During the beginning of China’s “Golden Week” holiday, a trend emerged on social media where many young people were seen donning hospital patient gowns and going on group outings, calling it “crazy travel.”
On September 30, a self-media article stated, “With the arrival of the Golden Week holiday, young people finally have the chance to relax, and many choose to engage in ‘crazy travel’ during the holiday to heal their mental state worn out by work.”
Videos circulating on Chinese social media showed groups of young people wearing patient gowns collectively dancing, rolling on the grass, forests, deserts, and doing various bizarre movements, creating somewhat eerie scenes.
One video blogger named “Juanzi” gained a large following by filming herself dancing in a patient gown, stating that wearing the gown was for fun and to relieve anxiety, although it sometimes led to misunderstandings. Once, while dancing by the river in a patient gown, an elderly person mistook her for attempting suicide by jumping into the river and immediately reported it to the police.
After the videos of people wearing patient gowns for “crazy travel” went viral online, more and more young people started to emulate the trend. The search volume and sales of similar patient gowns on Taobao surged, making it a hot-selling item.
Some businesses stated that the sales of “patient gowns” saw hundreds of orders per day recently, with many people purchasing them for photo opportunities.
Wearing patient gowns for “crazy travel” has even become a new tourism activity, with tour guides adding “wearing patient gowns for photos” to their itinerary, attracting over twenty participants.
Videos shared by the tour guide showed that when she called out “patients, please gather,” all the young participants put on patient gowns and rolled on the grass, danced, and made silly gestures together.
Online searches revealed that the trend of wearing patient gowns started becoming popular in China over the past two years. Regarding the significant number of young people wearing patient gowns for “crazy travel,” some netizens commented that it was a way to relieve stress and heal their mental state worn out by work. Some netizens even joked, “Since becoming ‘mentally ill,’ my mental state has indeed improved significantly.”
However, public opinion generally believes that the abnormal phenomenon of Chinese youth collectively wearing patient gowns for outings highlights the “unhealthy” state of Chinese society. In recent years, with the continuous sluggishness of the Chinese economy and the soaring unemployment rate, young people face immense job pressures and intense workplace competition, leading many to fall into anxiety, and there have been occasional incidents of young people’s group suicides.
On September 21, a whistleblower informed Da Ji Yuan that on September 19, nine Chinese youths born in the 1990s in Beijing’s Haidian District collectively jumped off a bridge on Shangzhuang Bridge, with the bodies of seven retrieved from the water while the other two remain missing. The Chinese authorities tightly controlled the information surrounding the incident.