we talked about comporary chinese culture, and we then should move on to the contemporary chinese arts and how do they relate to chinese contemporary culture. but before we get there, let’s take a look at the contemporary american culture, especially the pop culture, since it seems that many “contemporary chinese” just love the trendy culture.

if you look at any one out of a crowd, how do you identify him/her with any specifical social group that you can relate to?

even kids can tell: the rich ladies from the top 10% of american societies (by income) would hardly be trendy. they would typically show very conservetive taste in every thing they wear, or the kind of cars they drive, or the house decor…the only thing radical you may find in their households would be art works…just to show they have a stomach for the different stuff.

where would they hang out? ballet theater, opera house, upscale cafe, art museums, art galleries, designer cloth shops, beauty salons, jewlery stores…or resorts

around this group, you could imagine would do they talk about

then, let’s look at the young generations (before they become conservetive, they go for radical first) you would have the type of girld wear all black, known as goth…
you would have the girls wear very color coordinated and all in classic style, known as preppy…then you have the very unti-social group wear competely to make a screaming statement otherwise known as “punk” which today is different from the 70’s and 80’s, and you have the nerdy geek group look totally out of touch with what’s in…

guess what, they are all “cool” at the same time in middle school today in america.

what does this mean? a society already showing the co-existance of mutlple sub culture that may or may not have anything to do with the ethinic backgrounds.

now, let’s take a look at what is in the chinese contemporary pop culture:

in the urban societies like shanghai beijing…on and on

all trendy people wear the same thing: whatever just became cool lately in the street.

is there a personality as what suits me? no sir, no mam, we leave the thinking to the people publish fashion at milano or paris or berlin, just as mao used to do the thinking for everyone in china.

if this is to sum up the contemporary chinese pop culture, then what kind of contemporary chinese arts would suit it?

but then if you go to the exterior parts of china: inner mangolia or yunnan, guizhou, sichuan…the culture of the regions would be totally different.

what kind of chinese contemporary culture is that? what kind of contemporary chinese arts to go with those?

we will look at that in next session