A Year of Reconciling with Life: From Shenzhen Editor to Didi Driver — a Mirror of AI’s Disruption

From city promise to sudden displacement

A former Shenzhen video editor says eight years of overtime and sweat raised his pre-tax monthly pay from ¥4,500 to about ¥11,000, but a single layoff erased that livelihood. The account, first published on Huxiu and written under the WeChat account 格隆, recounts how the man—37 and a married father of two—accepted an N+1 severance of nearly ¥100,000 after his ad company cut teams in May 2024. He soon found that responses to job applications were scarce. Why? Because the tools of his trade are changing fast.

Returning home, recalculating family math

Faced with sky-high monthly obligations—roughly ¥16,000 in rigid costs including a ¥5,000 mortgage on a 20‑year loan, childcare and household expenses—and a household income that averaged about ¥18,000, he left Shenzhen and returned to his hometown of Nanning. He rented a car and began driving for Didi (滴滴) to make ends meet, sometimes working from 6 a.m. until past 11 p.m., with nett monthly take-home fluctuating between about ¥5,000 and ¥8,000 after rental and operating costs. He and his wife keep the family’s financial strain hidden from their parents, who provide childcare support and modest income of their own.

A personal story that reflects a national trend

This is more than a single career setback. It has been reported that AI-driven editing tools have rapidly improved and begun to displace routine editing work, reshaping demand in China’s video and creative sectors. For millions of middle-income workers who moved to coastal tech hubs like Shenzhen chasing opportunity, the shift poses a stark question: retrain, relocate, or accept precarious gig work? The pressure on household budgets is compounded by China’s earlier housing boom and local consumption patterns that made mortgages and family care heavy, fixed commitments.

Tech, policy and the human toll

The episode also sits against a broader geopolitical backdrop: with U.S. export controls on advanced chips and heightened tech competition, Chinese firms have doubled down on AI software and automation, accelerating changes in the labor market. Reportedly, the result is faster rollout of tools that can replace certain creative tasks even as policymakers and companies debate reskilling and social safety nets. For the man who traded a video timeline for a driving app, the calculus has become painfully simple: reconcile expectations with reality, or keep searching for a new way to provide.