Ant tribe

Ant tribe (simplified Chinese:蚁族; traditional Chinese:蟻族; pinyin:yǐzú; Zhuyin Fuhao:ㄧˇㄗㄨˊ) is a neologism used to describe a group of low income university graduates who settle for a poverty-level existence in the cities of China. Those who belong to the ant tribe class hope that, in time, they will find the jobs for which they are trained in college. Lian Si (Chinese:廉思), then a postdoctoral researcher at Peking University, coined the term "ant tribe" to draw a comparison between the lives of these college graduates and ants: "They share every similarity with ants. They live in colonies in cramped areas. They're intelligent and hardworking, yet anonymous and underpaid." Typically consisting of those born during and after the 1980s, the ant tribe is considered the fourth disadvantaged social class in the Chinese social paradigm, alongside the traditionally disadvantaged classes of the peasantry, the migrant workers, and those formerly employed by government-owned corporations and left unemployed by the economic reform in China.