After six years of grueling schedules and long shifts, a former tech engineer is finally enjoying an early finish.

Financial freedom and early retirement may be a dream for most people, but Guo Yu, a former information technology engineer, achieved both at the age of 28.

His resignation letter, posted in February on microblogging platform Sina Weibo, has been shared widely online and made FIRE－an acronym that stands for financial independence, retire early－a new trend in personal finance.

The basic principle is to save enough money so you can quit your job early. Although the movement is new in China, it has gained followers around the world.

Guo's story may represent a unique voice in that community, but sheds some light on its concept.

In his letter, Guo writes that, after six years, he will quit his job at Beijing-based technology company ByteDance and explore new possibilities in life, such as "deciding to retire (from the internet industry) at 28 years old and live in Japan".

Guo has been a trending topic on Zhihu, a Chinese equivalent of Quora. The search phrase "how to look at Guo's resignation" has been viewed more than 10 million times. Some Zhihu users questioned Guo's experience, while some were more concerned with how much he earned from ByteDance.

"I am the lucky one who has been granted a second chance to choose a different life," says Tokyo-based Guo, who is still a bit confused about his sudden fame on social media.

Within days, thousands of strangers have tried to add Guo as a friend on WeChat. Their most common question is "how much did you earn?"

Living a comfortable life in the Japanese capital and driving a Bentley Continental GT, Guo owns several properties, including a couple of three-story buildings in the city, which came from previous income and investment. The rental income, at a yield of about 10 percent, reaches tens of thousands of yuan every month, which is equal to his salary at ByteDance and, according to Guo, the main reason he began to think about his resignation.

He has also invested in the stock markets of Hong Kong and the United States.

"From a consumerist perspective, many people misunderstand financial freedom, which is not about the money, but about personal freedom behind a positive free cash flow," Guo says in his Sina Weibo post.

Guo's story is not just one of luck in embracing the internet age at the right time, but also of his talent and endeavor to achieve financial freedom at an early age, according to a post by his friend of 10 years, Luo Lei, on Zhihu.

In his eyes, Guo is changing from an unconventional man into an unconventionally rich man and his success cannot be duplicated.

Road to riches

Born in 1991 in rural Jiangxi province, Guo spent most of his childhood with his grandparents before following his parents to Shenzhen, Guangdong province, when he was in junior high school.

In his words, he recalls he had little choice at the time but to obey his parents' decision. He hoped that one day he would have control over his own life.

In 2008, while in the 3rd grade of senior high school, Guo got his first laptop because he wanted to set up a website to keep in touch with his high school classmates. It was then that he started to teach himself how to code.

Studying political science and public administration at a college in Guangzhou, Guangdong province, Guo describes his college life as "depressing" adding that he spent most of his time coding in the dormitory.

Guo says that he likes coding because it does not require any communication with other people, only an interaction with the screen.

He explains that his major did not carry great prospects, but his computer skills helped him land his first job.

In 2011, the sophomore became an intern at Alibaba-backed Alipay in Hangzhou, Zhejiang province.

"Joining Alipay didn't mean that I saw the trend in the era, it was the only option that I had at that time," Guo says, adding that he was quite satisfied that the job proved to his parents that he could win recognition his own way.

From a self-taught programmer to a full-time developer, Guo decided to leave his comfortable job for one with a startup in Beijing in 2014.

Later that year, the company was purchased by ByteDance, operator of news portal Toutiao and short video app TikTok. Guo became an IT engineer at ByteDance, where he witnessed firsthand the company's rapid evolution into a global media conglomerate.

In the eyes of many, Guo is considered "lucky" by making the right career decisions just as China's internet industry went through the transformation from desktop to mobile in the 2010s, an era which gave rise to Chinese internet giants, such as Tencent, Baidu, NetEase along with, of course, Alibaba and ByteDance.

Like most companies in the sector, Guo's work schedule at Byte-Dance was the grueling 996 format, which requires employees to work from 9 am to 9 pm, six days a week.

Guo remembers that everyone wrote code like crazy, often working until midnight.

One of the biggest projects he was involved with was Millionaire Hero, a livestreamed quiz show on Byte-Dance's Xigua video app. For the whole month, his life was only sleep and work.

During that six-year period at ByteDance, Guo says that, with his tough schedule and midnight finishes, he sacrificed his freedom in the short term, but he also gained something for the long term, which will give him that second chance he talks about. In 2017, he got the opportunity to take part in the Byte-Dance share option scheme, something he is under an obligation to not discuss in detail.

Facing this unexpected fortune, Guo was unable to sleep, feeling unprepared and unable to envision a future without coding.

In 2013, Guo began flying to Japan on a frequent basis and has been to more than 150 onsen (hot spring) towns.

He still remembers his first hot spring experience in a family inn. Although the place was small and water was not clean, Guo was hooked and embarked on regular hot spring visits. He spent nearly 400,000 yuan ($57,005) a year on the trips, even earning a certificate for Japanese language proficiency in 2018.

As a frequent flyer, he has traveled nearly 900,000 kilometers, and his target is to hit 1 million km before the age of 30.

Spring in his step

It was the hot springs that made him start seriously rethinking his job and life.

"Totally different from the internet industry, which focuses on targeting the public demands, onsen provide an isolated space, which makes people introspective," Guo explains.

In a hot spring, the moment people take off their bathing robes, they get rid of their social identities and just become a human in its purest form, like an animal, no different from a monkey, a flying eagle or a bird in morning light, Guo says, adding that the experience is inspiring.

Seeking a new vocation into which he can settle for a long time, running an onsen hotel is on his checklist.

Last year, he opened a travel agency to enable more Chinese tourists understand the beauty of onsen, which aims to pave the way for his plan to establish a top onsen hotel in Hangzhou, building a communication platform between China and Japan.

Becoming a writer was also mentioned in his "retirement" letter－"seeking inner peace in reading and finding life's purpose in writing".

"I have always wanted to become a writer, ever since junior high school," Guo says, adding he has never mentioned that to his parents.

His family is not wealthy. Once an electrician in a rural mine, Guo's father was not in good health after he fell off a pole due to an electrical shock. He passed away several years ago. The family was supported by his mother.

Now his mother lives in Shenzhen, with no need to worry about the family or her son, which is welcomed as "the happiest time in her life", according to Guo.

Without hesitation or asking for his mother's opinion, Guo quit his job in Beijing and moved to Tokyo.

Due to the COVID-19 outbreak, there has been no business for Guo's travel agency, but it has been a good time to adjust to a new pace of life, he says.

"I have continued writing for a Shanghai magazine about Japanese hot spring travel," Guo says.

After the pandemic has run its course, his travel agency will resume the business helping Chinese travelers better understand Japan's hot spring culture, he says.