The recent May Day holiday was another crowded one. To avoid the masses, some people looked beyond popular attractions and set their sights on the sea—cruise travel.
From the Antarctic cruises that went viral at the beginning of the year to the more affordable domestic routes, data shows that domestic cruise bookings this year have increased by over 60% year-on-year. For the most famous Royal Caribbean Spectrum of the Seas, room prices surged from 3,700 to over 10,000 RMB per night, sometimes requiring booking a year in advance.
At the same time, many people don't understand: isn't a cruise ship just a boat, just a means of transportation? Why is it so expensive, and what are people playing at?
In 2025, 22-year-old Lili, during a short break before starting graduate school, boarded the largest cruise ship in Asia and became an "NPC" in this mobile paradise, earning a monthly salary of 1,800 USD.
By day, she led dances under the spotlight, watched the sunset from the deck, and had a passionate romance with a handsome foreign manager; by night, she lived in a cabin below the waterline with no windows, her knees aching from hours of dancing.
Four months later, Lili decided to disembark. Not because she was tired, nor because of a breakup, but because she suddenly realized it was time to wake up from the dream.
Here is her story:
One
Above and Below Deck, Two Different Worlds
In late October 2025, I saw the Glory cruise ship for the first time at the port in Tokyo, the place where I would spend the next six months.
My first impression was that it was huge, just too big.
Previously, the largest ship I had been on was something like the Mazu, which was completely incomparable to the Glory. This luxury cruise ship cost 700 million euros to build and is the largest in Asia. It's like a building on the sea, with 19 decks in total, over 300 meters long, and at its widest point, almost the size of two and a half football fields.
Everything above deck was luxurious and beautiful. On the fifth deck of our ship, there was a spiral staircase made entirely of Swarovski crystal, with a piano underneath. The ship also had a grand theater, a spa center covering over a thousand square meters combined, outdoor pools on the deck, and an all-you-can-eat buffet with lobster and salmon... It was like a walking Disneyland.
The Lighthouse Restaurant on the Glory (Source: Glory Cruise Ship Official Website)
And my job was to play the role of an "NPC" in this paradise.
Actually, before boarding this time, I knew nothing about cruise ships or the life and work on them.
In June of that year, I graduated with my bachelor's degree and had already received my study abroad offer. The Japanese graduate program started in April, so I had an 8-month gap in between, and I wanted to earn some tuition money myself.
I scrolled online and saw a girl with blue hair and a petite frame sharing her experience working in a cruise ship's entertainment department. The salary was much higher than on land, and the daily work involved dressing up nicely, dancing, hosting, and things like that. It was exactly what I liked, and there were no barriers to entry, so I thought I could give it a try.
Later, I actually met this blogger on the ship; we served on the same cruise, and we even made a video together.
Long after, I learned that her knees were already injured from dancing for long periods, and she was resting at the time. Not long after we met, she disembarked to recuperate. She was only 20 years old.
The crew's life and the glamour above deck are completely two different worlds.
Because the ship sits in the water, the entire ship from deck one to four is basically underwater year-round and has no windows; this is where the crew lives. If you are a galley worker or something similar, you can only move around your work area and might not see the sun for a month or two.
As an entertainment department employee, my day was roughly divided into two or three parts.
Starting at 8 a.m., we would host mini-games in the activity room, like pitch-pot, crafts, trivia, and then give guests some small gifts.
By 6 p.m., the games would end, and we had to change into our own clothes to socialize.
The so-called socializing was because our ship had two theaters with scheduled shows every night. Often, guests would arrive early and wait there; we needed to chat with them while they waited, asking how their day was, if they were having fun, finding topics to keep them from getting too bored. That was socializing.
At first, I thought, what is this? It was so baffling. Later, I realized that the important thing wasn't what we talked about; the point was that when guests on the ship were even slightly bored, an employee would immediately come over enthusiastically to greet them and ask how they felt, giving the guests a sense that they were being cared for.
Once the show started and the guests went inside, we would prepare the stage for the evening party. At 10 p.m., we would change into another outfit to lead the dance at the party.
The manager required us to wear heavy makeup, and our clothes had to match the party's theme. For example, at an Italian-themed party, our clothes had to have red, white, and green colors.
Outdoor party at Christmas
The party lasted a full hour or two. As a dancing employee, I would stand on stage the whole time leading the dance, improvising steps to the music. Dancing non-stop from beginning to end was physically and mentally exhausting. But if I let my frustration show on my face, the manager would scold me.
And during times like these, it was easy to encounter people getting handsy. Especially since Japanese cruise tickets included alcohol, some guests would get drunk.
For instance, a few of the more excessive times I experienced: once, a guest told me he was very lonely and then kept trying to hug me; another time, when I was socializing and went to invite a guest to dance, he asked me if I wanted to go to his room later.
