Dissecting China’s “hipsters”
Chinayouthology has a piece over on their blog explaining who the Chinese hipsters are. The term of “hipsters” in Chinese is 潮人, which literally translates to “trendy/hip person” and sounds a bit like 超人 (“super man”). The term is more straightforward than the American word “hipster” and not as unique a classifier. (Arguably, the term “hipster” in English has lost its subcultural roots as well.)
The post continues to define two types of hipsters, creative (those closer to being cultural producers) and mainstream (the followers). While I found the market segmentation of hipsters into two distinct categories too forced, I did enjoy their description of the creative hipster’s general sentiment:
Not all of the creative people look hip. But some of them do look really trendy. In fact they don’t care to ‘look’ cutting-edge but just care to be different. They usually HATE to be labeled as ‘Chao Ren’ which in their perception refers to ‘mainstream hipsters’.