Milan (AsiaNews) – Anyone who thinks that Internet cafés (Wǎngbā) in China are a thing of the past is sadly mistaken.
After a rapid growth in the late 1990s, these cafés equipped with computer stations are experiencing a second renaissance, helped by the country’s economic crisis and the resulting demand for low-cost entertainment.
Precisely because of their competitive prices, some Internet cafés have also become a sort of temporary shelter for the homeless, for gig workers, and for all those leading a “wall-hanging life” (guà bì rénshēng).
This expression from Internet slang is used to describe the people who live on the margins of Chinese society, in a state of poverty and neglect, and who seem to have no way out.
The best-known example of this is undoubtedly the XX Space Internet Café in Zunyi, a small mountain town in Guizhou Province, southwestern China.
For just 0.6 RMB (US$ 0,09) per hour, one can get a safe place to spend the night and thus secure one’s own “digital survival" space. Undeniably, it is cheap, considering that an e-sports station typically costs around 20 RMB (US$ 2,98) an hour.
Doing the math, the minimum cost for camping out in the Zunyi Café is thus a dozen yuan a day, which can buy you at least 12 hours of Internet access to play games or watch movies, and a simple meal.
For those who can't afford housing, sleeping in a gaming chair saves on rent and utilities. The only alternative to that is the streets.
A win-win solution
Because of this, the Zunyi establishment was renamed the Sixty Cents Internet Café to attract customers from thousands of kilometres away.
“We never expected the Internet café to go this way,” noted the owner, Old Zhang. “So many people come from far away, many ask me for advice on finding work, and some even ask us for money for return tickets, which we always give them. I often remind them to find a job, not to wait until they run out of money before starting to look for solutions."
Besides competitive prices, another feature of the Internet café in Zunyi is the live-streaming events organised by the owner. Forced to lower Internet rates due to the economic crisis following the COVID-19 pandemic, Old Zhang resorted to this ploy to avoid losses, finding a win-win solution.
Viewers watching online can make donations and send gifts to the café's customers, such as drinks, food, cigarettes, money for Internet access, or hotel stays, often following haphazard criteria. For example, a user once offered a Coca-Cola to anyone playing the video game "Legend of Mir 2" inside the café.
Sometimes, however, donations are made based on the province of origin of those in attendance. Joking about this practice, the café's owner said of himself. “I run an Internet Café, but in reality, I'm just an online beggar.”
While live stream donations may seem like a form of "exploitation of suffering" to many, in reality, with this "digital charity" mechanism, old Zhang has managed to keep prices unchanged and double the number of employees, while maintaining the nature of the establishment.
In the opinion of many, the café in Zunyi succeeded where welfare services often fail, providing concrete support to people living in desperate situations.
Although China's welfare system, despite being a late bloomer and facing numerous challenges, has achieved significant results in the last decade, it is still inadequate to meet the diverse needs of vulnerable populations and address today’s new challenges, which is why it urgently requires reform.
The New "Gods of Sanhe"
The café in Zunyi went viral on Chinese social media after the publication of a documentary by blogger Shijiu, shot during the 2026 Chinese New Year holidays. The footage shows the café crowded with people who had no home to celebrate this important occasion, nor any family members to reconnect with.
One of them was Cheng Wen, the pseudonym of a 28-year-old aspiring writer with a hard childhood and a past as a factory worker, delivery driver, and bodyguard. At the end of 2025, tired of his factory job, he quit and went inside the Internet café for the first time.
Every time he gets small gifts from a "big brother" (dà gē), an endearing term for a generous donor, during a live stream, he writes down their name and sends them a private message to thank them.
One of them even paid him three months' rent, offering him a quiet place to write his novel.
Nicknamed for his goatee, Little Mustache is 32 years old. He lost his father when he was very young, married at 28 thanks to a blind date, but six months later, his wife lost a significant amount of money online gambling and refused to return home, hiding from her parents.
He reported her for marital fraud and recovered part of the dowry. After the divorce, however, Little Mustache's mother, who had remarried, kicked him out of the house, calling him a “failure”. Since then, he has lost all contact with his family and has never looked for work again.
Iron Window is originally from Sichuan and previously worked in tunnel construction in Xinjiang and as a steelworker on construction sites in northern China.
Before the Lunar New Year, he arrived at the Internet café with just over 1,000 RMB (around US$ 110) in his pocket, after spending his entire salary to pay off his family's debts.
When he couldn’t pay for his Internet connection, he performed a live webcast, and his "big brothers" were amused, and refilled his account with donations.
Many consider the patrons of the Zunyi Café to be a version 2.0 of the Sanhe gods (Sanhe da shen), an expression that refers to the young people who once gathered near the Sanhe Talent Market in the southern Chinese city of Shenzhen.
Unemployed, they worked day jobs to survive, earning around 100 RMB (about US$ 11) a day. Their motto was "work one day, and have fun for three."
Many were migrants who cut ties with their families and lived in a state of total neglect, without any goal or purpose for the future.
The Sanhe phenomenon almost disappeared after local authorities launched initiatives in 2021 to help these young people find their way and rediscover the meaning of life, including setting up "service stations for struggling workers," creating psychological support groups, and instituting vocational training and other counselling programmes to cut unemployment.
Thanks to these actions, many young people eventually found suitable jobs, while others chose to return to their hometowns.
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