What’s with digital wallpaper in Chinese homes?
In China, copying is not at all bad. There is a term “Fu Zhi Pin,” referring to copies of things made with such craft and exactitude that it is worthy of study in a museum. Fast forward to 21st Century and contemporary Chinese domestic space. Copying, or maybe copy pasting, is celebrated, but in a different way. The trend of plastering wallpapers of digitally rendered nature and blog space backgrounds onto walls and floors of Chinese home is an intriguing one. How did the copying of Western architecture in residential communes and homes lead to saturated, digital wallpaper and Karaoke style lighting design to be the preferred taste of the older generation? The answer lies in breaking down the aesthetic of “China Too Cool.”
Knock-offs, counterfeits, unoriginal. These are the words that usually come to mind when we think about things “Made in China.” As China has risen to become the largest export economy in the world, exporting over 2 trillion US dollars worth of goods in 2017, it has become no exaggeration to say that in almost every region of the world, everyone must own or at least have encountered something manufactured in China. In today’s episode, we’re going to consider goods and cultural productions made in China, and question the stereotype of unoriginal counterfeit goods. To do so, we’ll first look at what’s China’s fascination with copying, and then examine architecture and interior design choices to understand the phenomena of tacky, repurposed aesthetic taste that I call “China Too Cool.” The term “Too Cool” is the phonetic English translation of a subcultural style “土酷” (Tuku), which in Chinese means “tacky cool.” The emphasis should be on the English term “Too” and not the Chinese “Tu” as in tacky. It should be considered in its double meaning of both outdated and cool, cooler, coolest — too cool. This style is marked by an attitude of poking ironic fun at but also embracing the stylistic elements of dated popular taste.
To get a visual image of Too Cool, think of the Microsoft rainbow word art on a full background of digitally rendered nature, printed on a glossy, plastic laminated cheap notebook. For visual references, I suggest going to the Instagram page of @butterfly.minmin, a 3D graphic artist who is the living embodiment of the saturated visual overkill of Too Cool.
There is a long-standing tradition of imitation art within China that boasts of its own classification system. The highest form of simulacrum bears the essence of the original — the qi, or in English, the “life force” — to the extent that the image evokes and becomes a “real” substitute of the original. In this case, art imitates and reproduces life, capturing not a perfect copy of the appearance but its essence. We can see this in traditional Chinese ink painting, where the mountains and lakes do not look realistic, but they exude the spirit of the sublime beauty of nature.
The act of perfecting copying is also highly regarded by the Chinese as “testament to cultural and technological achievements.” Journalist and Columbia University professor Alexander Stille points to two Chinese terms, “fangzhipin” and “fuzhipin”, to explain the Chinese attitude toward the copy: “Fangzhipin is closer to what we would call a reproduction — a knockoff you would buy in a museum store — whereas fuzhipin is a very high quality copy, something worthy of study or putting in a museum.” These instances of copying are for the sake of understanding the beauty of form and structure, of technology and craftsmanship, and of artistic achievements. For the Chinese, to perfectly reproduce something shows thorough understanding and extraordinary craftsmanship. Value is perceived in the skill of making, not necessarily in having a new idea.
In the book Original copies: architectural mimicry in contemporary China, author Bianca Bosker examined the intriguing phenomena of “simulacrascapes.” These are themed residential communities in China that replicate archaic European and American towns. For instance, you will have “Little Paris” residencies that feature a miniature Eiffel tower in the middle of its park, or a replicated Venetian neighborhood complete with a canal running through it.
While both the Western and Chinese intellectual elite sigh at the “backward” mass scale replication projects, quick to dismiss them as “kitsch”, “fake”, “unimaginative and cliché”, Bosker provides a more nuanced reading of the phenomenon, explaining the conditions for their existence and viewing them as “monuments to the ‘New China’.” These mass scale residential simulacrascape developments, aimed at the expanding middle class, owe their success to their visibility as “coveted status symbols.” Much like the conspicuous logos of branded goods, these themed residencies featuring the trademark forms of Western cultural achievement are meant to signal wealth and luxury. Beneath the surface of “West worship” actually rests a mindset of Chinese superiority, the conviction that all the good things of the world can be found in China, and tailored to Chinese taste to resemble Chinese peoples’ conception of the foreign — the historical tourist spots showcasing the celebrated moments of Western culture.
