Why Chinese Culture Is Cool But Nobody Likes It

why is China so powerful but yet it's not considered that cool and its culture not that important you know for us this important to me but uh yeah let's just hear the analysis from this white Canadian guy JJ interesting because even though China is obviously the biggest and most politically powerful country in Asia I feel like a lot of us don't really know all that much about Chinese culture relative to the culture of some of the other places on the continent and there are a few reasons for that as far as I can one is just that China has been a poor country for quite a long time and doesn't have the same tradition of exporting high-end cultural Goods to the West the way places like Japan and Korea do that is starting to change as China gets richer but even now most of what China exports to the West are consumer goods manufactured on behalf of Western companies as opposed to distinctly Chinese goods from ch Chinese boom Andrew cultural analyst from Canada JJ McCulla just dropped a video Chinese culture is cool and important and I'll tell you this Andrew for a non-chinese guy or a non-asian guy this is one of the most interesting videos I've seen trying to understand China yeah I thought he did a good job and I thought thought he did his research he was uh his tone was very you know unbiased very neutral and you know I think it was very sincere so honestly this was a good video there's a bunch of crazy comments and these comments get really really long and analytical so we're going to try to break this video down guys so please hit that like button check out other episodes of the hot pop boys hey but you know what is cool that is influenced by Chinese culture what SMA whoa you get on Amazon right now it's got great ratings smas saa.com real quick let's just talk about this Andrew do you agree with this General premise that in the Western World which has more Global hegemony and most people think Western right in the world most people think in the western anglosphere cultural sphere that despite China being very economically important and maybe militarily important it's culture is not considered important and its pop culture is certainly almost unknown okay so I would say this that I think even from a western lens or maybe I would say educated Western lens that people see obviously China as an important country it's culture as having permeated a lot of the globe in different ways but its pop culture definitely not considered that cool and China maybe the word cool is not the best word to describe China or Chinese culture I think that's how the West perceives it I think that JJ did a pretty good job this guyy is a culture geek I know he's not Chinese But ultimately listen it's important to hear smart non-asians or non-chinese analyze China you know from because there's Chinese Scholars that we could listen to and pro-chinese people yeah let me take you through the history of the tong Dynasty and how they exported all around the sign of fear but uh I would say this would you agree that all ABC should watch this video I think they should but Andrew guess what I don't think that they will because I think that a lot of ABCs American Born Chinese maybe Canadian Born Chinese we know the Chinese culture is considered like esoteric and not cool in a in a grandma way and like maybe uh or a motherly way I don't know and then like Japan and Korea are more like the cool Trendy Kids of Asia you know what I mean like but maybe they birthed some of their culture from the mother or the grandmother but it's like we just don't really care about analyzing it how JJ is right like I'm saying we don't think about it in terms of like hey why isn't China cool we just kind of like accept it well I think always wondering why China is not cool is more of a question that would I guess somebody from China would probably spend more of their life thinking about that question somebody from China living in the west yeah but an Asian-American who sees himself as American for example that's where hence this kind of like Asian-American culture comes from whether it's Boba or aen culture you know what I mean lambas and KD yeah this kind of blending of Southeast Asian and East Asian cultures and then blending it with a but it is kind of sinosic actually that blending it is it is but I'm saying like to sit there and Ponder why Chinese culture is not cool is definitely something for very like I guess uh more are Chinese thinking people people with the time and I guess the intellectual curiosity to do so but guess who has that ding ding ding ding ding we do um I think the thing was like we never fully leaned into like aen culture I I like aen culture I go to I I was a fan of Arena Nightclub you know what I mean amongst other clubs whisper parties when there was were around uh in New York but like at the end of the day I understand this is a real question and I think it's something that is important to ask let's just get into to his reasons Andrew let's just go one by one he says wait wait this is to answer why Chinese culture is not considered that cool in the west yes yes yes so JJ's first reason Andrew was that China your average person in