Hippies, yuppies, preps, jocks, hipsters, skaters, slackers, stoners, nerds, geeks, posers, pranksters, gangstas, players, thugs, brats, rednecks, momma’s-boys, tom-boys, air-heads, jug-heads… the list goes on. My home country, the U.S., certainly has its fair share of stereotypes. In fact, I’ve been called a jock (for liking American football), a nerd (for reading a book at a café), a redneck (for simply being from the southern state of Louisiana) and a prep (for graduating college)—how is that even possible?! That is to say, I agree that it’s ridiculous to think that a “label”, based off appearance and actions alone, can ever wholly describe one’s idiosyncrasies, no less an entire group of people. That being said, taken with a healthy grain of salt (or MSG), discussing stereotypes can provide us with certain insights into the zeitgeist of a culture, which is particularly useful for trying to understand one that is changing as rapidly as China’s. In the time that I’ve lived here, I’ve noticed that some U.S. stereotypes seem to hold true on this side of the planet while others are uniquely Chinese. Here’s a look at some of the Chinese stereotypes—specifically with the urban-youth—I’ve encountered by living and traveling through China during the past five years.

Source: life.takungpao.com

1) Bobos/Chuppies
An article from China Daily puts it best: “‘Chuppies’ are China's young well-off generation. With money in their pockets…[they] describe themselves as ‘being open-minded, being ready to learn, and loving new things.’” Basically, a chuppie or “bobo”—a self-imposed English nickname combining the words “bourgeois” and “bohemian”, as taken from David Brooks’ Bobos in Paradise: The New Upper Class and How They Got There”—is a Chinese Yuppie (Young Urban Professional), and they’re starting to become quite common in China these days.

At the Shamrock, the most popular expat hangout in Chengdu, my friends and I witnessed an attractive bobo woman dressed nicely with a designer bag in one hand and her poodle wearing shoes and a vest in the other. In typical fashion, she ordered a coffee for herself and, oddly enough, a Coca Cola which she poured in an ashtray for the dog. Upon leaving I couldn’t help but ask, “Does the dog really like Coke?” Glancing up from her iPad, she responded, “I’m sorry, my dog hasn’t learned English yet.” With poodles learning English, it certainly seems that yuppie culture has taken form in China.

2) Fuerdai
Translated as “second generation rich”, fuerdai (富二代) are the Chinese equivalent of the Western “trust fund babies”. And like their foreign counterparts, China’s fuerdai are filthy rich: more than half own multiple luxury cars, more than a quarter have two or more residences, and they usually receive monthly allowances from their parents, sometimes more than 100,000 RMB per month! The fuerdai are also notorious party animals who enjoy drinking, clubbing, joy-riding, gambling and, on occasions, illegal narcotics.

I recently met a fuerdai girl and she began showing me pictures on her iPhone of her and her friends driving their Mercedes whilst flashing luxury jewelry. She’s 24, doesn’t work, receives a huge “allowance” from her family and lives in one of the nicest areas of town. I’ll also never forget about one of my foreign friends who lived in Wuxi and dated a fuerdai. She’d always let him drive her BMW (even though he didn’t have a Chinese license) and would regularly take large groups of us out for dinner and KTV. The fuerdai have money and they’re not afraid to show it.

3) The Ants
“Ants” are the educated college grads that are marginalized by China’s insanely competitive job market and forced to take extremely low paying, demanding jobs in the urban jungle. They usually work in the high-tech industry, share living areas in cramped apartments with communal bathroom facilities, and live each day on a shoestring budget with a monthly salary of just a few thousand RMB. If you don’t believe me, check out the Tangjialing neighborhood in the northern suburbs of Beijing, which is home to about 50,000 ants.

A 2010 Reuters article vividly describes the typical life of the Tangjialing “ant tribe” (蚁族) as one filled with muddy roads, two hour long commutes on crowded buses, dingy cafes and jammed residential box apartments. While there aren’t any Tangjialing equivilants in Chengdu or many other major urban cities yet, it’s likely that with the growing number of students graduating from Chinese universities each year, “ant hills” will start popping up all over the country as they have in Beijing.

