Working extra hours on both weekdays and weekends has become an integral and routine part of Liu Xiaoning's life, who works in a media company in Beijing.
"I usually finish my work at midnight, almost every day," said Liu.
Liu is just one of the large number of white-collar workers in China who are feeling the strains of working overtime on a continuous basis.
About 60 percent of the white-collar workers in China have to work overtime during weekdays while 40 percent do the same on weekends, said a survey conducted by NetEase Inc, a Chinese Internet company that operates 163.com, a popular web portal.
Among weekdays, Wednesday is the hardest day for the office workers, as overtime is maximum on this day. The percentage of workers who have to work overtime on Wednesdays is about 60.17 percent, according to the survey.
The NetEase survey was conducted in association its mail services and 10 other applications that are closely linked to the lives of the white-collar workers like flight booking, taxi-hailing and recruitment services.
The survey based its conclusion on responses from about 800 million NetEase mailbox users and defines working extra hours as the time users access their mailbox (before 9 am and 6 pm in the evening) on weekdays.
According to the survey, about 60 percent of its monthly active users work overtime on weekdays, and 20 percent of them send their first email of the day before 9 am, while 20 percent continue to send emails late into the night (10 pm to 4 am).
About 29 percent of users choose to work extra hours in the morning while 44.41 percent of them choose to work overtime in the evening.
Guangdong province, Beijing and Zhejiang province rank the top three in terms of the number of workers who work overtime on weekdays, as the report showed.
"I have to work extra hours about 80 percent of weekdays, and 30 percent of the weekends," said Ma Junheng, who works in a public relations company in Beijing.
He usually stays in the office until 10 pm.
Ma said most of his colleagues also have a similar lifestyle.
"It is not compulsory, but we do this on our own accord as we have gotten accustomed to it," he said.
Li Zhelong, a design architect who has been working in Shanghai for five years after graduation, said that he generally takes one day off in a week, and it is quite common to leave office around 9 pm or 10 pm in the evening, especially if there are important and pressing projects.
Li said it is a common practice to work overtime in his industry, especially in his position, which covers most of the work in the early stage of a project.
He takes it for granted as he thinks there will be a period of time in a person's life that he or she would sacrifice something for career success.
