I also agree that it's not a fad. I've said it before on the soft power thread and possibly in this thread. Soft power and attractiveness of a culture grows when it gets rich, not necessarily in monetary terms but in material abundance terms. This is because poverty forces people to focus on the necessities like food, clothing, shelter, safety, etc. When a people is materially abundant, they start pursuing things that are associated with being "cool", like entertainment, tech, fashion, etc.Have to reply to my own post, because I wanted to post that robot gala video for Chinese New Year, but after posting it, saw it posted, so had to compensate with this article, but later I find that was posted already as well.
So a shout out to dingyibvs and JohnnyD for their efforts at keeping us informed and entertained.
To compensate, again, posting this.
It is okay.
This trend of "a very Chinese time in my life," is not a fad.
Some people think it is a fad, not me. And I do not really care about these trendy social things.
Some critics of this trend are correct that it's not just about China being "cool", but also about their dissatisfaction with their own country. The thing is, I don't really see this trend changing any time soon. Real wages have been stagnant at best for decades in the west, and safety has been eroding for almost just as long.
When we visited China about a year ago, my family wanted to take us to a restaurant right after picking us up from the Airport. My wife was worried and asked them where would we keep our luggage? They were dumbfounded by the question and said "uh...just keep them in the car?" Having lived in the SF bay area for so long, that didn't occur to my wife as a possibility. We may make a lot more money than my relatives in China, but that level of safety was a luxury that we simply didn't have access to and something we both thought was pretty "cool".
