Huoren weisi is internet slang that spread in the early 2020s: alive, but a little dead, the state of someone so worn down by work and routine that they go through the motions with no energy left to feel. It is said with gallows humour, often of oneself, much as English speakers say they are dead inside. It belongs to the same vocabulary of burnout as niuma (牛马, workhorse) and tangping (躺平, lying flat). An essay on Small Town Remedy used it for the exhausted state its doctor hero comes home in.
