China's economy is sluggish, and traditional manufacturing industries continue to shrink. Low-tech production sectors such as garment manufacturing and electronics no longer require intensive labor. (Getty Images)
[People News] An internet café that charges just 0.6 yuan (six-tenths of a yuan) per hour? Yes, you read that correctly. In most third- and fourth-tier cities, even the cheapest prepaid rate at internet cafés is at least 5 yuan per hour. Six-tenths of a yuan is truly rock bottom. Yet this has long been the price at an internet café in Zunyi, Guizhou, called “Dashen.”
What breaks people’s hearts is not just the price. Every day, the café is packed with homeless drifters from all over the country.
On Douyin and Xiaohongshu, videos about Zunyi’s “six-mao internet café” have flooded the internet. In the footage, under dim yellow lights, rows of middle-aged and young men crowd before worn-out computers. Some stare blankly at stock-trading software. Some bow their heads playing mobile games. Others eat instant noodles with takeout boxes in their arms.
Some have been staying in this café for five or six years. Even short-term “residents” remain for months at a time.
Most of them are so-called failures in real life—society’s discarded sons. They are the true bottom-tier “workhorses” of young China, their faces marked with frustration and helplessness, sheltering in this remote haven.
There is a man from Henan who lost millions gambling and saw his family fall apart.
A Sichuan orphan who has been wandering since the age of 16 after losing both parents.
A man from Hubei who worked 15 years on assembly lines in Dongguan and nearly suffered a mental breakdown under the 996 work schedule.
A self-proclaimed “literary youth” who keeps writing long novels in the café but cannot even scrape together money for meals.
Many of them spend day and night in the café.
They rent collective housing nearby at about 100 yuan per month per person. There is no hot water. Bathing is done by wiping down. There are no toilets inside. There are virtually no electrical appliances. Other than broken beds and sofas, there is no furniture. Four people share a room and must sleep in shifts.
The café owner, Mr. Zhang, is a straightforward local from Guizhou. He has run the café for nearly twenty years. He once promised customers that the price would remain 0.6 yuan per hour forever—and he has kept his word. Word spread among drifters nationwide.
To sustain operations, Zhang began livestreaming. On Xiaohongshu, he shares the café’s daily reality—the bitter stories and his own charitable intentions. The stories have moved countless viewers. Netizens send tips, meals, and snacks. During holidays, some generous donors buy out all the drinks, snacks, and cigarettes at the counter and entrust Zhang to distribute them to the café’s residents.
This is not really an internet café. It is a grassroots shelter and a people’s charity house. There are no official documents, no government funding, no official visits, and no media hype. It survives solely on the owner’s conscience and the scattered donations of strangers.
Even Hu Xijin, a well-known commentator, had to admit on Weibo: the internet café has done what the Civil Affairs Bureau should have done.
Livestreams draw hundreds of thousands of viewers. People travel from other provinces to film videos. Others mail blankets and books. During the New Year, netizens crowdfund dumplings and red envelopes to create a sense of home.
But behind this warmth of mutual aid lies the piercing coldness of a systemic failure.
These unemployed drifters were not born destitute. They are the damaged byproducts of an era’s grinding machine—a microcosm of countless “leeks” and overworked laborers amid China’s economic downturn.
According to China’s National Bureau of Statistics data released in December 2025, the urban unemployment rate (excluding students) for ages 16–24 was 16.5%, for ages 25–29 was 6.9%, and the overall urban surveyed unemployment rate stood at about 5.2%. In 2025 alone, 12.22 million college graduates entered the market. Nearly 40 million more are expected over the next three years. With a sluggish property sector, declining population, AI replacing jobs, and intensified U.S.-China tensions, how many can remain untouched?
Civil servants face pay cuts. Factories lay off workers. Divorce rates climb. Parents require elderly support. These pressures have pushed ordinary citizens into social dead ends.
These men did not jump from buildings or burn charcoal in despair. They did not harm themselves or lash out at society. They simply lie flat here—quietly. Their basic nature remains kind.
Meanwhile, the authorities spend heavily on domestic stability maintenance and military preparations. As for civil relief, community support, and government safety nets, the promises far exceed reality. Official performance evaluations prioritize GDP and stability maintenance. Grassroots suffering is packaged as “isolated cases” or dismissed as discordant voices.
Public trust in official charity has long eroded. Red Cross scandals are widely known. Extravagant expenses and corruption have made people skeptical. Many prefer to donate to Zhang’s livestream rather than official channels—an unmistakable vote of no confidence in the system.
The six-mao internet café is like a mirror revealing the chaos: economic slowdown, social disorder, governmental dysfunction, and official dereliction.
On social media, comments overwhelmingly express sorrow and frustration:
“This isn’t an internet café—it’s the last shelter for bottom-tier men.”
“They’re not unwilling to go home. They truly have no home.”
“It reflects too many social problems: youth unemployment, gambling apps, broken families, untreated mental health. How many holes are there in the social safety net?”
There is also concern. If the café’s influence grows too large, authorities may inspect, regulate, or even shut it down under various pretexts. At best, it might be absorbed into formal community management under the banner of standardization and “core socialist values.”
Worse still, some fear that homeless individuals—if unnoticed—could face grave risks.
In many Chinese cities, homeless people and beggars have largely disappeared from the streets. Even former orphans from state institutions seem to vanish as adults. Reports have surfaced of illegal organ trafficking rings involving vulnerable individuals. Cases have been prosecuted, but many tragedies remain unexposed.
Zunyi’s six-mao internet café bears witness to the warmth of grassroots mutual aid. It also tears open the cold reality of systemic neglect. It has become, for many observers, a heartbreaking line—China’s breaking point laid bare.
(Published first in People News)
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