In those situations, you just have to politely decline, say the company doesn't allow it, and then quickly run away.
The company indeed had such rules, saying we must keep a certain distance from guests and not actively touch them. Actually, it was also to protect us, giving us a decent excuse when refusing.
Cruise tickets are expensive, and most guests don't come on board to grope the staff, so in situations like the ones I encountered, refusing them would usually put an end to it.
Two
Discrimination, Harassment, and Hierarchy
More pressure came from among the crew.
When I first boarded, the person leading us was a very obnoxious Japanese manager. Once, we made a mistake; clearly, it was a lack of coordination within the whole team, but she called everyone together and singled me out for criticism, saying it was because I was new that we messed up.
After the scolding, when everyone dispersed, she pulled the few Japanese employees from the service department aside and said, "I didn't mean to scold you, the main problem is Lili, don't take today's incident to heart."
The worst part was they were saying this right behind me. I really wanted to yell, "You are a bitch!" Can you walk further away? It's not like I can't understand Japanese!
But I was cowardly, so I endured it all.
This kind of culture just exists on the ship. We call it "Bai San Lou," which is a phonetic pronunciation; the original word might be Italian or Spanish, meaning "people from the same country as you." When I first got on board, someone would introduce another person to me like this: "This is my 'Bai San Lou'," meaning this is my fellow townsman. People from the same country hang out with people from the same country.
If it were just this, it would be fine. The problem is that on the ship, nationality and job rank are always tied together.
Like many of the bottom-tier jobs on our ship, they were filled by people from countries like Indonesia. For the same work, they would be paid less. But they didn't have better choices in their own countries either.
I was considered to have a relatively high salary on the ship, but this wasn't entirely because of my abilities; it was because they were running an Asian route and needed Asian faces to make the guests feel comfortable.
Further up in management, they would use their own Italian staff. It was very hard for a Chinese person to get those roles. Moreover, these European countries' staff were paid in euros, which, when converted, was even higher.
"Italian Night" on the ship
Higher-ranking officers lived on higher floors of the dorms, even having single rooms. Their activity space on the ship was also larger. For example, the 18th and 19th decks, with their superior ocean views, belonged exclusively to the "Yacht Club" passengers who paid over 10,000 RMB a night. Ordinary employees couldn't go there even off-duty; only managers could.
Officers wouldn't even be punished for violations. There was an Italian man on our ship who spoke to me in a very frivolous tone every time he saw me and once invited me to "go to his room."
Another time, he made frivolous remarks to another girl. A technician on our ship went over and told him he couldn't speak to women like that. Later, the two got into a bit of a physical altercation. When security came, they gave them breathalyzer tests and found that the Italian officer had been drinking.
This is not allowed on the ship. But in the end, nothing happened to him.
Two days before I disembarked, I was drinking with a female friend at the bar, and two guys walked past us and pulled my friend's hair. The next day, my friend reported them for sexual harassment. She wanted me to provide a testimony as a witness. Of course, I said no problem, and we went together.
When she reported it to HR, she mentioned that those guys had often harassed me before. HR asked me to share my experiences too, and that's when I realized that words like inviting me to his room actually counted as harassment.
But these kinds of remarks happened around us every day, to the point that my mindset had gradually been altered. I started thinking it was normal for a young girl like me, who dressed up beautifully every day, to be harassed on the ship.
When HR asked me, I suddenly woke up. Then I wondered, do other young girls think the same way? Could more serious situations occur?
My friend and I reported those guys together, but I don't know if it will do any good, because they were all managers.
Three
Is the Sunset on This Isolated Island Real?
Cruise life is like being on an isolated island.
The ship looks huge, but it accommodates thousands of employees. Guests come and go, but employees cannot disembark. When we board, we sign a contract, usually for 6 or 9 months, and you cannot leave unless you have a severe physical or psychological problem.
If you're at a regular company and get bullied by a colleague, you might feel a bit annoyed and go out for a meal to get over it. But on the ship, if you're not working, you're in your windowless dorm. The whole experience is like an amplified version of a normal workplace. Your good and bad emotions are magnified and intensified. People might constantly badmouth you to the manager just because you earn a bit more.
Lonely feelings are also magnified.
There is a saying on our ship: "Once you take off your ring, you're single." Many crew members have wives and families on land, but after a few months on the ship, they'll find a partner. Or many people just have friends with benefits; they might be together for a couple of days, and then switch partners the next day.
Anyway, no matter how much you mess around on this ship and ruin your reputation, it doesn't matter. Once you leave this ship and move to another or even return to land, no one will know.
I understood all these principles, but at the end of my second month on board, I still fell in love.
My ex-boyfriend—at first, I felt he was a dangerous person. He was a manager on the ship, and when we first met, he actively asked for my contact info, looking like a real player.
