How to deal with this ‘very Chinese time’ in Western lives

What comes to mind when you think of China, Japan and South Korea? This was a question posed in a second-year sociology seminar during my time at Bristol, and it has stayed with me ever since. We were split into three groups and given 10 minutes to create posters capturing our immediate associations. Japan came first. Sketches of anime, sushi platters and temples appeared. My classmates spoke with enthusiasm, drawing on travel memories or aspirations to visit. A country that, less than a century ago, had been ostracised for wartime atrocities now seemed to exist in the Western imagination almost entirely as an aesthetic object. South Korea followed. It was six years ago, when K-pop and K-dramas were breaking into Western markets. My classmates’ imagery was less about heritage than exportable modernity: carefully manicured idols, glossy beauty products and a polished consumer-friendly culture. The tone shifted when it came to China: censorship, propaganda, surveillance, suppression of rights and freedoms. The list of associations was almost entirely political. What struck me was not just the negativity, but the absences. There was no mention of culture, food, travel or everyday life in a civilisation spanning millennia. “Do you guys not see how biased your thinking is?” I asked, as the only Chinese student in the room. One person nodded, only to add: “The UK has a lot of CCTVs as well.” If China’s propaganda was truly as pervasive as they seemed to think, why had so little of it registered? In a sense, China was everywhere in the United Kingdom: it was in the British Museum, which houses one of the West’s largest collections of Chinese antiquities; in the cuisines that have become a staple of British life; and in the international students who sustain university finances. Yet in that room, it existed mostly as a string of grim headlines. So over the past year, it has been jarring for me to see Gen Z Westerners on social media documenting a “very Chinese time” in their lives, “Chinamaxxing” or embracing fragments of Chinese culture with a professed affection unthinkable just a few years ago. Minor, even quaint, habits – drinking hot water, herbal tea or Tsingtao beer, removing shoes at the door – are being reframed as markers of a desirable lifestyle. This reappraisal extends to China’s consumer ecosystem, from home-grown brands such as HeyTea, Luckin Coffee, Miniso and Pop Mart, to the Chinese influence on recent fashion trends, as exemplified by Adidas’ viral “Tang-style” jacket. At the same time, gleaming skylines, drone-enabled food delivery and hyper-efficient infrastructure are held up as emblems of a form of modernity that a disorder-stricken United States appears to lack. Even the more contentious issue of China’s surveillance apparatus is being recast: tourists, particularly women, increasingly describe an unprecedented sense of safety in the country. But experiencing it from the other side feels disorienting. The pivot from fear to fascination is so sudden, so uncritical, that it raises an uncomfortable question: is this genuine curiosity about China or a projection of frustration with the West? In choosing China as a point of contrast, are these Westerners engaging with the country on its terms or simply using it to spite their own? Amusingly, the trend has also drawn in those who were born Chinese, including some from Hong Kong, who engage with it on social media as if encountering this version of “Chineseness” for the first time. The irony is difficult to ignore: practices and environments once dismissed as mundane or backward are being rebranded through Western validation. A feedback loop emerges, where identity is externalised and reimported – filtered through global attention and returned as newly worth embracing. The phenomenon resembles the flattening I witnessed in that seminar room, just in a different key. Where China was once reduced to a set of political anxieties, it now risks being reduced to a handful of aesthetic trends and consumer signifiers. The substance has changed, but the simplification remains. Still, rejecting this moment outright would be a mistake. “Chineseness” has never been a fixed or singular identity. It stretches across 1.4 billion people within China and countless more across a global diaspora, shaped by region, migration, language and experience. No viral trend, positive or negative, can fully contain it. The more productive question is not whether outsiders are getting China right, but what we choose to do with their attention. Curiosity, however superficial, is an opening – one that can be deepened, challenged and redirected on our terms. For my part, it was only after the Covid-19 pandemic that my quest to see and experience China took fuller shape. Since then, I have visited many cities, explored local traditions and witnessed the remarkable diversity across its regions and communities. Before that, my understanding, though informed by academic study and first-hand observations of national economic growth, was far narrower. For someone in the diaspora, or outside it, exposure to predominantly negative media narratives can easily skew perception. Even a fleeting fascination, whether with a viral drink, fashion trend or modern infrastructure, deserves to be engaged with impartially rather than dismissed outright. Rather than fixate on the superficiality of Westerners’ “Chinese” era, we can seize the chance to introduce complexity and reclaim the conversation. Perhaps the real shift is not in how China is seen, but in whether those being seen are prepared and willing to define the narrative themselves.

How to deal with this ‘very Chinese time’ in Western lives

.css-1c6uqr6{color:inherit;font-weight:inherit;font-size:inherit;font-family:inherit;line-height:inherit;overflow-wrap:break-word;}The question is not whether outsiders are getting China or Chinese culture right, but what we choose to do with their attention

The question is not whether outsiders are getting China or Chinese culture right, but what we choose to do with their attention