This article in Slate asks, "Are there really no hipsters in China?"
The article is specifically focused on trends as relating to bicycles, which I know nothing about, but the question is really interesting, because what I've found in my time here is that, no, there aren't.
I'm going to preface this with the acknowledgement that as an outsider, there may well be subtleties to the culture that I'm missing. In addition I'll add the disclaimer that Haikou may well be different from other more metropolitan places such as Shanghai or Beijing, where it's hard to imagine that there aren't subcultural pockets thriving.
That said, though, it's been something that I've long noticed about being here: those cliquey youth subcultures don't seem to exist (or are not readily apparent).
It's really interesting, because irony/hipsterism/counterculture-icity/slackitude/whatever are such a big part of youth culture in the US. The ideas manifest themselves in different ways - disparate groups like punks and hipsters would probably both hate to be lumped together as I'm doing now - but in a way they're reflections of a similar phenomenon: rejection of mainstream society's aesthetic or cultural values, and using a parallel set of them in the creation of a different in-group, a subculture. Winning approval from society at large is not only unimportant but perhaps detrimental to your status within the subculture. There's a deliberate rejection of what society at large values (maybe hard work, maybe earnestness, maybe corporateness or material wealth), and intentional embrace of that which is devalued by society (maybe things that are old or ugly or broken-down, leading to some retro fashions, poverty chic, hideous moustaches, etc.) Sarcasm/irony/above-it-all-ness play a big role too, where some things can be so bad they're good.
It's a conversation I've had before with an American friend here, who is a member of the DIY/punk community. His question, then, would be, "are there really no DIY/punk kids in China?" So far, we haven't really found any. Everybody here seems to accept the narrative of working hard in school, getting a "good" job, living happily ever after. There's not so much of a notion of living off the grid, destroying the corporate establishment, hating The Man, or generally criticizing instead of embracing the values of the larger society. Or, again, at least I haven't found it. My seven months here don't really make me an expert.
Part of the whole deal is rejection of the superficiality and materialism and uselessness of mainstream society; the counterculture (as the name indicates) comes as a backlash against that. Therefore, part of the reason there may be less of these youth subcultures is that mainstream Chinese culture isn't (yet) so corrupted and superficial. No matter whether you prefer to blame Hollywood liberalism or right-wing capitalist greed, the love of bling is an important pillar of American society. In China, it seems like, it's only just starting to become that way.
Although I've written before about some of the stupid aspects or behaviors of the Chinese government, and I will continue to do so (including in this post), we might say in their favor that this healthier approach to money and materialism that Chinese society has - if it in fact does have that - perhaps has something to do with "capitalism" versus "communism" (not that either the US or China is a pure representation of either system in its pure form). Under the formerly strong Chinese communist system, such love of money was basically expressly prohibited. We are all poor, we are all the same, and we are all in this together. While such a system has drawbacks (that I don't need to go into for an American audience), one thing that system won't do is lead to a DIY/punk revolt, right? Because DIY is basically a part of the mainstream culture. When most people wash their clothes by hand and bike instead of drive and so forth - not out of highfalutin principle, but just because they have no choice given their income level - then calls to reject the waste and automation of daily life are not only not heard, they're not necessarily conceived of. In a society that doesn't throw away fresh produce the minute a spot appears on it, but continues to sell it anyway, there is no need for dumpster divers to go salvage that wasted-but-still-perfectly-edible food.
Now, no one would argue that money isn't important to Chinese people, but being here I do have less of a sense of cutthroat do-anything-to-get-ahead-edness. In fact, among young people, attitudes seem at times much more naive than that. As if glitz and glamour are fairly recent imports, and people are still awed by them. Young people seem to like glittering displays of prosperity, and actually pay attention to flashy advertisements instead of writing them off as "they're just trying to sell me something". Our Western-youth sort of cynicism towards corporations and corporatism, cynicism towards moneymaking, cynicism towards the very idea of upward mobility as opposed to just living a good simple humble satisfying life -- those things are not part of any youth counterculture revolt, because they are rooted in the mainstream culture and values expressed by generations past. If anything then, maybe the youth counterculture revolt is in actually valuing wealth and prosperity, along with the outward signs of it.
