Always an interesting read. My biggest irritation about China is probably best summarized in this part: Note that this is part of a rather enthusiastic essay about China by someone living in...
Always an interesting read.
My biggest irritation about China is probably best summarized in this part:
By my count, the country has produced two cultural works over the last four decades since reform and opening that have proved attractive to the rest of the world: the Three-Body Problem and TikTok. Even these demand qualifications. Three-Body is a work of genius, but it is still a niche product most confined to science-fiction lovers; and TikTok is in part an American product and doesn’t necessarily convey Chinese content. Even if we wave nuances aside, China’s cultural offering to the world has been meager. Never has any economy grown so much while producing so few cultural exports. Contrast that with Japan, South Korea, and Taiwan, which have made new forms of art, music, movies, and TV shows that the rest of the world loves.
Note that this is part of a rather enthusiastic essay about China by someone living in China. This is not a statement written with a cynical agenda to downplay China's culture.
China is huge, relatively rich and is an international force to reckon with. It's growing and growing in influence. Yet for all the power it absorbs, it creates remarkably little culture. If China actually "wins" and can dictate its culture to a larger part of the world, the result seems barren.
Or we're simply not looking in the right places. China is perceived as the global villain by many people in "the West," and a lot of Chinese cultural works are likely seen as non-starters by the...
Or we're simply not looking in the right places. China is perceived as the global villain by many people in "the West," and a lot of Chinese cultural works are likely seen as non-starters by the organisations who would be responsible for the finances of trying to translate and publish Chinese media outside of China (as a side-note, Mandarin is also notoriously difficult to translate into other languages).
I would be curious to know what the state of its cultural influence is over in Africa, where China has been heavily investing in infrastructure and exercising its soft power more and more over the last decade. Are Chinese films and TV shows more familiar there than they are with us?
That's more of a passing comment rather than a direct reply to your answer, but lately I've realized that I have been living in a bit of a bubble, culturally speaking, and decided to venture a...
That's more of a passing comment rather than a direct reply to your answer, but lately I've realized that I have been living in a bit of a bubble, culturally speaking, and decided to venture a little outside Hollywood for my cinema nights. So far, I've been very impressed by the output of Jia Zhangke, and Bi Gan, as well as Hu Bo's An Elephant Sitting Still - the closest comparison would be the work of someone like Tarkovsky, although with a larger focus on social realism. I do think that there is very little exposure to non-Western works of art for those of us living in the imperial core - although I can't be certain of the exact causes of this, beyond lower interest both from the consumers and the big orgs that would be responsible for financing.
Always an interesting read.
My biggest irritation about China is probably best summarized in this part:
Note that this is part of a rather enthusiastic essay about China by someone living in China. This is not a statement written with a cynical agenda to downplay China's culture.
China is huge, relatively rich and is an international force to reckon with. It's growing and growing in influence. Yet for all the power it absorbs, it creates remarkably little culture. If China actually "wins" and can dictate its culture to a larger part of the world, the result seems barren.
Perhaps there is plenty of culture within China, but it is not exported?
Or we're simply not looking in the right places. China is perceived as the global villain by many people in "the West," and a lot of Chinese cultural works are likely seen as non-starters by the organisations who would be responsible for the finances of trying to translate and publish Chinese media outside of China (as a side-note, Mandarin is also notoriously difficult to translate into other languages).
I would be curious to know what the state of its cultural influence is over in Africa, where China has been heavily investing in infrastructure and exercising its soft power more and more over the last decade. Are Chinese films and TV shows more familiar there than they are with us?
That's more of a passing comment rather than a direct reply to your answer, but lately I've realized that I have been living in a bit of a bubble, culturally speaking, and decided to venture a little outside Hollywood for my cinema nights. So far, I've been very impressed by the output of Jia Zhangke, and Bi Gan, as well as Hu Bo's An Elephant Sitting Still - the closest comparison would be the work of someone like Tarkovsky, although with a larger focus on social realism. I do think that there is very little exposure to non-Western works of art for those of us living in the imperial core - although I can't be certain of the exact causes of this, beyond lower interest both from the consumers and the big orgs that would be responsible for financing.