He is so focused on keeping his start-up alive that he can't sleep at night.

She was asked in an interview if she would be willing to break up with her boyfriend for the job.

A young couple wants their own family but has no energy for sex after work.

These are some of the struggles faced by the hundreds of thousands of young workers in China’s tech industry.

They are people like Yu Haoran, a 26-year-old computer science major, who in 2014 founded Jisuanke, a start-up in Beijing’s hi-tech Zhongguancun district to teach kids coding.

Yu has worked nights and weekends to grow his business from a 10-coder team to one with a $30 million valuation.

But the personal price he pays is chronic insomnia, sometimes getting just two hours of sleep every night.

“I haven’t really thought of living a life,” Yu said. “Because I’m building something, and before I finish it, there won’t be anything else on my mind.”

Last year China churned out four new billionaires every week, with technology being the biggest driver of new wealth, followed by real estate, according to the Hurun Report rich list.

For every success story there are thousands of wannabes who toil away, hoping to be the next Jack Ma or Wang Jianlin.

The South China Morning Post spoke to tech workers in Beijing for a snapshot of what life is really like living in China’s Silicon Valley, as the capital’s tech hubs have been dubbed.

Employees at major tech companies interviewed for this article asked to be identified only by their surnames because they were not authorized to speak publicly about their jobs.

Once a graveyard for eunuchs in feudal China, Zhongguancun is located inside the northwestern stretch of Beijing’s Fourth Ring Road, one of the major highways that encircle the Chinese capital.

Over the past three decades the area has seen the rise of successive generations of Chinese tech and internet start-ups, from computer maker Lenovo to news portal Sina and ride-hailing app Didi Chuxing. By the local government’s account, as many as 80 tech start-ups are born in Zhongguancun every day.

Yu, the Jisuanke founder, set up shop at a co-working space in the basement of one of Zhongguancun’s office buildings, in part because he could more easily tap talent from top Chinese academic institutions nearby like Tsinghua University.

The office is within walking distance of his two-bedroom rental apartment, where he offers free bunk beds to student interns working at his company.

In recent years, Zhongguancun has become crowded and expensive, spurring bigger companies to move their offices to more remote areas, which in turn have become Beijing’s newest tech hubs.

That has created a new problem for workers: the daily commute.

Chinese often joke online that the real bottleneck in the country’s internet development is the traffic jam at Houchang Village Road, a four-lane street flanked by the sprawling campuses of major tech companies in the fringe area of Xierqi. There, infrastructure development is way behind the growth of tech companies.

Last year a summer rainstorm in Beijing turned Xierqi’s streets into rivers. One photo, of a calm-looking commuter checking his phone while sitting on top of a garbage bin to escape the flooded road, went viral.

Tech firms in China typically expect their employees to work long hours to prove their dedication. That means a so-called 996 schedule: 9am to 9pm, six days a week.

Yang, a 33-year-old Beijing native who lives with his wife and parents, works as a product manager in an internet company in Xierqi. Every day he gets up at 6am for a two-and-a-half-hour commute, taking two different subway lines and a shuttle bus.

Yang’s wife, 29, works as a product manager in Wangjing, once known as Koreatown. By the time the couple gets home from their long workday, it is already close to midnight.

They have been trying for months to conceive a child but are too tired for sex on weekdays. “I hope we can make faster progress,” said Yang.

The boundaries between work and private life are further blurred by company perks like free meals and shuttles, on-site gyms and barber shops, as well as many other entertainment and leisure options. Although Silicon Valley giants like Google and Facebook offer similar benefits, some Chinese tech workers say they feel exploited.

“They want to save all the troubles in your life,” said Wang, a 26-year-old product manager, whose employer in Xierqi offers her free manicures, massages and phone screen protectors, among other things. “It’s like saying, don’t think about anything else, just work.”

Such “benefits” do not make employees stay longer. The average tenure for tech workers in Silicon Valley is 3.65 years, whereas in Chinese tech firms, state telecoms operators excluded, the figure is less than 2.6 years, according to data from Maimai, the Chinese equivalent of LinkedIn.

If the culture of excessively long hours stems from start-ups chasing scale, backed by large sums of venture capital cash and investors eager for results, those circumstances have changed over the past year.

By the end of 2018, many tech companies were announcing plans to cut benefits, bonuses and jobs as they hunkered down amid the country’s worst economic slowdown in nearly three decades.

In January, China’s venture capital deals totaled $4.3 billion, down nearly 70% from a year ago, according to data from research firm Zero2IPO.

“One thing Chinese founders or unicorns haven’t figured out is how to become a sustainable business,” said Jelte Wingender, a senior manager at Innoway, a government-backed incubator in Zhongguancun. “If you continue those [long hours] for 10 years, people will have no personal life any more, they will have no kids, they will go crazy.”

Yang is pondering what comes next. With more than 10 years of experience, he now holds a mid-level position at a top-tier internet company but has reached a career ceiling.

He compares himself to a construction worker, who can earn good money – but can easily be replaced by younger, cheaper labor.

Yang has thought about running a home-based business so he can spend more time with his future children. “I’m willing to fully support my wife’s career and take care of the family,” he said.

Those who choose to remain in the tech industry, especially women, have their own battles to fight.

Ren, a 24-year-old coder based in Xierqi, said she had has turned down opportunities from companies demanding a 996 schedule and said no to jobs where interviewers asked questions like, “Is it too hard for a girl to be a developer?” and “Are you ready to break up with your boyfriend?”

Such blatant sexism – from job ads preferring men to marketing campaigns discriminating against women – is still rife at Chinese tech companies despite some efforts to change in recent years.

As for Yu, the coding education start-up founder, he is starting to make small changes to his lifestyle, like working out more and making breakfast at home every day.

On a recent afternoon, he bought his first piece of clothing in years, a navy blue shirt from the Japanese brand Uniqlo.

The next item on his shopping list, though, is already popular in Zhongguancun. He plans to get a hoverboard to save him some time on his way to work.