斜杠青年xié gàng qīng nián

Slash youth (people with several jobs)

wǒ shì xié gàng qīng nián.我是斜杠青年。I’m a slash youth.

斜杠青年 means “slash youth”: a young person with more than one job or role, who introduces themselves with slashes, as in “designer/photographer/writer”.

Took off: 2017
Started in: An American book
Today: Now everyday Chinese

What it means

斜杠 is the slash sign, /. 青年 means young people. The word covers people with a day job and paid work on the side, and people who freelance in two or three fields at once.

Writers on the topic set a bar: a true 斜杠青年 can earn a living from each thing after the slash. By that measure, a second job driving for a ride-hailing app does not count.

How people use it

The word is ordinary Chinese now, in news features and social profiles. It usually sounds positive: busy by choice.

Not everyone admires it. In the same 2017 survey, 45.5% said slashers often lack one strong skill.

灯灯

你那个朋友是做什么的？
nǐ nà gè péng you shì zuò shén me de?
What does that friend of yours do?
白天写代码，晚上教吉他，周末还拍视频
bái tiān xiě dài mǎ, wǎn shang jiāo jí tā, zhōu mò hái pāi shì pín
Codes by day, teaches guitar at night, and makes videos on weekends.
标准的斜杠青年啊
biāo zhǔn de xié gàng qīng nián a
Textbook slash youth.
我就一份工作都觉得累
wǒ jiù yí fèn gōng zuò dōu jué de lèi
I have one job and I’m already tired.

More examples

她白天是老师，晚上是歌手，真是斜杠青年。
tā bái tiān shì lǎo shī, wǎn shang shì gē shǒu, zhēn shì xié gàng qīng nián.
She’s a teacher by day and a singer at night. A real slash youth.
我想当斜杠青年，可是一份工作已经很累了。
wǒ xiǎng dāng xié gàng qīng nián, kě shì yí fèn gōng zuò yǐ jīng hěn lèi le.
I want to be a slash youth, but one job is already tiring enough.

Where it came from

The idea comes from English. In 2007 the American writer Marci Alboher published One Person/Multiple Careers, about New Yorkers who list their jobs with slashes. She called them “slashers”.

Chinese media translated the word as 斜杠青年, and a Chinese book with that title by Susan Kuang, a LinkedIn columnist, spread it further. By 2017 it was common: in a survey that year by China Youth Daily, 52.3% of 1,988 people aged 18 to 35 said they knew a 斜杠青年.