2024-06-06
27 分钟Discussion keeps the world turning.
This is round table.
You're listening to roundtable with myself.
Hey young.
I'm joined by Dinghung in the studio and Steve hatherly on the line.
Coming up, the popular county town aesthetics blends rustic charm with modern artistry.
This nostalgic style recreates the vibe of the 1980s and 1990s chinese towns nestled between rural villages and bustling cities.
Yet some small town residents now feel misrepresented by the oversimplified and sometimes condescending gaze.
How can we better represent the true diversity and vitality of todays county towns through art, media and public discourse?
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Now lets move on to the next topic of discussion.
Today, it hasnt got much to do with literature, but county town aesthetics, or Xiancheng Wen shu in Chinese is in fact a photographic ode to the spirit of Chinas counties and small towns.
This aesthetic style often features elements such as abandoned buildings, disorganized alleyways, rusty iron windows, and youth staring far beyond the camera with vacant facial expressions, evoking a sense of loss and deep solitude of small town life.
Why has this nostalgic yet gloomy style become so popular?
Genuine homage to the past or a superficial exploitation of small town struggles?
Yes, many in China may have a general idea of what small town aesthetics looks like, but some argue that there is rarely one single small town or county that perfectly fits its cookie cutter image.
How do you describe the concept of small town aesthetics?
Dinghung yeah, I think the core idea is that it is a visual style that is trying to romanticize and evoke a sense of nostalgic for those small town life in China, this kind of old memory about how your mother should look like in their youth, like in the 1980s or the 1990s era of China, depicting narrow streets and like you said, dilapidated buildings, etc.
Etcetera.
I feel like this is really, it's not my opinion, but according to some observation, some people say this kind of literature is essentially similar to gang Feng or Hong Kong photograph aesthetics.