Pictures of the Year International

On weekends, Luo stayed in his own house. Langfang City, Hebei Province, China. Jun. 22, 2024 Luo , 41 years old, is from Hubei Province and graduated from Changjiang University. He has worked in Beijing for 10 years, engaging in Internet finance industry. Due to the high housing prices in Beijing, he bought a small house in Langfang City, Hebei Province in 2016. It takes four to five hours to commute to Beijing by bus every day. For many years, he spent most of his time single and briefly dated a girl. However, he still prefers single days because to be with others brought too much trouble for him. He doesn't want children because raising them is both troublesome and expensive. He is now accustomed to being single. His only concern now is work. With the recent economic downturn, if he loses his job, his life will be very difficult because he has to pay off his mortgage. According to Chinese online sources, the number of single people in China will exceed 300 million by the end of 2024, equivalent to the total population of the United States. China has become the country with the largest single population in the world. However, the government does not encourage singlehood and has not released any official data. It is worth recording because the scale of this single population is unprecedented in Chinese and even human history. I recorded the stories of this group through portrait photography. Being single is a negative concept in traditional Chinese culture, representing failure, personality defects, poverty, and so on. But in recent years, with the increasing level of education among young people and the awakening of personal consciousness, being single has begun to represent a brave, free, and independent way of life. Especially young women in China, they dare to be single, resist traditional beliefs, and even dare not to have children. There are other reasons for being single, such as high survival pressure, spending too much energy at work, and not having time for dating. Young people who grew up watching movies and TV shows are inculcate into the image of a perfect protagonist, making them all want to have a perfect partner, and are unwilling to change even if they can't find one. The only child who is lack communication training in their upbringing environment is also a very important reason. Although most young people in China can accept being single, I found that many people are still reluctant to it, just do so due to reality. As they age, their hope of getting rid of being single may become increasingly slim. When a large number of single people enter the elderly stage, how they take care of their own lives and how Chinese society arranges for them are issues that everyone needs to face.