Along those lines, many of us Americans here have noticed that, style-wise, we seem to be in the 1980s over here. I'm not sure what it is; something about the clothing, the neon colors, the big lettering, the gold chains, the swagger, the clean-cut-ness, even the goofy poofy hairstyles. (Not everybody follows such trends of course; but that kind of style is what is "cool" -- which is actually the word they use, the English word "cool", which is funny because it is applied to so many things that, among native English speakers, would not be considered "cool".) Anyway that kind of style is something that seems to be reflecting an aspiration to wealth, like the conservative 1980s in the US. Expensive hairdos are cool - for guys - cleaning up nice is valued. Doing something like going to class in your PJs - the whole idea of looking "bad" <i>is</i> looking good - doesn't seem to exist.
On the other hand, for my generation (admittedly not exactly the current generation) of youth in the US, such sentiments were more often to be derided than embraced. Effortlessly messy, shaggy hair was cooler than a nicely combed or well styled do. Among a large subest of the young population, there was a lot more character to be found in driving a beat-up piece of junk (which you probably bought yourself) than a shiny new top-of-the-line automobile (bought on your daddy's dime). I don't feel like that aesthetic exists here now. Again, maybe as a foreigner I'm just missing the signs, or don't know where to look, but it seems like everybody here would pick the nicer car. Because it's nicer. As another example, pop stars seem to be of the ostentatious-display-of-wealth variety (a la Lady Gaga, who is very popular here) without the whole alternative/grunge/punk reaction against that.
We've jokingly wondered, if we're in the 1980s now, whether there will be a grunge backlash to follow, as there was in the '90s in the US. My friend who made the comment said it in jest, but to be honest I wouldn't be at all surprised. That kind of movement, where dirty and unkempt is cool, is obviously a reaction against the superficial material excess of the previous era. I pointed that out, that the pendulum could well swing toward grunge next, and my friend referred to America's cultural history of valuing grunge, though, and how maybe China doesn't have that.
In response, I would say that American culture and Chinese culture are obviously very different; we have different histories and come from different perspectives. But in both, I think, and maybe in all cultures, you can find a balancing act between valuing wealth and valuing poverty.
In America, the ways in which we value wealth are obvious. But we also have a long history of idealizing the rugged individualist, the dirty cowboy who makes his home under the stars, or the immigrant who arrived without a penny to his name. A "real" American is a workin' man, blue collar, no ivory tower, no fat cats, no frills, just putting food on the table for the family. In politics, both sides adhere to this ideal; on the right it often takes the form of anti-intellectualism, while on the left it is more likely to be anti-corporatism, but the basic archetype is the same. (Sorry, by the way, for the masculine bias, but that's the way it tends to be conceived of.) We could add to this the asceticism of our religious tradition, what with puritanism and the general "blessed be the poor"-ness of Christianity, as another example of how poverty is valued in our society.
In China, I know less about the cultural archetypes and undergirdings, but there is definitely also a strong romanticization of the worker, the common man (and woman), the poor peasant who achieves great things through hard work and bravery, etc. As much as we in the West tend to demonize communism, it and democracy are fundamentally based on the same idea: rule by the people. The common people are the most important. The fact that countries attempting a communist system have instead developed an autocratic regime does not change the basic underlying ideas, goals, rhetoric, and dreams: that the poor shall inherit the earth. In addition to the political, China also has a religious tradition that values poverty. Buddhism teaches not to desire worldly goods; ascetic monks beg for alms and so forth. (However, that religious culture has largely been lost, since the conversion to communism - for some reason - also required a conversion to atheism.) In China today, being religious is not illegal, but it's not exactly smiled upon either.
