Why 胖东来 (Pang Dong Lai) Is Called China's Best Company to Work For — 40 Days' Leave, 'Unhappy Leave', and the Vote to Turn Down More

Quick answer: Pang Dong Lai (胖东来, Pàng Dōng Lái) is a supermarket chain in Xuchang, Henan that has become the most-discussed employer in China — not for pay alone, but for a package that reads as impossible in a country whose work vocabulary includes 996 and 牛马.

Staff get 40 days of paid annual leave, a 7-hour working day, every store closed on Tuesdays, and 10 days of 不开心假 — "unhappy leave," which you may take simply because you don't feel like working, and which managers are not permitted to refuse. Average take-home pay ran ¥8,974/month in 2025 and ¥9,598 in early 2026. Staff mistreated by customers can claim a 委屈奖, a "grievance award," of up to ¥5,000.

Then the detail that makes the whole story strange: in February 2026 the company polled its workforce on trading some pay for even more leave. 82.38% said no — they wanted things left as they are.

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The benefits, specifically

Annual leave	40 days paid
"Unhappy leave" (不开心假)	10 days, at the employee's discretion; managers may not refuse
Working day	~7 hours, no overtime culture
Weekly closure	All stores shut on Tuesdays
Average take-home pay	¥8,974/month (2025); ¥9,598/month (Jan–Mar 2026)
Grievance award (委屈奖)	up to ¥5,000 for staff wronged by customers
Headcount	over 10,000 formal contract employees
2024 sales	close to ¥17 billion

For context on the leave figure: a typical Chinese enterprise offers around five days of statutory annual leave. Pang Dong Lai offers forty.

不开心假 — the one everybody talks about

不开心假 (bù kāi xīn jià) breaks down as plainly as it sounds: 不开心 = "not happy," 假 = "leave."

Ten days a year, taken because you are not in the mood. No doctor's note, no explanation, no justification of what you'll do with it.

The crucial part is the enforcement. Founder Yu Donglai (于东来) stated publicly that management cannot decline the request — refusing it is itself a violation. That inversion is what makes it real rather than decorative. Most "unlimited leave" policies fail because approval stays discretionary and nobody wants to be the person who asks. Here, saying no is the punishable act.

Alongside it sits the 委屈奖 (wěi qu jiǎng), the "grievance award." 委屈 is a precise and very Chinese word — the feeling of having been wronged and having to swallow it. Retail staff absorb that daily. Pang Dong Lai pays for it, up to ¥5,000, which quietly reverses the customer-is-always-right premise the entire industry runs on.

The vote that makes the story interesting

Here is where it stops being a list of perks.

Between 23–24 February 2026 the company surveyed all 10,214 formal contract employees about a proposal to reduce pay in exchange for more time off. 9,686 valid responses came back.

82.38% — 7,979 people — voted to keep things exactly as they are. And 97.55% said they were satisfied or very satisfied with the existing 40-day arrangement.

Read that carefully, because it cuts against the easy narrative. This is not a workforce being handed leave it begged for. It is a workforce being offered more and answering: we're good. Forty days and a 7-hour day is apparently the point at which Chinese retail workers stop wanting time and start wanting the money.

Why this is the anti-内卷 company

To understand why Chinese people talk about this supermarket the way they do, you need the vocabulary it's a rebuttal to.

• 内卷 (nèi juǎn), "involution" — competition that increases effort without increasing reward. Everyone works harder; nobody gets further ahead.
• 996 — 9am to 9pm, six days a week. The tech-industry schedule that became a national argument.
• 牛马 (niú mǎ), "cattle and horses" — beasts of burden. What workers call themselves: labour without personhood.
• 打工人 (dǎ gōng rén), "wage worker" — the ironic, weary self-label of the ordinary employee.

And the exits people chose when the system wouldn't change:

• 躺平 (tǎng píng), "lying flat" — opting out, doing the minimum. (Full explainer →)
• 摆烂 (bǎi làn), "letting it rot" — giving up on improving a situation on purpose.

躺平 and 摆烂 are what you get when 内卷 has no exit. Pang Dong Lai's significance is that it proposes a third option: an employer that simply pays well and stops early, and remains extremely profitable while doing it. That's why it functions less as a company in Chinese discourse than as an argument — evidence that the 996/牛马 bargain is a choice rather than an economic law.

The economics, because the perks aren't charity

The obvious objection is that this only works if you're losing money on purpose. Pang Dong Lai isn't.

Yu Donglai is a middle-school dropout who started with a tobacco shop in 1990 and a small retail store in 1995. By 2024 the business was doing close to ¥17 billion in annual sales.

The model has some deliberate levers:

• Capped margins. Profit on fast-moving consumer goods is limited to around 30%, and the "backstage fees" suppliers normally pay for shelf placement are eliminated.
• Own-brand depth. Roughly 30% of revenue comes from its own DL label, developed directly with factories and farms, cutting wholesalers out.
• Trust as the product. In June 2024, after discovering sanitation problems at a supplier, the company paid the whistleblower ¥100,000 and refunded ¥1,000 to every affected customer — a response so far outside Chinese retail norms that it became national news. In a market with chronic distrust of food safety, that reputation is the moat.

The staff policy isn't separate from this. Retail quality is delivered by people, and rested, well-paid, non-desperate people deliver it better. The perks are the strategy.

The part that complicates the halo

Two things are worth knowing before treating this as a template.

It's one man's company. In August 2026, Yu Donglai announced on a livestream that the Xuchang Life Plaza store — open 24 years, with nearly ¥1 billion in first-half sales, a projected ¥2 billion for the year and over ¥100 million in annual profit — would close at the end of the year. A decision like that, taken at peak profitability and announced on a livestream, tells you the model is inseparable from the founder's personal judgement. That is not a governance structure anyone can copy.

It's one city. Pang Dong Lai operates in Xuchang, a mid-sized Henan city, with local wage levels and local rents. Whether the same arithmetic survives in Shanghai or Shenzhen is genuinely unproven — and the model's admirers and critics have been arguing about exactly that for two years.

None of which makes the 82% vote less remarkable. It just means the honest reading is: this is a real counterexample, not a blueprint.

Frequently asked

What is Pang Dong Lai? A supermarket chain based in Xuchang, Henan, founded by Yu Donglai, famous nationally for its employee treatment and customer service.

What is 不开心假? "Unhappy leave" — 10 days a year an employee can take simply for not feeling like working. Managers are not allowed to refuse.

How much annual leave do Pang Dong Lai employees get? 40 days paid, against roughly five at a typical Chinese enterprise.

How much do Pang Dong Lai employees earn? Average take-home pay was ¥8,974/month in 2025 and ¥9,598/month in early 2026.

Did employees really turn down more holiday? Yes. In a February 2026 survey of over 10,000 staff, 82.38% voted to keep current pay and leave rather than take less pay for more leave.

What is a 委屈奖? A "grievance award" of up to ¥5,000 for staff who are treated badly by customers.

Is Pang Dong Lai profitable? Yes — close to ¥17 billion in sales in 2024, with capped margins and a large own-brand range.

Can other companies copy it? Unclear. It is closely tied to one founder's personal decisions and to one mid-sized city's cost base.

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Related reading:

• 躺平 (tǎng píng) — lying flat, explained
• 内卷 (nèi juǎn) — involution
• 牛马 (niú mǎ) — "cattle and horses"
• 996 — the schedule that became an argument
• 打工人 (dǎ gōng rén) — the wage-worker self-label