Workers nap away their worries with singing bowls

Beijing – It’s just after midday in a quiet studio in Beijing and Xuan Yi is finally getting the deep sleep she’s craved for months.

Xuan is one of an estimated 300 million Chinese people suffering from insomnia, the product of a high-stress, high-pressure culture that has left many young people choosing to “lie flat” instead.

She tried everything, she tells AFP – from psychological counselling to essential oils.

“I had a lot of work pressure. I could not go to bed before 2am or 3am and had to get up at 7am to start work,” she says.

“I also worked weekends, and my sleep was not very good for a long time.”

But when the curtains close and the singing bowls start humming at healer Li Yan’s studio, she can finally drift off.

To the sounds of a gong, Ukrainian water drum, rainstick and handpans, Xuan and her fellow millennials enter a gentle slumber.

Fifty minutes later, they awake after what they say is the best sleep they’ve had in years – at a cost of 180 yuan (about R470).

“Dozens of people with tense minds lay down together and want to give their brains a short break,” Li says.

“It’s like charging your cellphone battery from three percent to 100%.”

“Pressure”, “anxiety” and “insomnia” are the words Li hears most often. She says she often fields calls from clients desperate for a break.

“I need this therapy right away, in half an hour, I’m so tired,” Li says they tell her.

Many come from China’s competitive IT industry, which has some of the highest incidents of depression and anxiety in the country, according to a National White Paper on Health.

Giants like Alibaba – whose exCEO Jack Ma was notorious for demanding that his employees work long hours – have even used Li’s sessions as team-building exercises.

Li calls her work “lie flat concerts”, a reference to a popular meme extolling the virtues of trading the high-pressure life for something a little more easygoing.

But the singing bowls also tie into another growing trend: “short escapes”, in which young people snatch small, zen moments for themselves to escape the daily grind.

Surrounded by office buildings in the heart of Beijing, Li’s studio offers time slots tailored to the busy routines of young workers.

She says she has seen growing demand in the so-called sleep economy since the Covid pandemic, which the World Health Organisation says sparked a 25% increase in incidents of depression and anxiety worldwide in its first year. –