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The idealization of the West in China
During my childhood in China, there was one particular advertisement that
occupied my memory: De Rucci sold mattresses. Its advertisements were
plastered all over billboards, trucks and lost-and-found style on lampposts
and electricity posts. The graphic was simple and minimalistic, without any
flamboyant design elements. It was merely a middle-aged, lanky white man in
rounded reading glasses, smoking a Holmes-style pipe in a white dress shirt.
We, of course, can reasonably infer from the cursive text “De Rucci
furniture,” that the man is the founder of the company, and his brooding,
contemplative expression can only be produced by gazing at his masterfully
crafted mattresses.
In reality, the man was not the founder of De Rucci; he wasn’t even a
businessman, actor or model. He was the product of a nationwide manhunt for
the perfectly enlightened, suave white man to pose as the founder of the
company. The company found that figure in an English teacher in rural China,
who agreed to do the photoshoot for $1,500. He was blissfully unaware of
his notoriety and the company’s success until much later. The company, on
the other hand, was never Italian: it was Chinese. However, the iconic
advertisement of a fake European luxury brand worked. The company now has
over 4,000 store locations as of 2019 in 17 countries, many of which are in
America and Europe.
The rebrand of the Chinese mattress company as a European family business
exceeded the company’s expectations, taking on a mystic, enchanting allure
to its Chinese customers. Consumers viewed the European persona on the
advertisement, littered all over major cities, as a symbol of success and
alluring Western prosperity which certainly contributed to the company’s
success. The idealization of the West sold. Chinese consumers chose European
worldliness and an Italian brand name over domestic “tackiness.” Many
similar instances of proximity to whiteness, falsely equated to noble taste,
character and quality, as product or advertisement, followed suit. I
vividly remember my father often opting for French restaurants that served
steak and creme brulees for family celebrations rather than Chinese ones
that served classic dishes. I also remember him dragging me downtown to
Tiffany & Co. for my mother’s birthday gift, instead of shopping at a much
more affordable (and equally renowned) Chinese brand such as Chow Tai Fook.
Back in China, these phenomena can be somewhat explained by cultural
hegemony, the dominance and perceived superiority of Western culture due to
a global history of Western imperialism. Growing up, I had always gotten the
sense that the West was a utopia of freedom, beauty and self-expression. My
white English teachers from kindergarten and elementary school always
dressed in better, more fashionable clothing. In a curious way, they also
inexplicably smelled better, like colognes or baked goods, and were more
charming to me, based on my perceptions of sophistication, than their
Chinese counterparts.
However, my stunted notion of “Westernness” back then largely differs from
what people living in the West understand it to be. It is an abstract
notion of prosperity and material, where the continents of Europe and the
United States are morphed into one and reduced to merely mainstream Western
culture, such as popular movie franchises and fashion brands. Aspects of
popular media like “The Avengers” and other art forms I was familiar with
rarely showed the plights of working-class people, but a mere silhouette or
an idealized society in which everyday people were represented by beautiful
models and actors. Even if the actors were just normal-looking people, they
were considered more attractive due to their whiteness and features that
adhered to eurocentric beauty standards. These arts, cuisine and culture are
falsely equated with worldliness due to their higher monetary value and how
they paint the consumer of these goods as sophisticated and opulent.
The demand for Western goods that portray white American and European
suaveness is similarly tremendous. The Chinese appetite for Hollywood movies
has become so massive that Chinese companies took notice. Product
placements have been sighted frequently in Western blockbusters, accompanied
by appearances by Chinese actors and even several scenes set in China. But
often, Western brands’ attempts to appeal to Chinese customers with their
perceived “Chineseness” backfire as they attempt to court an audience by
appealing to their traditional culture. For example, to appease the growing
demand in China for designer goods, Balenciaga released bags that feature
declarations of love written in Mandarin for Qixi (Chinese Valentine’s Day)
. However, the campaign and handbags themselves were far from well-received
by the public. The ad campaign employed Chinese models instead of white
models, who made up the majority of campaign models targeted towards Western
audiences. It also incorporated an aesthetic of poor graphics and low-
quality, highly-saturated backgrounds reminiscent of photos taken in a low-
end, ‘90s Chinese photography studio. Perhaps the abandonment of Western
grandeur by including Chinese characters and aesthetics was what prompted
one Chinese netizen to say that “the ad campaign is downright ugly and
tasteless. It reminds me of the style used by photography studios in rural
China in the 1990s.” A large portion of netizens also called for the
boycott of the brand altogether.