China has been poor throughout much of modern history okay so and he's saying that typically poor people do not just like really have like people do not have their eye on poor people like when we think about even Japan or something like that it's like Samurai people who were high up people don't study like the bur cumin like uh Untouchables in Japan right um but I will say this I would argue this that South Korea Andrew was actually very very poor for a very very long time in Asia but has had such a crazy come up over the past 30 40 50 years that I don't know if just being poor is enough to say that's why it's not cool yes there was a lot of poor countries and I think that you know for example I think Korea's uh rise or I guess like um when they started creating and exporting culture it came at the right time so you mean a time of globalization yeah but China was always China with or without the West to an extent right to an extent China was going to be China so China never had to cater and think about what people on the outside thought China was this big country that kind of could exist mostly on its own essentially doing its own thing so it was not forced to be cool right right right right well yeah I mean uh a lot of people talk about places like India or Brazil almost uh living in their own cultural sphere and not needing to be part of like a globalized sphere of culture right um he also says Point number two much of Chinese history in North America for the past 100 years has been defined by lower middle class immigrants catering to the westernized white middle class what be more specific here basically he's saying that if you look at the immigration patterns until very recently maybe the last decade maybe the last two decades depending on if you're in Vancouver Canada where he is it's probably been happening for three decades where he's basically saying like for the most part if you look at the immigration waves it was lower middle class people from China coming to the west and doing whatever they needed to do to survive which was often either catering to their own population in a Chinatown or opening laundry mats and Quick Service Chinese takeouts for a middle class white American well I would add on to that I don't fully disagree with that because obviously if you think about you know if you just look at chinatowns right chinatowns are a great place for Commerce Community Food all this stuff but they are absolutely immigrant enclaves they are absolutely lower middle class generally immigrant enclaves at least the people who live there well they they and they probably have still are that to this day yeah but but I will add on to this that even since 1965 when a lot of Chinese for example whether it's Taiwanese Chinese Hong Kong uh students came over which part of our family is part of I'm saying talking about heart seller yeah the heart seller act those students maybe they didn't have a lot of money but they were not necessarily the poverty immigrants they were coming here to get educated so so what I'm saying is you do have the lower middle class immigrants coming here to work and just make a living for themselves everything from the railroad the gold rush over on to you know servers in Chinatown but also we have a lot of kind of I would say brain workers or essentially Chinese nerds that came over and so post 1970 though right but between the geeky first of all nothing wrong with being a geek guys so I got you know this is a lot of our family by the way so I'm just saying I'm just using the word educated geeky minds of Asia with the lower class minds of Asia as well or I mean from China so then those two groups are not considered the coolest those are not the Swag Lord 3000s right and I don't think they came over to be cool they came over for opportunities for just a better life and to study and you know become engineers for example but unfortunately in America being an engineer is not considered that cool useful though you need it to turn the economic wheel but yes in America I wish it was cooler I wish being an engineer I wouldn't say in China it's necessarily like cooler than being Jackson Wang either but it's not as dumped on yeah because there's just not I think the process of cool is not it's not uh such a hard what people aren't so judgmental of being cool in China um he also goes on to say that 21st Century Chinese history was marked by a lot of confusion and arguing and even War over what even is true Chinese culture so Andrew we're not even talking about the situation in the west we're talking about in China they couldn't even figure out what was Chinese culture right but uh what is this attributed to mostly I mean that's well China is gigantic it is not as easy to find as what Japan or Korea is like their histories are way more I guess simple to understand right like China's history is like incredibly convoluted and it's very like do do people say uh Manu or like Mongolian Le dynasties do those count as Han Dynasty right and then like there was a bunch of stuff that came in from cu the Mongolians they were homies with all the Tatar looking people from the from the Western steps and they came down and like what's going on right so