Let us now examine the interior choices made by home buyers: by looking at the domestic space, we get a glimpse into the popular taste and preferences of individuals. A little search on Zhihu.com, China’s Quora/ Reddit, brought me to revealing explanations of popular contemporary Chinese interior design choices. What the term “European-style” translates to in China is literally: chandeliers, Greek columns, pompous gilded Rococo motifs and gaudy Baroque furnishing.
Italian philosopher Umberto Eco once explained that such “eclectic frenzy” and “compulsive imitation” “prevail where wealth has no history.” This aesthetic had seen an earlier manifestation in America, in the seemingly “artificial regions” of post-urban California and Florida and it is happening now for the Chinese nouveau riches, especially after the disruption in historical, cultural, and aesthetic richness as a result of the Cultural Revolution. The Rococo motifs and Greek columns, once elements of high culture and luxury are today considered archaic and kitschy for their irrelevance and impracticality to contemporary urban living. This is especially so after the new standard of design elevating functionality over appearance set by the Bauhaus school and Modernist architecture.
A more interesting development of this interior appropriation is how these “European style” copies evolve into mutations with Chinese characteristics. What is kept of the “European style”, in other words, the elaborately ornamental Rococo and Baroque, is the essence of sensory overload, but the manifestations are more in keeping with “current” trends.
One image from Chinese Quora Zhihu.com shows the design on a sliding closet door (top left). It features bright, saturated colors of blue skies and soaring birds, a high-definition landscape rendering of detailed grass, gradient-infused lotus plants in the foreground, a flat pictorial space, and an unmistakable uplifting mood. It is all too much. It’s too artificial, too uplifting, too bright, too much, “Too Cool.”
This was a photo in a series uploaded by a millennial netizen expressing her disbelief at her parents’ interior design choices for their new house on the outskirts of the main city. She is not alone in her lamentation; threads voicing outcry over outlandish new wedding home designs gifted by their loving parents are ubiquitous on the Chinese Internet, gaining popularity and resonance with every “Like”. Among those are bed frames with a Microsoft logo that acts as a lamp, a virus-molecule-like structured lighting fixture, a bedroom with crowded magenta rose wallpaper and magenta bed sheets, big digitally rendered aurora flowers, and a kitchen floor fully covered with a stock image of retreating seawater and sandy beach.
These acts of personalizing your living room wallpaper or lighting fixtures are popular with older people from small cities in China. That, combined with their love for nature and saturated colors result in a home of digital pretense of nature.
In order to understand “mom and dad’s” unwavering belief in the aesthetic choices of these interiors, we have to put things into context and perspective. Whatever is “fashionable”, “trendy”, or “cool”, “has always to be differentiated from the mainstream.” So we have to ask: in comparison to what are these design choices cool and trendy? If we think about the older, simple countryside homes with wooden furniture and undecorated walls before the rapid urbanization and digitization of China, then all the examples I have presented exhibit an extraordinary sense and creativity in being different. They are most likely not going to be defined as refined and classic, but in terms of “coolness”, in terms of novelty, these interior designs might stand a chance, even if only within the circle of “mom and dad” or small-town folk.
Globalization and localization aren’t just buzzwords for the marketing director, they can be felt when you enter the doors of these Chinese Too Cool interiors. From replicating western architectural clusters to recapturing the essence of newfound wealth and self-expression, Chinese designs take on a life of its own. To only see the designs as tacky knockoffs would be a missed opportunity to embark on a nuanced cultural reading of Chinese thinking.
This podcast episode is an excerpt based on my essay “China Too Cool: Vernacular Innovations and Aesthetic Discontinuity of China.” In my essay, I propose Too Cool as a lens of understanding the generational and economic differences in modern China set forth by the country’s rapid urbanization. I talk about cultural productions made during the cultural revolution and right after during the economic reform of Open Door policy, cultural appropriations of Bollywood and poor copies of Japanese anime, as well as bizarre Taobao aesthetics. The overarching theme and mood is a relatable one of displacement and using creativity to regenerate meaning and identity. If this interests you, you can get a free pdf version of my essay here.