The controversy’s corresponding hashtag, “Balenciaga’s Qixi-themed
commercial is tacky,” had amassed about 180 million views. In an online
poll conducted in Mandarin by Toutiao News on Weibo, about 57% of the
roughly 13,000 respondents said that the ad campaign was “unacceptable”
because the images were “too tacky.” In Chinese, the word for tacky is “
土气,” while its antonym, “洋气,” literally translates to “oozing
westernness.” While “土气” is often used as an insult towards someone’s
unpolished appearance, “洋气” is used to complement one’s stylish dress
or demeanor. For instance, someone in a traditional Chinese cotton blouse
and pants may be condemned as “土气,” whereas someone in a trench coat and
knee-high boots may be praised as “洋气.” In the case of the ill-received
Balenciaga campaign, the inclusion of vintage Chinese graphics is
considered tacky, while Balenciaga’s more Western campaigns that feature
majority American and European models and dress were considered
sophisticated and just what the Chinese consumers desired.
Even without any knowledge of the history of Western imperialism or the
Western cultural hegemony, in my youth, I have always associated Western
goods and culture with quality and status. For Christmas, after I turned
eleven, I received a pair of Coach women’s low top sneakers from my parents
. In hindsight, those sneakers were far from what I consider fashionable now
. They were monogrammed, quite flat and shapeless, as they were composed of
fabric instead of the usual, chunkier materials sneakers are made of.
However, the fact that Coach is a semi-luxury American brand was enough to
make them my favorite shoes and at the time; I couldn’t wait to show them
off to the world. The night I received them, I laced them up tightly and
strutted up and down the streets of the neighborhood I lived in as if it was
my personal runway. Eventually, my parents, who had gone on the walk with
me, and I ran into my best friend and her mother. Crazed in my new kicks,
instead of greeting them, before I had even realized, I blurted out, “Look
at my new sneakers, they’re Coach.” In the moment, my excitement had
trampled my grasp on politeness; I came off as arrogant and obnoxious.
The incident had earned me a shouted lecture from my parents about manners
and materialism. However, in hindsight, I now know that they had wanted to
get me something nice for the holiday season, and to them, that meant
American designer shoes. I was never supposed to verbally declare the tacit
sense of status that came with those sneakers. Ironically, flat, fabric
shoes were also a prominent design in traditional Chinese garments. In my
childhood, I had also received a pair of fabric shoes for a Chinese New
Years’ performance I was a part of. Despite the almost identical designs of
the two pairs of shoes, the Chinese fabric shoes did not receive even a
fraction of the love I had extended to the Coach sneakers. They were tossed
aside and stuffed in a dark corner of my closet, never to see the light of
day again.
My childhood experiences with Western commodities and the idealization of
the West may seem like a display of cultural ignorance upon first glance,
but this idolization is rooted in a long history of Western interference
with Chinese sovereignty. China’s modern history from 1849 to the present
is a tale of exploitation and occupation by the West and Japan. The “
century of humiliation” describes a period of time between the first Opium
War and the founding of communist China. At the end of the Qing dynasty,
China’s government had yielded large portions of strategic and portal
cities such as Hong Kong to Western nations as a result of lost warfare.
This period of occupation eventually became a key element of modern China’s
founding narrative. In many ways, Chinese people have yet to recover from a
modern history riddled with warfare, civil wars, revolutions and famine. In
colonial Shanghai, plaques that read “no dogs or Chinese allowed” were
put up at Huangpu Park, an establishment exclusively for Westerners. That
kind of humiliation persisted in the Chinese people’s collective identity
and memory. The sense of cultural inferiority that seemed to haunt the
Chinese people can be explained when considering that in recent history; not
only is China still troubled with these conflicts, but American and
European culture hegemony still dominates the world today, further
contributing to this sense of inferiority. The domination of the West has
taught the Chinese people that they possessed a lowly place in the world
that could only be altered and improved upon through rigorous development
and at times, emulating the same material opulence that Western countries
possess proudly. To be outwardly sophisticated, one must imitate the
countries that once exploited the Chinese people, Chinese resources as well
as Chinese wealth. China’s past of Western colonization has shaped the
collective Chinese psyche, but this might not be the case anymore in the not
-so-distant future as China continues to develop and take center stage in
the world.
The idealization of the West emerged from a country in ruins and persisted
in a nation that is increasingly opening its doors to the world at large. As
world politics continue to shift and China continues its miracle trajectory
towards economic boom and progress, perhaps the sentiment of cultural
inferiority and the disillusionment of the West will be a thing of the past,
leaving the Chinese public to laugh and gawk at stories akin to that of De
Rucci. If the Chinese people were to better understand the West’s history
of colonialism and the oppression of its capitalist system, the veil of
mystery around the West’s prosperity would be largely lifted, and its
idealization would be replaced by scorn and become a phenomenon of the past.
Because China’s economic boom in recent years and increasing weight on the
global stage coincided with a rise in “国潮,” or Chinese fashion, it is
evident Chinese youth are rediscovering the beauty in classical literature,
dress and traditions. Perhaps one day, pride in one’s Chinese heritage and
Chinese fashion will overtake the worship of the false Western
sophistication in popular culture. |
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