I guess for example a question might be what dynasty defines the best Chinese culture is it the tong Dynasty which is considered I guess the most coolest best Han or the Song Dynasty uh is it not the latest Ching Dynasty because that was more what Manchurian which and they made they made all the Han guys wear the little uh cues which those are not cool so we so we don't count the Ching Dynasty for example and then what is it it's not like the cultural revolution because then they did away with a lot of the older Chinese culture because it was more like the cultural revolution but so we don't know like I guess what is agreed upon right we don't fully know here's the complicated thing about China Andrew as recent as in the past hundred years they picked Mandarin to be the national language and shangan cantones and fujin I believe placed all in the top five so I'm saying that it's like we didn't even know that Mandarin was going to be the language that we were all supposed to speak until the past hundred years well you know sometimes in history there's a group of guys guys make hard decisions and the decision they made was to pick Mandarin um Mandarin's pretty good it wasn't bad it wasn't bad four tones a little bit easier to learn than eight I'm not going to lie not mad I'm not mad but yeah I mean there's pros and cons of every dialect um he points to the cultural revolution 1966 to 1976 and basically Andrew what he was kind of trying to say is like this was M by the way I'm saying he did a bunch of bad stuff too during this time but this was him trying to figure out what was Chinese culture like basically everybody was arguing between these provinces Northwest East South Which history is the Real History because the capital moves so many times so mil was like yah we're just going to like do it this way like based off the Russian style right and that that obviously there's a lot of downsides to that too it wipes out a lot but like a lot of stuff is forgotten they moved on from a lot of tradition a lot of it people say is more contained in like Taiwan and the diaspora whether it's Malaysia Singapore places where they they left before the cultural revolution yeah yeah but uh I guess that was definitely one of the intentions of it yes right right I mean there's an argument too that the manchurians actually destroyed a lot of traditional Chinese culture that was even before communism happened um basically there was a feeling though he goes back to say even pre-communist there was a feeling amongst the Chinese Elites that traditional Chinese culture was just a burden like this is even in 1910 like they were looking at the rest of the world Japan was like get going learning all this stuff from England and France like just getting Germany getting super Advanced and then the Chinese were just like yeah like maybe we should like just use some inventions that we didn't create because you know for a while I think that China was kind of stuck on Andrew things that they created right right right right like if they didn't create it they didn't want it um so now then he goes on to say that the Chinese middle class right now in 2024 Andrew is trying to attempt to reclaim certain parts of ancient Chinese culture for hundreds and thousands of years ago but they're being selective about it but also that the CCP has a very large guiding hand in that Journey right yeah so we're trying to figure it out so basically Andrew what he did is he took it a look at all these minions from popmart China basically these minions are meant to be sold to middle- class Chinese and he is using these as the markers of what he believes will be pushed as Chinese culture moving forward interesting so you're looking at the toys and what uh Chinese marketers I guess you know have decided that would sell our sellable ass aspects of Chinese culture at least internally domestically to a Chinese domestic consumer Market all right number one Andrew he's got candied Hawthorne Tom AKA Tom selling Tang Hulu okay all right so interestingly enough Andrew Tang Hulu's really Define northern China right people really eat them in the winter time Tang Hulu they're trendy now you could do them with grapes and whatever like that but interestingly enough Andrew lii are the Tang Hulu of the South oh because lii is uh the one of the only fruits that is native to Guang Joo makes sense so basically it kind of goes to show you there that there is a completely different defining fruit in the North and the South right but obviously right now the capital is in Beijing so Northern things are more going to have I guess what higher priority Andrew than Southern things okay moving on Andrew Chinese calligraphy Dave okay basically he says that he as a western person feels that Chinese calligraphy is one of the absolute coolest Undisputed parts of Chinese culture yeah I think uh Chinese language and calligraphy in particular is cool obviously a lot of people get tattoos a lot of non-chinese non-- Asians will get Chinese calligraphy tattoos I think it it's a cool way of writing you know and I think people do have whether it be shallow or deep they have an appreciation for it uh Andrew there are five to six major styles of