The most commonly heard comment when you announce a trip to China is that it will surprise you. I can say, after almost a week in these faraway lands: yes, it does. Beginning by looking at ourselves, as we assess the extent of our prejudice, even if we consider ourselves "open-minded."
We were waiting for our bags at Beijing airport when the first ones arrived on the carousel, all identical. I immediately said to my husband, "Look at the bags! They're all the same." We were commenting on the Chinese people's lack of choice when we noticed that they all had the "Crew" label on them. Once again, it became clear to me how difficult it is to rid ourselves of our acquired prejudices, constantly fueled by the culture we live in. As I always say, it’s a constant "take heed and watch". It was worth starting the trip this way so as to raise awareness and allow China to reveal itself.
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We have already left Beijing, and on our way to our next stop, I begin commenting on the young people. The mix of fantasy with a dose of innocence and a touch of cartoon aesthetic makes the young people walking the city's most central streets one of the things that most caught my attention. If our Western youth—and practically all of us—have become almost addicted to social media, the way these Chinese youths do so surprised me. There is a specific production displayed without any shame. Hours in cafes—the most expensive ones are the most popular—filming, photographing, and applying makeup to themselves for hours on end.
As we left a café, we came across a long line of young people waiting to enter two booths of Jellycat, a premium toy brand, which simulated a café. I looked it up and found out that this is a pop-up experience for the brand in several cities such as Paris, London, NYC, and here in China. The young people in line—with advance booking via app—chose a toy and an experience with a toy cake. So far, nothing unusual. However, as we got closer, we noticed that the girls serving the cake were pretending to decorate it. The customer helped "assemble the cake" by waving spatulas in the air, adding fake whipped cream—like when we pretend to cook with small children. The attendants sang a song and, after a round of applause, placed the elaborate cake in a box covered in bows. Everything was duly filmed, of course. From what I have found in my research, the experience I have described doesn't happen in other cities.
I kept thinking about the cost of it all: the clothes, the food they eat at the cafes. The acceptance and patience of the cafe waiters. The investment in pretending to decorate a birthday cake. All done calmly, as if it were the most common thing in the world to be an adult and pretend to bake a cake in the middle of a shopping mall hallway.
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I thought about how genuinely committed these young people are to expressing happiness, beauty, modernity, and urbanity. I thought about how far they might be distancing themselves from reality, dressing up to the point, perhaps, of losing themselves in this very caricature. How much fantasy leaves the virtual world and enters real life.
Yes, I know this is happening all over the world. That we all, in some way, want to show and seek acceptance and admiration through social media. Perhaps what surprised me was the level it has reached on this land. How much the virtual world has become a place—happy and safe (?)—and how much we've become detached from what makes us most human: relationships in flesh and blood. How this can make us more and more intolerant of the idiosyncrasies that are part of each of us. Let's remember that it is through constant friction that the surface becomes less rough.
They are young, they are the future of our humanity. That's all.
