based trades, the remaining option is carving out your own livelihood—like entrepreneurship. Any business requiring a license entails annual baseline costs of at least 10,000 RMB for qualifications, certification, bookkeeping, tax filing, and invoicing, plus 50,000–100,000 RMB in startup working capital for raw materials. How many people can still do dropshipping or no-inventory e-commerce these days? The population is still shrinking, domestic trade is bleak, and over half the population earns less than 1,000 RMB per month. Do you really expect to make money in the domestic market? Abroad, even after excluding those without purchasing power, there are still billions of potential consumers. But entering foreign markets requires substantial upfront investment—if you fail, it's sunk cost. As more people are forced into entrepreneurship, the cost threshold will inevitably rise. What low-barrier options remain? Creating social media content or writing web novels: each major platform has about 500,000 practitioners, yet only about 50 top earners per industry capture most profits. Ninety percent earn less than 1,000 RMB monthly (I'm hardly daring to write 50 RMB because it's so demoralizing).

So it seems like you have choices, but really you don't.

Do you really think going to any university will make things much better? If it's not a good university, you still won't have choices—and you'll have wasted the time you could have spent learning a skill (college graduate unemployment is already over 50%. Out of every 10 million graduates, 5 million can't find jobs).

Going to a vocational school is also no real option. And if you don't even attend school, your choices shrink further, because physical-labor industries are increasingly replacing human workers.

In the future, society will mainly consist of three groups: consuming populations (those with assets), entertainment populations (those lying flat, playing games, scrolling videos, causing no trouble), and service populations (those still struggling to make ends meet).

The consuming population gives the service population money to earn; the entertainment population stays quiet; and it's already a good outcome if the service population just works diligently to get by.

Back to daily life.

Monthly rises in water, electricity, and gas prices make it not far-fetched to say basic living costs are already climbing toward 500 RMB. Food is the biggest expense among clothing, food, housing, and transportation. Five hundred RMB for groceries alone is already conservative. With no entertainment spending or medical costs, 1,000 RMB per month for minimum living expenses is rarely enough (just consider how much a takeout meal or a bottle of water costs; 1,000 RMB is truly a tight budget).

Medical costs: once middle-aged or elderly family members need maintenance medication for chronic conditions, that's 500 RMB a month at the bare minimum. What about a major illness once a year (and for the elderly, possibly more than once)? An ordinary hospital bed costs 700 RMB per day; an ICU room runs over 2,000 RMB per day. Each stay typically lasts around 15 days, so one hospitalization can cost 10,000–30,000 RMB—and that's just for one person. Add cosmetics, clothing, food, leisure, children, and a partner, and the question remains: how do you earn enough to cover even these basics?

So how do you choose? Which ecological niche do you occupy? How do you make money?

You've already run out of time.

Growthhas acost, and this is the price you must pay for your first growth. Life is finite, so how many more such costs can you afford? Do you really want to go through such experiences again?

In the life ahead

What do you still have? What do you still want? What are you willing to give up?