In addition to restrictions on freedom of religion, another freedom that people don't have here is that of protest. At our campus security orientation meeting at the beginning of the semester, they pointed out to us that in our home countries we may be used to having other rights and liberties that we don't have here. In addition to the religion thing, one of those is the freedom to assemble. (Another one is obviously freedom of speech.) In our home countries, if there's some policy we don't like, we have a Constitutionally-protected right to protest it. (As a certain heavily-media-promoted minority group in the US has recently been taking advantage of.) Here, we don't have that right. People can be arrested just for dissenting. It's possible, then, that this also plays into the whole lack-of-subcultures thing. Discouraging protest, dissent, free speech, and general individuality over conformity may actually stifle such youth counterculture movements and identities -- or at least, stifle the outward expression of them. Blending in becomes more important when standing out in an anti-social way could be cause for unwanted attention from the authorities.
So that's my analysis of these anti-conformist youth subcultures and potential reasons why they don't seem to be present among my university-student peers in China. But like I said, it could very well be that they do exist and I'm just missing them. Maybe they are forced to be farther underground, so that mere dress and aesthetic style wouldn't be enough to identify a political radical (as it often is in the US). Or maybe they really aren't any more hidden, and the Chinese students know exactly what cliques exist and who belongs to which one, and the problem is just that everyone just looks Chinese to me, so I'm not able to tease out the differences. But I do think that a foreigner going to an American campus would have a harder time not noticing those subcultures; that such subcultures really do exist here to a lesser extent than they do there.
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Comments
1. Chinese is hard. Not your fault. I don't speak it myself. Maybe you can order a cheeseburger or ask directions. Way to go! Perhaps you can have a halting, earnest conversation with curious and sympathetic people who make sure to adjust their language to a level appropriate for addressing a slightly weak-minded six year old. Fantastic! Imagine trying to fathom the US hipster scene with that level of English.
2. English is hard. Not your fault either. You weren't at the All-Comers Proto-Indo-European Standardization Committee Barndance of 6000BC. Nevertheless, all the Chinese people you hang out with are a bunch of nerds, who stay up nights sweating about definite articles and the future perfect tense and consequently are deeply, deeply dull people.
3. You're the special kind of douchebag who can't spend five minutes in a country without having magical epiphanies about the souls of the inhabitants. Never mind that you can't even read road signs, you can just *feel* the pulse of the place. Never mind that every piece of information your hosts hand down to you is calculated either to butter you up, shock you, or trick you into doing something dumb - not only do you just *know* about every single shibboleth that defines the Jello mountain of US culture, you have somehow achieved a mystical understanding about a whole damn separate nation, by taking a single bolus of Zen and and swallowing it whole. Oh. and you've turned it into a few hundred words that could have been so much more profitably used in a list of names for cats, instead of the world's longest synonym for "I'm an idiot"
I'd like to suggest, too, that - as you continue to observe contemporary Chinese culture - you bear in mind that Americans have tended to receive less than accurate information about the Chinese, their values, and their country, and that our own media is managed, value-laden, and (dreaded word) propagandistic. You ask and engage an interesting question about "youth culture" and "counter-culture" youth movements in China; I would suggest that - in searching for it - you remain truly open to the possibility that it doesn't exist, and open also to considering coolly and without prejudice possible answers to the question *why* it doesn't exist (if in fact it doesn't).
This is not my own domain of expertise, but I'll share with you something that might help inform your enquiries.
A year back I was lecturing in Western Culture and bilingual broadcasting at the nation's #2 university of media and communications. (The television station for which I work has, for obvious reasons, very close ties to this institution.) A friend in the US sent me The Breakfast Club on DVD, and I worked it into the lesson plan.
Mind, the students then in my care were bilingual broadcasting majors. Most enjoyed a much better than average command of spoken-English, and the majority were tall(ish), attractive, well-groomed kids from (relatively speaking) affluent families. There was a disproportionately large number of openly homosexual men in the class. Due mainly to their somewhat privileged upbringings, most students (the majority of which were female) spent their off-campus hours in the KTVs, clubs, bars, and shopping centers, confident that the guanxiwang of the pater familias was sufficient to ensure their careers would one day get off to a promising start. In fine - and this is the point - these were not your typical mainland undergraduates. They were well-heeled, fashionable (and fashion-conscious), and more interested in their iPhones than the Three Represents.