But when we actually interacted, he seemed very sincere, chatting with me and asking me out to explore when the ship docked, like an old-fashioned date.
The day our ship departed from Keelung, he texted to invite me to the deck to watch the sunset. We walked around side by side, watching the sunset reflecting off the slowly aging Keelung in the distance.
Everything around us slowly receded, the land grew farther away, as if we were entering no man's land. Then he confessed his feelings to me.
No matter how many times I look back, I feel I couldn't have refused that day's sunset.
Sunset on the cruise ship
Falling in love made me completely "enter" the dream of the cruise.
Every day we sneaked up to the exclusive Yacht Club bar on the 18th floor to drink, went to the top deck to watch the sunset and the stars, and ran into the dance floor hand-in-hand during parties... It was like a movie scene, like this entire cruise ship belonged to us.
But there were also many "poisoned thorns" in this relationship. He would occasionally express that he wished the relationship could be more casual. I would be very hurt, feeling that he wasn't serious. We repeatedly broke up and got back together; by the end, I was exhausted and thought a lot about it.
Was his charm really his own? Or did I just like enjoying the cruise with another person? He could take me to bars and rooftops that no one else could access; everyone thought it was impressive that I was dating a "manager," but was this just vanity?
When I was sad about the breakup, my ex-boyfriend's roommate would sometimes chat with me.
This roommate was an Indonesian guy whose English was poor, and he wasn't particularly good-looking. I had heard others say he was already married but still always hitting on Chinese girls, so I didn't like him much.
After getting to know him a bit, I found out he was actually very nice and gentle.
Once he told me he liked a friend of mine. I asked him, "Aren't you married?"
He said he wasn't married at all, nor was he hitting on Chinese girls everywhere; it was just because his English was poor, so everyone assumed these things, and he had no way to defend himself.
You realize that the ship is truly a very chaotic world.
If you are an ordinary employee dating a manager, everyone thinks you're amazing and capable. Conversely, if a manager wants to pursue you, he has the authority to check your files, access your surveillance cameras, and see all your consumption records on the ship. Even if it's not stalking you, it's very easy for him to engineer "coincidental" encounters and show that he knows what you like.
Under these circumstances, is the romance still genuine?
Four
I Needed to Disembark
Around February, which was my fourth month on board, I suddenly felt that the days were getting a bit boring. I had learned what there was to learn, seen the scenery there was to see, and suffered the heartbreak of love.
I suddenly felt that I needed to get off the ship.
The day I disembarked, I said goodbye to everyone, さようなら (goodbye), and I said we probably wouldn't meet again. After leaving, I quickly got busy with my visa and enrollment, returning to my academic circle, my circle of "highly educated" people.
I thought that once I entered this circle, I would gradually forget my life on the ship, but to be honest, the withdrawal symptoms were still very strong.
On April 1st, the Glory docked at the port in Tokyo. Friends still on the ship messaged me to meet up, and I went.
It was raining that day, and I held up my umbrella to shield myself. I thought, if my ex-boyfriend also came down from the ship today, I would "coincidentally" take a look at him. There was a mix of anticipation and resistance.
I was afraid that if I really saw him, I wouldn't be able to control my feelings.
And it wasn't just him; it was mainly that experience on the ship, that thrilling sensation—it still attracted me. Different experiences every day, parties all night, dancing, everyone's eyes on you, being able to bring joy to everyone, and making money on top of it.
Me and my friends at the crew bar
But at the same time, I knew I couldn't go back. Everything on the ship is repetitive: repetitive work, repetitive thrills. Going back would just be running in place or trying to recover a lost cause. You'd still want to find that previous happiness, unwilling to look forward.
I met a guest on the ship when I had just boarded. He saw me and greeted me, saying things like, "Hey, how come I haven't seen you before?" and "Where are you from?"
Later, I found out this person was a cruise regular. One of our voyages lasted four or five days, but he had taken over ten consecutive trips, spending more time on board than some of the staff. He was like a person living in a dream, reluctant to leave.
We had some mini-games on board, like who could stack 20 building blocks the fastest. He would play this game over and over on the ship, breaking our Guinness record. Our mini-games rewarded small merch with the cruise line's logo, and he collected the whole set.
But these things were not my goals, and they couldn't keep stimulating me forever.
Actually, when I resigned, my contract period wasn't over yet. The manager asked me to stay for another two weeks, but I said no, I had to go back and process my visa. I had to keep moving forward and couldn't stay on the ship any longer. I still think the same way now.
I probably won't go back to the cruise ship; I should look for new things to do. Perhaps a sunset like the one in Keelung will never happen again, but there will be other beautiful scenery.
Author Xiaoshan | Editor Xiaoshan | Intern Vienna
Source: Kanker
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