Man, if you ever wanted proof that life doesn’t follow a neat LinkedIn trajectory, meet Zhao Dian.
On paper, he’s a dream candidate with three master’s degrees in finance, globe-trotting education from Sydney to Paris to New York, and fluency in elite academia overseas.
But instead of cashing in on Wall Street or sipping lattes in Shanghai’s financial district, the 32-year-old is living on the streets of Dali, Yunnan, surviving on just US$14 a month.
And he chose to do this.
Three fancy diplomas later, Zhao wakes up at 7 a.m., packs up by 9 p.m., showers at hostels, eats free vegetarian meals, and launders at hotels.
I guy carries second-hand clothes and an e-reader. He even started book clubs and career counselling videos. He even walked away from his 10-year-old daughter in New York. The man literally swapped Bloomberg terminals for washing dishes in Paris. I’m not making this up, he literally said,
“If washing dishes could bring happiness, so why wait for an ideal job?”
So why did this genius turn out this way?
I think it’s about breaking chains.
Zhao says his prestigious education was a shackle, born out of domineering parents and a lonely upbringing.
So, is he a free spirit or a failure?
Depends on how you define success.
THE WHY: CONTROL
I do not like leaving behind his own wife and daughter, but Zhao traded status for control over his own choices, even if those choices look extreme, which gets a 3 stars on our weirdness scale.
“Look, most of us want a normal life without any drama, but life in this world is always strange, and uncertain.
I don’t need your email. I don’t want to bug you with a billion notifications. All I ask is this, if you felt something here, if this made you think, laugh, or even shake your head in disbelief, turn on notifications or just bookmark ‘Averagebeing.com’ and come back tomorrow.
That’s it. No strings. Just you, me, and this stupid world.”
