# Observations on the Decline of the Middle Class Around Me

I've observed that over the past few years, approximately eighty percent of the middle-class people around me have fallen back into poverty.

The reasons are varied, but about half of it is due to real estate depreciation. Basically anyone who bought property in the years after 2018 has seen their assets shrink by more than half.

In the past, when people had money, they liked to invest in commercial properties and residential real estate. A friend had a commercial shop worth over 2 million yuan—now they can't sell it for 500,000 yuan even with price cuts, and it won't rent out either. The entire commercial district has become desolate.

Apart from real estate, the other reasons are diverse. I closed my studio in 2020 due to the pandemic, and until now I've only survived by doing social media content creation.

Among my relatives and friends, two were involved in medical devices. With recent healthcare reforms over the past two years, they've been unable to continue. There was also a small official in the healthcare sector who used to live very comfortably, openly taking commissions, but now has to return everything. He had to sell his house and borrow money from everywhere just to barely escape disaster.

Then there's my older brother, who had several decoration companies and building materials factories. A lifetime of accumulated family assets all vanished when Evergrande collapsed, and he still owes considerable debts.

There's also the restaurant business—almost nobody has managed to sustain it. I have a relative who's a year older than me, who came from a rural background and was admitted to a Beijing university. During his glory days, he was an executive at a foreign company with properties in both Beijing and Shanghai. Now his assets have shrunk, and being laid off, he had to return to his hometown with his family. Then there's a couple of friends who struggled to save money, originally planned for their child's wedding, but were convinced to invest it and lost everything. They still owe significant debts and had to sell their house.

In summary, nearly all those who started businesses or ran their own companies have struggled over these years—some have gone bankrupt entirely, others are barely holding on.

Many industries that used to be lucrative have simply stopped working these past few years.

Most of these friends are already in their fifties or sixties. They thought they'd accumulated wealth over half a lifetime and could enjoy a comfortable retirement, but it all disappeared over these past few years. Only those who got out early and held onto cash had better outcomes.

However, a considerable portion of these people also lost money in the stock market—I'm one of them. Those who were once glamorous now all look quite down and out. If there are people who've done well these past few years with minimal impact, they're either civil servants or people who've held onto cash without taking reckless risks.

Life is truly a wheel of fortune—thirty years in the east, thirty years in the west.

When I was at my peak, my studio had hundreds of employees. Now I survive on 2,000 to 3,000 yuan per month from freelance writing fees.

Heaven doesn't show eternal favor to just one person.

Building wealth takes half a lifetime, but losing everything requires only one wrong decision. Now I've come to terms with it. A few thousand yuan is enough for a family to live well. Health and peace are worth more than anything.