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[Calach Pfeffer]

What's in the news (or was about six months ago)?  High school girls.  (Translated)

Now (a) I don't know if it's just me getting older or some new school opening nearby or if it's really what I think and the freshmen this year are more emotionally retarded than usual, scooting about the place in gangs like 12-year-olds, and (b) that fashion of stockings on display is so five minutes ago, and in summary (c) awww, look at China, all growed up.

There's something odd about the wide-eyed moralism you see, and have always seen, about the place.  Where does it come from?  And how is it staying around so much in the face of blatant, but fairly rootless change?

See, that's the thing, the changes that are being visited upon China.  From one perspective they look random and surprising and out of control.  But I believe they're not.  I believe they're understandable in some sense.  Not historical, certainly.  Nor directly related to anything anyone overtly chose.  But hardly so awesomely out of the blue as to be truly genuinely surprising.  So what is it we're seeing in all this change?

NB: the sex stuff is the interesting and obvious "change", but not really what I'm talking about...  I'm talking about change.  The origin of change.  

[Raoul F. Duke]

Och, aging is such an ugly and debilitating process...

[Calach Pfeffer]

Nabutsee, in any country in the world, other than America perhaps, if high school girls paraded around in mature fashions, even stripper fashions, there would be a section of the community legitimately, or at least traditionally, outraged.  There are some of these in China.  But also in China is some sense that not only are the "outraged" segment the loudest, but there isn't really any other segment--all the rest of the people, compared to the outraged segment, are merely bewildered, possibly accepting the outraged position by default.  Now expand this image to cover all the rest of the change going on in China and the whole country is more or less dazed.

I don't know if it's true, but it seems like it might be, and it suggests a leadership vacuum of some kind.  Or does it?  It certainly obscures, for me anyway, discussion of where the real changes are occurring and what those changes are, and thus, in a sense, who the Chinese people are.

Who are the Chinese?  Qipao wearing traditionals, middle schoolers in suspenders, black suited grim-faced techocrats, brown jacketed migrant workers....?  What's the dominant image these days?  Who are they really?



Secretly I'm quite a fan of stripper chic for school girls, but they all come to class in jeans and sneakers, damn them.

[Riz]

I am not sure if the culture exists in the middle kindom because I notice a variety of people dressed, speaking a variety of dialects and what not. I think there is not one chinese culture but a collection of cultures make china. I have seen and met very open-minded people who talk about sex and stuff like that and I have also met people who are just shy talking anything openly. It's an amalghamation of a variety of people. You see youngsters dressed like japanese and koreans. you see a lot of people influenced by basketball(NBA) and you see so many variations of chinese cultures. I think it's either
a) Going thru sexual revolution.
b) economic revolution
c) American or western culture(only movies).
d) or they are not sure what they are heading toward.

Comments plz.

[Calach Pfeffer]

I'm wary of nominating any modern revolution as being especially, erm, "impactful" (business English FTW!).  Certainly there are various revolutionii--something about sex, something about work, something about cultural allegiance--but revolution needs people, and are these people all that revolting (ho ho)?

Or more seriously, these revolutions as we know them are western concepts.  They refer for their content to western world conditions.  For instance, "sexual revolution"... in China it means not much more than "people, most visibly the young, are changing the rules under which they have, talk about and understand, sex."  So what?  Where are they taking this revolution and why?  I think actually that no one knows.  Well, on-lookers don't seem to know.  Perhaps the revolting people themselves do.  In fact, to some degree, probably they do.  BUT THEY"RE NOT EXPLAINING IT WELL TO ANYONE!  And it seems to me that therefore they're probably not doing it well, and thus the revolution, whichever revolution it is that is really going on, is going on...... eh, whatever.  Ran out of steam on that sentence.  I understand much too little about the dynamics of Chinese society to properly characterise the changes it is going through.  Someone should write a book or make a movie or something.

But I do have the sneaking suspicion that the revolution is right there happening right in front of my face clearly to be seen if only one knew what they were looking at.

[seamallowance]

But, my city has quite a large concentration of (unavoidable) pink houses and sex shops, and it isn't the teenagers or young adults that I believe are the primary customers. On top of those there are the night clubs, and the hotels with special services and night calls to businessmen and single men. It's so prevalent that I've thought before that "sex" might be the "opiate of the masses" in China. Sure, most might not be that open about talking about it, but that doesn't mean they're not interested in it, and that those ubiquitous businesses aren't somehow staying in business. Sex seems as abundant here as cell phones.

I moved to the wrong town. It is as scarce here as pink Lincoln Continentals.

[kitano]

one of the things i've noticed here is that people seem to have much more set roles in society. so the chinese are not so outraged/confused about the actual sexiness which is a massive part of their culture, but more that the roles are being blurred. schoolgirls should be schoolgirls and look like schoolgirls and hookers should be hookers and look like hookers, but schoolgirls dressed as hookers.....

[Stil]

but schoolgirls dressed as hookers.....

Yeah that's just wrong. Now hookers dressed like schoolgirls is a different story.