China Social shortcuts.
Melted ice cream or carbonara sauce.
Chinese youth rebel through weird and wacky life hacks.
Picture yourself as the hero in a Chinese martial arts novel intent on honing your powers or perhaps attaining immortality.
There are two paths available to you.
Do you choose Zhengshu, the orthodox one that typically demands decades of meditation in a cave,
or do you risk Sheshu the heretical way?
It is swifter, but it also involves moral compromise.
In the novels, those who opt for the latter usually end up either corrupt or dead.
Traditional mores warn against those who cheat established systems.
But Sheshu has acquired a new lease of life among certain youngsters.
Detached from its literary origins, it now denotes a departure from the proper way,
more efficient, more creative, or simply less bound by convention.
In recent months, videos tagged with the term have drawn billions of views on Douyin and Xiaohongxu,
a pair of social platforms.
Businesses have joined the funds selling products in strange combinations.
Some departures are just rebranded life hacks,
such as rendering lard in a microwave, or learning English through fan fiction.
Others veer into the absurd, reading advanced mathematics as a cure for insomnia,
dining in the nude to shame oneself into getting in shape,