calligraphy you could go Oracle bone seal clerical cursive semic cursive standard I'm going to go ahead and say this andreww I think Chinese probably have the best looking calligraphy of their own language but I will say this Japanese calligraphy has a very hyper loose style that is really cool looking for tattoos but sometimes it is unintelligible to the eye what kanji they are even trying to write so are Chinese characters cool or not let us know in the comments down below I would say Tang Hulu is cool yeah but specifically with non- hawthorn berry fruits though shout out to the traditional Hawthorne Berry but like I I like the grapes and the tangerines uh by the way Andre here's an ancient Chinese book from 600 years ago here is an ancient Japanese book as you can see they have looser calligraphy this is Korean hanja uh it looks a little bit more AZ Tekken the way they used to write the Chinese characters and this is Vietnamese chunam Andrew from like I don't even know 500 years ago that actually looks like really interesting like a hieroglyphic version of Chinese characters um those are the countries that were in the sinosphere that use the Chinese language at some point for their culture um anyway he also goes on to say that the CCP simplified Chinese to make to increase the literacy rate because the traditional characters have too many strokes and are too complicated yeah um he also talks about radicals by the way guys there is a Chinese radical system that allows you to uh to tell you the meaning of a character but it's only about 70% accurate on the radical system next up number three Andrew there's Shanghai restoration Tom and P King Opera Stewart look at these funny Minions yeah well I think it's this is referring to the times of I guess theater entertainment obviously Shanghai being the more uh uh relev or I guess recent Hub of culture back in like the 20s and 30s right but then before that also like the peaking Opera like I guess he also mentions that the peaking Opera while it is a part of Chinese culture is to in today's world not considered very cool I don't think it's cool I'm not I don't really go against it but I remember going to many peing opera for performances when I was young and I'm just glad that not all the performers are male anymore can't say that I am into the peeking up all right I got an interesting point I'm into the Shanghai 1930s though do you think that the 1930s westernized shangai pearl of the Orient Jazz show tunes music is similar to how K-pop or Japanese uh 2000s R&B is popular because they did was essentially western music with slight Chinese Sonic influences and Chinese lyrics uh uh yeah but but K-pop is a lot more popular now so I I do think that uh I mean I also think more of this time was uh from the Western Viewpoint more focused on like Chinese women you know to be honest so I think that I think a lot of the songs are sang by women that's and they're kind of suggestive too yeah it was kind of the beginning of perhaps I guess romanticizing Chinese women which comes with its pros and cons of course by the way guys I don't even want to say this but they also called it the more of the orian too not just the pearl of the orian I I can't say the word I don't want to get demonetized h o r of the orient at the time Shanghai because it was colonized yeah so I do think that this played a part into it but uh made for some good music oh interestingly enough Andrew our grandparents lived slightly through this 1930 Shanghai period shout out to jao Tong Dash um moving on Kung Fu Phil Andrew is kung fu cool has it seen its peak or is it still cool uh Kung Fu still considered cool I think in an entertainment aspect I think from uh a practical standpoint a lot of debate is out there but also I just think in general I mean all martial arts works and all martial arts don't work at the same time all right what do you think about this statement he said Chinese martial arts are often times thought to be more artistic less brutal and more philosophical more peaceful and more flow than even other Asian martial arts that is I would say a general accurate sentiment towards Chinese kung fu you're talking about Shaolin Wing Chun yeah like a lot of these are uh considered more art forms in the modern day rather than a form of actual combat uh although there are other Asian forms of combat that are more effective that have or something like that well s uh which Chinese s s which is Chinese kickboxing was developed by the Army but um yeah anyways um yeah I would say that kung fu is still considered cool even though I would say that recently with the Advent of MMA people were questioning its combat usefulness right uh game of gobob is the next minion Andrew how familiar are you with the the game of Go Chinese go uh not that familiar but because of this video I definitely looked up how to play it and uh yeah I mean go it's cool that Chinese I guess have an ancient board game we have Chinese chess too though yeah also Chinese chess too so we have multiple board games so I think yeah I mean is go cool it's not really known so I guess I wouldn't say it's cool I just went into a boba shop the other day called SI Andrew that looks like a