The poor hiding in the city: they hold iPhones and wear luxury goods from head to toe, yet they can't afford to eat their fill

My friend Da Liu basically stays holed up in his city rental room when he's not working. Once, when he went to a restaurant to eat, he studied the menu for a long time - not because the food wasn't good, but because he was looking for the cheap dishes. Just as Da Liu was studying the menu, in came two girls who immediately ordered six heavy dishes from the boss, all the most expensive ones. Judging by what they were wearing, they were covered in luxury brand names from head to toe, and the shoes on their feet cost several times more than everything Da Liu had on. In their hands were the latest iPhones worth over ten thousand yuan. As the old saying goes: comparing people makes you want to die of frustration, comparing goods makes you want to throw them away!

Badly hurt by this, Da Liu decided to go back to his rental room right after finishing his meal. Da Liu is a young man who came to the city from the countryside to make a living, living in a rental room in an urban village. The rooms along this road are crowded, without sunlight, damp and dark. Just as Da Liu carefully opened the door, he suddenly saw the two girls from the restaurant earlier - it turned out they lived here too, and he couldn't help but feel a trace of comfort in his heart!

"My salary of three thousand yuan this month isn't even enough to pay back Huabei and my loans..." "The salary is so low, mine isn't enough to pay back the loans and Huabei either... what should I do?" Even from far away, you could hear the two brightly dressed young women worrying about money.

People like this are very common in life. They used to be called the "paycheck-to-paycheck tribe," and now they're called "the poor lurking in the city." The definition is: people who look like they have food and drink, who dress brightly and glamorously, but who are actually extremely poor.

If they can eat out, they won't cook; after buying clothes, they're ready to eat instant noodles; they get a gym membership and only go a few days a year. On social media they have a house, a car and good food, but in reality their pockets are empty as the wind, living on dirt for the long term.

Some people will say: people nowadays like to eat well, dress well and use good things; they won't eat fast food, won't wear cheap street-stall goods, and they love to follow trends and consume without restraint. They earn a few thousand yuan a month, yet buy an iPhone for over ten thousand - why not buy a Huawei for just over 1,000?

In today's world of material abundance, in people's understanding of poverty, meeting basic needs for food, drink and clothing still counts as poverty. Because there's always someone around you whose monthly salary is tens of thousands, someone who succeeded in starting a business and became a multimillionaire, someone who married into wealth. Your peers are abandoning you, people younger than you have already abandoned you - there are far too many reasons like this.

Compared with people earning tens of thousands a month, someone earning three thousand is poor; compared with houses in Beijing, Shanghai and Guangzhou, a house in your hometown is poor; compared with an iPhone, an Android phone is poor. This kind of poverty is more a poverty of the mind. Everyone lacks money, and everyone wants to have more wealth and satisfaction than others.

People today are busier the poorer they are, and poorer the busier they are; they keep working hard, yet their lives never seem to improve - could it be they've gone in the wrong direction? Wages simply aren't growing at the same pace as rapid economic development. The work is intense, the income is low, the future is uncertain, and even with diligent work there's still the risk of losing your job.