Pretend to Work Co.
What’s going on at Beijing’s “fake offices”?
OCTOBER 7, 2025
Living in China, it was hard to miss the social media posts about “pretending to work,” which went viral on the Chinese language internet this year. The trend started in December 2024, after a comedy sketch aired on a Chinese variety show. In the skit, an office automation technician visits a fictional company, called “Pretend to Work,” where people pay a fee to come to the office and just slack off. They don’t do any real work or earn a salary, but they maintain the appearance of being employed. The company’s representative explains that by going through the motions of work, people are ready to slip seamlessly into a real job when one comes along.
To outside observers, China’s economy still looks unstoppable. But inside the country, among mid-career white-collar workers, the mood is very different: most people are anxious and disappointed.
In the months since the skit appeared, real-world businesses have latched on to the concept. In cities like Beijing, Hangzhou, Shanghai and Shenzhen, offices advertise themselves as places to “pretend to work.” In an online tour of one such “office” in the district of Yizhuang in Beijing, I saw desks, people typing at laptops, snacks — even mock salary slips. For 30 to 50 yuan ($4 to $7) a day, people can enjoy the trappings of being a white-collar worker in an office space indistinguishable from the real thing. A similar company in Shenzhen declared: “The best thing about work isn’t the salary, it’s the people pretending to be busy next to you.” In a promotional video, the founder showed off an office chess set, beers brewed from lurid blue Yunnan mushrooms and a small library stocked with quantum mechanics textbooks.
Local news described these offices as ways to keep up appearances, to avoid the stigma of being jobless and deflect questions from worried family members. They reminded me of stories from Japan, following its severe economic downturn beginning in 1989. Though they had lost their jobs, some salarymen would continue to dress in shirts and ties and go and sit in libraries. The routine allowed them to avoid the shame of admitting to their families that they were out of a job.
It made sense that this trend had caught on in China. Since the pandemic, the economic slowdown has been felt by almost everyone. To outside observers, China’s economy still looks unstoppable. But inside the country, among mid-career white-collar workers, the mood is very different: most people are anxious and disappointed.
The Chinese relationship to work has undergone a significant shift. A real estate slowdown has slashed local government revenue and forced cuts in the civil service. Banks are lending less, limiting startup growth and business expansion, and big tech companies like Alibaba and Baidu have scaled back their workforce for three years in a row. The private tech giants were once a desired destination for ambitious workers, but many now see them as unstable and precarious, and where burnout is all but guaranteed. Jobs at state-owned enterprises, once considered bureaucratic and uninspiring, are now increasingly coveted for their stability.
Though mainstream discussion of the potential of AI has been optimistic, there is also widespread anxiety about what automation might mean for white-collar jobs. Personal stories of being fired or dealing with unemployment are all over social media. Talk of downsizing and salary cuts is common. Mid-career employees have been hit hardest, as they find themselves replaced with younger, cheaper workers and forced to compete again in a tight job market. This trend even has a name: “the curse of 35.”
Over the past few years, the belief that an office job was a sure path to prosperity has been shaken. White-collar workers in China have developed their own vocabulary for this malaise. Neijuan 内卷, a term for intense competition with diminishing returns, has gone mainstream. It’s used so often now, people simply say juan (as both adjective and verb). There’s also moyu 摸鱼 (“touching fish”) — slacking off discreetly. Bailan 摆烂 (“let it rot”) is the act of giving up entirely; banwei 班味 (“work stench”) refers to the lingering scent — real or psychic — of corporate life. Some people choose to tangping 躺平 (“lie flat”): to withdraw from the competition, dial down costs, and pursue a quieter life, often in a less expensive city.
Given this atmosphere of disillusionment, I wondered about the appeal of these “fake offices.” What did people do there all day? And why bother with the charade at all if they were fed up with working?
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Outside a squat commercial building in a suburban district of Beijing, a 40-minute car drive east of the city’s flashy business district, white block letters spell out 假装上班 (“Pretend to Work)”. At the entrance, there are bouquets of bright orange wheat wrapped in red and gold foil — a traditional gift in China for the unveiling of a new commercial enterprise.
There is a low tea table, common in many Chinese businesses, as well as a green screen area for people to use for livestreams. One door bears the label “Chairman’s Office.” It opens onto the fire escape.
The founder of Pretend to Work Co., who asked to go by the pseudonym Zhu Jun, to avoid any potential blowback from the authorities for speaking to international media, offers me tea — the reflex of someone used to entertaining clients. People often stop outside to take photos of the office’s name, he tells me. The district is known as a testing ground for AI and new energy vehicle companies. From the window, I saw the occasional self-driving police minicar or food delivery cart puttering along.
The space has all the trappings of a modern office: shared desks, office chairs, a whiteboard, a conference room enclosed in glass. There is a low tea table, common in many Chinese businesses, as well as a green screen area for people to use for livestreams. One door bears the label “Chairman’s Office.” It opens onto the fire escape. Zhu said this usually gets a laugh.
He started the company only a few months ago, in April. I had come across it online; it is one of the most viral “fake offices” in Beijing, with posts about it viewed tens of thousands of times.
The people who come in just to keep up appearances are rare, he says. Once, an illustrator had come in for a day to show her parents she was going to an office. She was a freelancer and made the same amount designing two avatars for social media as a month’s salary at a company. Otherwise, the people who come in are working.
One regular visitor, Qin Yan, is a mother of two, who had left her job as an administrator in a finance firm to raise her children. When her oldest turned five, she wanted to rejoin the workforce but didn’t want to return to an office job. She wanted to build something on her own terms.
