孔乙己文学

Named after a tragic scholar character in a Lu Xun short story, this meme captures the plight of over-educated, under-employed young Chinese people who feel trapped by their degrees. Just like the fictional Kong Yiji — too proud to do manual labor, too powerless to rise — these graduates joke darkly that their diplomas are both a badge of honor and a pair of handcuffs they can't take off.

Against a backdrop of record youth unemployment and a saturated graduate job market in post-pandemic China, millions of college graduates found themselves unable to land white-collar work but psychologically unwilling to take blue-collar jobs. The meme went viral as a bittersweet form of collective venting, channeling frustration with an education system that promised upward mobility but delivered credential inflation instead.

受过高等教育却找不到理想工作的年轻人，用学历为自己的困境开脱，既心酸又无奈。