“When I crush a few packets of instant noodles, that sound gives me satisfaction.  But the best is popping bottles of soda. That feeling, that sound that it makes! Oh, it puts my heart at ease!”

This quote comes from an anonymous member of China’s “crush-crush tribe” (nie nie zu, in Mandarin), young white-collar workers who release their pent-up frustrations by sneaking into supermarkets and crushing packages of food.

Introduced to the West in the Jan 28 issue of The Economist, the crush-crush tribe has infuriated store owners and caused hand-wringing moral panic across China since they first emerged in the summer of 2009.

The phenomenon began in China’s largest cities and spread through the internet.  Posts on popular internet message boards recounted solitary late-night visits to the supermarket to smash packages of food or pop open bottles of soda.

The stories gained an eager following and a host of imitators in cities such as Beijing, Shanghai, and Guangzhou.

“Every day, the cookies on our shelves suffer varying levels of damage,” said a Guangzhou storekeeper in a report by the state news agency Xinhua. “It’s especially bad in the evenings and on weekends.”

A shopper looks at packages of instant noodles, a favorite target of the "crush-crush tribe." Pic: Wanjia Rexian

By August, members of the crush-crush tribe began to appear in less developed, less cosmopolitan cities.

In Heilongjiang province in China’s far northeast, one supermarket told a local newspaper that they were losing as much as 4,000 yuan (US $634) worth of merchandise per month because of damage caused by the crush-crush tribe.

Many grocery store managers complained that most crushers were able to get away unnoticed, and that those who were caught could only be made to pay for the damaged goods and then let go without any further punishment.

The social networking site QQ even devoted a special topic page to covering the crush-crush tribe.

“To crush or not to crush, that is the question,” read the page’s headline.  Below, articles featured a range of opinions from netizens, including members of the crush-crush tribe themselves.  “It’s not instant noodles that I’m crushing,” read one title, “it’s loneliness.”

Most observers agreed that the cause of the crush-crush phenomenon was the high stress faced by young college graduates in demanding, low-paying jobs.  But some dismissed it as simply the latest fad embraced by a fashion-conscious generation.

“Young people like to imitate and follow trends,” said Wang Hongjiao, a Shanghai psychologist.  “If there’s something new, they have to go out and try it.”

"I'll crush you to death!" growls this member of the crush-crush tribe in an Aug 2009 cartoon. Pic: ifeng.com

Therapists and other experts have offered a variety of alternative ways for young workers to vent their frustrations, from hobbies and exercise to popping balloons and tearing up sheets of paper.

For those unable to control their urges, one Beijing psychiatric hospital advised crushers to shop at the supermarket as infrequently as possible, and then only to go with a friend.

By the end of 2009, the crush-crush epidemic began to subside.  But stories of smashed cookies and crumpled packages of instant noodles periodically continue to appear in China’s newspapers.

However, most members of the crush-crush tribe appear to have moved on to other “tribes” who engage in their own signature brand of stress relief.

Unfortunately for China’s shopkeepers, these include the “switch-switch tribe” who mix and match different products in similarly-sized boxes, and the “rip-rip tribe” who tear open packages of socks and underwear.