game of Go so it's actually an aesthetic thing too the White and the black it looks like a calligraphy on a white piece of paper so yeah shout out to the game of Go let us know if you guys know I heard it's very complex um interestingly enough Andrew it kind of goes to show you the way the East and the West thinks because in the game of Go you don't really get dominated and kill the King right like in chess what do you do you just try to like ENT trap each other and then one person just like gives up next up Andrew you've got Terracotta Warrior Kevin um this is talking about Ching shuang uh 221 to 210 BC Andrew this is China in 200 BC this is Greece in 200 BC um in the jet Le movie hero Andrew he's about to assassinate ching shuang and he lets him go and lets him unite China despite Jet Lee getting killed at the end of the movie d uh yeah I think terra cotta soldiers are pretty cool I mean I guess just maybe Chinese warriors in general I don't think because I think terracotta warriors isn't that referring to exactly the clay Warriors yeah those are the 6,000 clay Warriors that got buried with Ching xuang when he died go with him to the afterlife cuz they believed in that back then yeah yeah yeah so I guess uh I mean I think Warrior culture is always considered cool in any culture so I I just don't think that uh the Chinese warrior culture it's not exactly like if you're like European or like you know from the you're thinking about the Vikings like it's not the same like the Vikings is considered they're more considered more Savage but also I guess better Fighters I would say the only Chinese warrior I mean East Asian or Asian Warrior culture I see put on a pedestal is Samurai yeah yeah right but uh if you guys know about like when and woo masculinity in China we're just in a when cycle right now so the woo guys kind of get downplayed and you know shout out to guu anyway um next up we've got flying high Stewart Andrew who has a swallow kite on his back basically that is just a uh Chinese invented a lot of different types of kites yeah yeah and uh I always said my the Chinese box kite was my favorite Hot Pot Bob Andrew would you say that uh yeah I mean this is the history of Hot Pot it's not fully clear but suchan now has the most famous hot pot that exportable yeah yeah I think a I think this is a pretty cool I think Hot Pot is cool I think people think sichan food is cool as far as food goes right interestingly enough Andrew the huaja the like the the little circular pepper corn is native to suchan however the red and the green peppers were brought by Spanish and Portuguese traders from South America m Andrew next up we've got tiger Ry and Dave that is true the Chinese love them some tigers yeah tigers tigers are cool you know it's funny because in Chinese culture they also kind of rever the panda but I want to say that's maybe more of a recent thing I'm not sure somebody in the comments who knows more about this let me know but like the fixation with the panda is more of a re because pandas don't do anything they're not fierce animals well would you say that P pandas and tigers both come come from China well I think pandas more exclusively Tigers were all around the Asian Seaboard but I'm saying that like they couldn't you couldn't think of two more opposite animals Tiger's almost the fiercest hunter in the jungle pound-for-pound yeah and pandas are on the opposite and so yeah I think those maybe that's the Dual maybe that's the yin and the Yang man the pan and the tiger by the way Andrew they said that most Tigers it's not of 100 out of 100 would beat a lion in a battle to the death because tigers are better at fighting uh by the way here is the historic distribution of tigers and all the way from Siberia we got Korea all the way down to China Vietnam southeast Asia and India so that's pretty cool I didn't even know that that's where all tigers came from uh Stone lion Carl Andrew he's talking about the food dogs or the shii or the I believe that's what it's called and uh yeah you see these and are most famously now in front of casinos in Las Vegas and on dude's forearms as tattoos guys is food yeah ASN uh lion dance Stewart Andrew this is pretty obvious right because you see a lot of lion dancing near Chinese New Year it's more of a southern practice yeah no but yeah I mean lion dance it's uh lion dance teams in America and in the western world have been a source of community for a lot of people and uh kind of of like uh competition amongst each other so yeah I guess line dancing kind of cool yeah yeah yeah yeah I would say you know it's really interesting if you like I said one of the hardest things about Chinese culture is that it's so diverse because like you could grow up in a part of China even for like hundreds of years let's just say you had like a 900 year lifespan you're like a you know Highlander or whatever I'm saying that you might not ever have seen lion dancing based on the province that you were living your life in and last but not least Andrew we've got Bamboo Flute Bob with a panda hat on and he's playing a uh dies and yeah basically this Chinese flute Andrew is that like like you know like you just play that music every time