While renting a desk at Pretend to Work Co., she developed a line of NSFW boxes that included toys, role-play kits, prewritten scripts and audio. She sells them in packages at different prices depending on how elaborate they are. She had been blocked several times from online platforms like RedNote and Douyin (the main source of sales now for many brands) because of the adult nature of her products and had found support among the people she met at Pretend to Work, who would listen to her sales pitch and make suggestions. “I used to blush when I pitched my business,” she said. “Now, I have thicker skin.”
Pretend to Work Co., Zhu said, was for people like him: people who had left or lost jobs in the corporate world and wanted to strike out on their own.
Qin comes in six days a week. People who come to “pretend to work” offices want to work, she told me. Still, she embraced the “pretend to work” branding, she said, because she wasn’t yet turning a profit. “If I don’t succeed, I am pretending to work, right?” she said.
The idea of “fake offices” as places the unemployed go to reassure worried family members is more of a meme than anything else, Zhu told me on my visit. He and other businesses have played into the idea because it was a useful marketing tool; it got attention and attracted people who recognized the meme and identified with it. But in reality, someone who is out of a job can’t afford to slack off or remain unemployed for long — the economic pressure is too high.
Zhu had taken a risk in starting this company. He’d left a comfortable job in a big company. There’d been a change in management and the new manager had brought in his own people. Zhu compared himself to an old official under a new emperor; the change had left him with little to do but punch in and write meaningless reports. He decided to quit but couldn’t afford not to work.
Pretend to Work Co., Zhu said, was for people like him: people who had left or lost jobs in the corporate world and wanted to strike out on their own. His clients weren’t young, co-working office types. Like Qin, they were often older, with years of experience working for bigger corporations, and often had kids. They had financial obligations — tutoring fees, mortgages and other child-raising costs. He was catering to people who didn’t yet have the capital to rent an office themselves but needed to look to the outside world — to clients or potential clients — like they did. “You need to tell people how good your product is,” Zhu said. “If your product’s so good, why are you in a basement?”
The people in this office were not pretending at all. They were working hard. They weren’t here to slack off, they were here to reinvent themselves, create a new business, or otherwise monetize their temporary unemployment.
Why then the pretense around “pretending”? I asked Xiang Biao, director of the Max Planck Institute for Social Anthropology in Germany, to demystify the phenomenon of “pretending to work.” Why were people so keen to say they were pretending, when they were in fact working?
“It’s a way to show they’re fed up,” he explained. “They’re unhappy with social norms … the standard, conventional white-collar job” and yet they feel “there are no other job opportunities.”
Still, despite their general unhappiness and cynicism, these workers remain psychologically attached to the idea of working and don’t want to step too far outside of mainstream society, which remains deeply goal oriented. On the other hand, as Qin had said, if her venture failed, she could simply say she had been pretending to work and the project hadn’t been serious. The pretense acted as a psychological safety net — and helped her feel a little less alone.
“This is a collective pretense,” Xiang said, among people who are jobless or unable to see a future in traditional white-collar corporate life. “People feel solidarity by coming here with others. They want to develop a mutual understanding of their situation.”
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I visited Zhu’s Pretend to Work office three times. I noticed that the people there were focused on using online platforms to sell their products.
In China, nearly 70 percent of the population — some 1.1 billion people — own a smartphone. Purchasing products directly from a live video on online platforms, where buyers can interact with the host directly and ask questions in real time, is far more common than in other countries.
Users on streaming platforms like Douyin and Kuaishou not only treat these platforms like digital storefronts but also tip creators in virtual gifts (ranging from a rose or heart to a sports car, which is more expensive) that creators can then convert into real money. Amounts range in the single or double digits of yuan, but even small sums, at scale, can create real revenue. Even amid its economic slowdown, China still has the second largest consumer market in the world, behind the United States. Any attention is potentially monetizable.
Ultimately, pretending to work was about building something new out of shame and disappointment.
I had watched videos of unemployed people staging a performance of going to the office, only to sit on fire escapes or in their cars for hours. More recently, I’d seen videos of recently fired couples showing off their hauls from dumpster diving. Across all these examples, the logic was the same: more likes, more followers, more potential tips.
“People need to do something,” said Zhu. Not just to make a salary, but for the psychological benefits.
Ultimately, pretending to work was about building something new out of shame and disappointment. It was about exploring other opportunities. The very word “pretend” implies a choice, said Xiang Biao. Pretending to work isn’t forced: It gives people a sense of control, he explained, even as it exposes their vulnerability. It is a way of managing the feeling that the white-collar job economy is a dead end.
Most people who are pretending to work have some savings, which they invest in their new ventures. The daily fee of a place like “Pretend to Work” is still much cheaper than renting your own office or livestreaming space. (At the coworking company WeWork, a hot desking spot costs around 2,200 yuan, about $310, a month, and first-time use of a livestreaming space costs 497 yuan, or $70 for eight hours.)
Zhu was convinced he could find a role for anyone who walked in. Any interest, if livestreamed, could become an income stream.
“You like to eat?” He’d film you enjoying your lunch.
“You want to tangping?” he said. “Let’s see how many days you can lie there when everyone around you is busy — I’ll livestream you lying flat.”
Perhaps livestreaming a joke would resonate enough for people to tip or become a follower. In the end, no one was pretending, unless pretense paid the bills.
✺ Published in The Dial