So what did they make of The Breakfast Club?
1. "Claire" (Molly Ringwald's character) seemed to everyone the most normal and enviable of the bratpack. Her dressing-down by Johnny Bender (Judd Nelson) didn't make sense to them: ("Of course her father spoils her -- its his daughter. Why wouldn't he?")
2. The attraction of the rebellious Bender puzzled them. ("He should be expelled from school".) Suggestions that she would be romantically involved with a liu'mang troubled them.
3. There was nothing comic about "Brian" (Anthony Michael Hall), whom everyone assumed should be with Claire: He was the brightest student, and was therefore the obvious choice of mate for the prettiest girl. Proto-emo "Allison" (Ally Sheedy) was pitied, and it was thought that she needed psychiatric treatment. Immediately.
4. The crisis between "Andrew" (Emilio Estevez) and his father made no sense. ("If he is a good athlete, then of course he should always try to win. His father loves him, and wants him to be successful".)
5. The day-long weekend detention made no sense whatever ("Why aren't the forced to study?"). The hermetically-sealed youth-culture - inflamed and swollen and seemingly in opposition to parents and school authority - didn't have any hooks on which to hang.
None enjoyed the film.
I do not suggest we should draw too many conclusions from this one "experiment" and this single sample. But I would suggest that it would be a mistake to *assume* that a counter-culture movement by teens is normal, healthy, a part of growing up, an ineluctable result of adolescent psychology, a natural part of the quest for self-identity, etc., or, that its absence in any society or culture (if it proves absent) is due to (e.g.) an oppressive political regime.
Chinese culture generally speaking does not identify 'personal autonomy' in the way we in the West do, and perhaps for that reason does not value it in the way we do. Personal autonomy in the West - from Socrates' daimon, to the soul as characterized by early Christian scholars, to its role as the locus of moral responsibility and human dignity in Kant - doesn't really appear on the landscape of the Chinese intellectual tradition. Perhaps you will find that Chinese youth are not *seeking* self-identity (and therefore: seeking to define their own unique personal borders and boundaries) in ways that Westerners might, because the Chinese intellectual universe does not include the Western concept of 'self' among its metaphysical furniture.
Chinese hipsters? Yup. By the truckload. Rebels without a cause? Here and there. Rebels without a clue? Insufficient data.
But Chinese existentialists?...
What is the sound of a non-existent Self clapping?
Vale!
JC
Thanks a lot for your interesting comment; your insight that they just don't have the same culture of seeking to form their individual identity is probably spot-on -- a facet of American teenage/young-adult culture that I was taking to be a universal, leading me to try to think its absence needed an explanation, rather than its presence.
Along the same lines, I was thinking about how here you see little kids running around alone, taking the city bus alone, etc., whereas in my (suburban American) culture, parents are often more paranoidly reluctant to let their kids out of their sight for any time at all. But then, here, people are in a way more attached to their parents, don't think it's weird to be living with them after you're 18, etc., whereas we tend to want to get out of the house as soon as possible (if not sooner). And I wonder if those two things are correlated - the relative freedom given (e.g.) Hainanese children doesn't lead to the same stifling home environment as a teenager, the same need to escape.
And that stuff about the Breakfast Club was truly amusing. I've heard the same thing here - I was basically a nerd in high school at home, but here (aside from the attraction of being a foreigner, being white, being tall, speaking English, etc....) I've had people say "I can't believe you weren't popular back home" -- because I'm smart, academic, hard-working, or whatever, good at academic pursuits, not a slacker -- and I just have to reply, in our culture, those things are not cool; being a slacker is cool and attractive. So my limited experience in that regard would agree with your limited experience with the Breakfast Club characters.