4) Flower Hearts
Huaxin (花心), which directly translates to “flower heart”, basically describes a guy who has many girlfriends. In the U.S., they’re usually known as playboys, players or, more colloquially, playas. Players back home have many girlfriends and usually (but not always) dress confidently, have a modern attitude and love the night. Based off of some of the characters I’ve met here, it seems that the flower hearts of China also conform to this stereotype in most ways.

A Chinese guy I know has a girlfriend, but that doesn’t stop him from having other girlfriends. And for some reason he feels like he needs to update me about his weekend escapades every time I see him. When I called him out for being a flower heart, he agreed and actually took it as a compliment. He and his friends pay a lot of attention to their looks, keep up with the latest fashion trends, have ear piercings, sport the trendiest haircuts (which are a little ostentatious and spikey) and spend several nights a week at the clubs.

5) Gangstas
In 2011 I set off to backpack across 15 provinces to discover the true essence of China. In the end, one of my most fond memories was a rap battle that I stumbled upon in Wuhan. It felt like a scene from the movie 8 Mile with everyone wearing NBA jerseys, baggy pants, backwards baseball caps and Nike shoes. Apart from a few foreigners, the crowd and rappers were all Chinese. Contestants battled each other in Mandarin (with an occasional a hint of Chinglish) over original beats produced by the DJ until the crowd either deemed them worthy or booed them off the stage. By the end of the night, a guy with cornrows wearing no shirt and a platinum chain won and became the city’s freestyle king.

Michigan Daily in 2011 reported on a hip-hop show sponsored by the local Confucius Institute to show university students in the US that the rap game was catching on in China. It’s true. I’ve witnessed the fad not just in Wuhan, but also Beijing, Shanghai, Guangzhou and Chengdu. In fact, Chengdu’s gangstas put on an underground rap show here several months ago and were even free-styling after a recent Madlib concert. This may seem offbeat, but it’s not when considering that hip-hop culture is found all over from Bangkok to Bogota.

6) Art Students and Hipsters
China Daily recently reported that graduates from Chinese art universities now exceeded 80,000—a fifteen fold increase over the past decade. With more Chinese going to college each year, coupled with an artistic renaissance following the days of heavily regulated socialist-realism propaganda, the art scene in China is booming, with 798-esque art districts showing up in cities across the country. As we all know, a boom in creativity usually brings with it lens-less glasses.

I decided to refer to the hippest guy I know for this one – an American from – you guessed it – Brooklyn, who lives in Beijing (China’s hipster capital). He explained that the hippest neighborhood in Beijing is Gulou/Andingmen where he resides, but it used to be Nanluoguxiang until the area became “too popular,” causing the hipsters to relocate. He also noted that that typical Chinese male and female hipsters in the area have bowl cuts, thick framed plastic glasses, memorabilia from the eighties, enjoy taking pictures with lomo cameras and ride fixed gear bicycles. He also stated that “they’re the only people in China who will buy anything used, but only if it’s expensive.” Beijing meet Williamsburg, the international hipster revolution has begun!

Where did all the cowboys go?

Of course there are other stereotypes out there like the punks and metalheads, the twenty- and thirty-something women who still wear Winnie the Pooh, Hello Kitty and Mickey Mouse attire, the little emperors etc., but it’s impossible to touch on all of them so I just focused on some of the ones I’ve personally encountered and found the most interesting. On the contrary, I haven’t seen too many stoners, hippies, cowboys or jocks in China. For whatever reason, these and other trends just haven’t caught on here as they have back home. Moreover, chances are I’ve missed other stereotypes, while we cannot overlook the notion that a large number people simply do not fit into any of these categories (thus is the nature of stereotyping after all). My interest in writing this article stems from my observation that many outsiders perceive China to be a homogenized culture that speaks with one mouth and thinks with one mind. However, that traditional stereotype is quickly vanishing as China blasts its way through the 21st century.
 

Related links:
Experiencing “Real China”: Being the Token Foreigner in a Fourth Tier City
China Expat Stereotypes: What Do People Back Home Think of You?
3,000 RMB?! Returning Overseas Chinese Students Come Back to Paltry Salaries

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Keywords: urban-youth stereotypes Chinese stereotypes