pk-china-user “Odyssey years” is a term that young adults in China are increasingly using to describe a prolonged period after high school during which they explore their careers, relationships, and personal identities, typically between the ages of 20 and 30.
The growing popularity of “Odyssey years” reflects a reassessment among young Chinese people of their life priorities, including how they define personal growth, standards of success, and expectations for long-term stability in life.
The increasing use of social media has made it easier for young people to share and discuss their “Odyssey years,” turning personal experiences into part of a broader public conversation that everyone can observe.
By Xinhua writers Shi Yifei and Wang Xiaopeng.
BEIJING, June 2 (Xinhua) — Each morning, Chen Yuxin sets up her laptop and microphone in a comfortable corner of her apartment. She divides her time between teaching online IELTS classes, recording podcasts, and posting on social media.
At 26, she left a stable job at a psychological counseling center in Shanghai in search of a slower lifestyle and work that better matched her skills.
“I’m in my ‘Odyssey years,’” she said in her latest video post on the lifestyle social media platform Rednote.
Chen is using a term that young adults in China are increasingly adopting to refer to a long period after high school in which they explore their careers, relationships, and personal identities, usually between the ages of 20 and 30.
The term first became popular in 2007, when columnist David Brooks borrowed it from Homer’s “Odyssey.” In the epic, the hero Odysseus spends years wandering at sea before returning home.
This metaphor has recently regained popularity across the world. In February, a Rednote post explaining the idea received more than 100,000 likes and quickly became part of the shared vocabulary among urban Chinese youth as they explored their identities.
Yan Chaogan, a professor in the Department of Psychological and Cognitive Sciences at Tsinghua University, said the term resonates strongly with younger generations because it provides a fairly accurate and gentle way of describing the situation many young people find themselves in.
In the past, people were expected to follow a fixed life path: graduate, start working, get married, buy a home, and have children, Yan said. But today, many young people have more flexible life paths, with new job opportunities emerging. Some even take breaks to figure things out, he told Xinhua.
A 2025 report on new forms of employment found that jobs in emerging sectors increased by 15.1 percent, including roles such as online medical consultants, professional patient companions, and pet care specialists.