something Chinese pops up in a movie or a video game right um yeah I would say and he also goes on to say Andrew the Chinese culture was built on bamboo because they were using bamboo in China before the nation state concept of China even existed yeah man and uh I had to look it up they said that Japan was built on a volcano cuz there's a lot of sulfur Korea was built on granite Vietnam was built on ice patties and Thailand was built on river basins woo yeah so it goes to show you there's different elements yeah no I mean definitely geography climate and environment help Define culture all right let's just get into the comment section Andrew um somebody said totally agree I always felt the Chinese culture why widely recognized still doesn't get its due because it's not seen as hip or trendy as Japanese or Korean culture I just really admire all the cultural Innovation the Chinese have come up with through the Millennia which has had a major impact on their region in the world so I would say this I would say that it's just interesting because China's like impact is sort of like ancient Rome but Andrew where do you see China headed in the future because obviously being cool is about the last what 150 years of world globalized society and in that past 150 years China didn't do so good until now well uh you know it's going to be in part on people to kind of choose which parts of uh culture that they want to keep and obviously parts of the culture that are easily sellable will stick around more because we live in primarily even if you're in Asia mostly a capitalistic Global Society where you know you want to sell something if it can make you money you're going to more likely keep it around I'm not saying people don't keep things around that don't make the money but ultimately if you can sell something it's going to be more relevant I think I've been in a commercialized Hot Pot spot Andrew recently where everybody was wearing Pand suits there was Chinese kites hanging from the wall and they were playing the Deeds of the flute bamboo flute music yeah do you know what I'm saying I'm saying they stacked all the things that JJ just talked about into one thing for sure I mean look at the things that people are hanging on to those are the things that people think are cool right um basically I'm just going to pop up a bunch of hyperd detailed breakdowns from like a lot of people because you know JJ McCulla even though he analyzed sort of these minion sets from popmart he would he didn't really come up with a conclusion but a lot of other people basically said you know it's just going to take time and it's going to be interesting to see what comes up in the future but it's coming because right now you know maybe like a lot of things are just like Innovative versions of things that other people are known for right um ultimately here's my takeaways I think that this is an important video I do think that most ABCs don't think about this I think they've given up on trying to contribute to this in any sort of way but it's something that crosses my mind sometimes so I got to give props to J.J McCulla I thought it was a good video Yeah and uh overall I mean I I think that uh you know there's aspects I think that are cool about Chinese culture whether it's language cooking ideals about hard work Harmony these are things that people kind of brag about like what what are the things about Chinese culture that people actually kind of can brag about like hey I don't wear shoes in the house hey we got some uh cool historical fashion you know with the cheap how and then you kind of have like uh maybe trying to make by Jill cool right now which is we'll see what happens but possibly and I think that man uh I don't think Chinese culture is going to ever be the coolest to a basic thinking person because I think basic people they're not looking at history which is not fully wrong because you know you live in the present but I do think that people who are going to more think from a historical context or look back at history which it is a more kind of geekier intellectual thing to do they will find more appreciation for China but in the most recent sense it's just not going to be as cool compared to other things right I mean I always say this I've flown you know Korea air Japan air different airlines back to Asia I've been to all the a lot of Asian countries and it's always interesting Andrew when you're on a flight to Korea you see a lot of like trendy young people wearing like hip fashion when you are on a flight to Japan you see people reading animes or mangas and when I was on a flight to China direct from the US before I saw a bunch of white people that were obsessed with Dungeons and dragons like super ancient like esoteric you know what I mean like things from like a thousand years ago type thing so anyway guys let us know what you think in the comments section below what's going to be cool from Chinese culture popping up obviously it's coming up now it's got a lot of stuff that it didn't have 10 years ago 20 years ago but it is behind the curve in terms of appealing to the west or you could argue even figuring itself out to itself until next time we the hotop boys we out peace