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NOSTALGIA usually refers toa bitter-sweet mood in whichone remembers "the way wewere." Older people are proneto it, but recently, ersatz nostalgia hasbecome a trend with the younger generations born in the 1960s, the 1970s, oreven the 1980s. Each age group has itsown past to be wistful about. Retro elements are in fashion, in entertainment,in film and television, and in literature. Ithas become the critical yeast in the breadof commercial promotion.
Psychological studies point to a connection between a reminiscent moodand dissatisfaction, frustration, or fearof the real world. When it is difficult tofind comfort in the present, people turnto the past. China has been in a periodof rapid social transition and development for sometime, and sooner or laterthe time had to come to pay for thepursuit of material pleasures and highend lifestyles. The bill usually arrives inthe form of physical and psychologicalfatigue. So viewing nostalgia in a morepositive light, by indulging an impetusto remember the past, one can adjustattitudes, release stress, deepen self-understanding, and cultivate confidence."Chinese people, especially the youth,are nostalgic," comments Chen Huizhong, an associate professor of sociology at Huazhong University of Scienceand Technology. "This is evidence of therapid changes in Chinese society. Newthings substitute for many older thingsuntil their total assimilation is effected.Nostalgia is a reconstruction of the past,and a foundation of the fnture."
Eat, Drink, Remember
As the class bell rings, young men andwomen walk into "Beijing No.8 School,"bare but for a podium, a blackboard, andsome desks. On the blackboard is written"A New Term Begins." A "teacher" settlesthe "students" down and hands out "testpapers." Then with the utmost seriousness class begins writing answers to theirtest. Looking through the window on thisscene, you might think it is a real schoolbut you’d be mistaken. "Beijing No. 8School" is actually a restaurant. Thepodium is a cashier. The desks are dining tables, and each test paper is a menutopped by several quiz questions. If thecustomer gets the answers right he orshe wins a "student card" that is actuallya membership card. With enough creditson the card, the customer can upgradehis service and participate in the restaurant’s "extracurricular activities."
Masking itself as a school, the restaurant has paid attention to creating a distinctive decor. The ashtray on every desklooks like a transformer. Nintendo is in acorner. Posters of famous cartoons, suchas Astro Boy, Me Liang’s Magic Brush,and Three Monks are plastered all overthe walls. In the open space behind theschoolroom, a hopscotch design drawnwith chalk adorns the floor. Everythingin the restaurant is emblematic of thepost-1980 generation childhood. HanTong, the "headmaster" of "Beijing No. 8 School," explains that this restaurant is a"theme restaurant" for those born in the1980s.
Hart Tong is a partner in "Beijing No. 8School," having started it with his friendYuan Bao in early 2009. In the beginning,their restaurant was an ordinary business with a disappointing turnover, likelydue to its location in one of the city’sless prosperous areas. To sustain theirbusiness the owners came up with theidea of opening up a theme restaurant.Han and Yuan both belong to the "post8o" generation. They used their favoritechildhood memories to decorate the restaurant and stipulated that only "post1980" diners are allowed in. Like magic,their exclusive business started to thrive.Sometimes customers have to wait in longqueues for an available table. "People donot just come for dinner," explains HanTong. "Our restaurant is also a community platform for the post-80 generation.Everything here calls up memories thatthe guests share and discuss. In a familiarenvironment, people communicate andmake friends more easily." Mr. Wang, afrequent customer of the restaurant, toldus: "Every time I come here, it is a journeyback to the past. I can play video and cardgames with my friends. I seem to be backin school."
Post-1980 nostalgia drives many diseussion boards on the Internet. It is easyto find threads about childhood toys,stationary, textbooks, snacks, and petphrases. Some of the posts are clickedover 100,000 times per month.
Statistics show that over one millionpeople who were born in the 1980s areso-called "city ants," young commutersliving in low-rent apartments in the suburbs, and nearly 100 million are the "newgeneration migrant workers." The sizeof the "snail group," referring to youngcity dwellers with decent jobs but sparedthe stress of meeting payments on a newapartment, is still unknown. The post-80generation has survived three decades ofChina’s social transformation. Their childhood was happy, as they normally grewup in better conditions than the previousgeneration; they have also been blessedwith more knowledgeable parents and lesspareutal pressure. Now, most of the post80 generation has joined the workforee.Lessons in the hardships of life are morecommonly what they struggle with now:the difficulty of finding a job, the stress ofwork, and all kinds of competition. Getring lost in the mental mists of childhoodeases the pain and discomfort wrought bysocial upheaval.
Wearable Nostalgia
Wu Yaguang is a designer at an interior decoration company. He has a keeneye for fashion and enjoys collecting related information. His wardrobe is dominated by major brand names. Not longago, he bought a pair of Warrior (Huili)shoes, just because the Hollywood filmstar Orlando Blume wears them.
In the 1970s, the name "Warrior"represented all the brands of sportsshoes in China. Many fashion-mindedyoungsters in that period sought to own a pair of Warrior shoes, but they nevertbeless faded out of public sight. Manyforeign sport brands poured into Chinawith the start of the country’s reform andopening-up period. But in 2010, Warriorstands again on the cutting edge of fashion, riding a wave of nostalgia and a focus on individuality. Within two months,ten Warrior stores opened their doorsin Chongqing City’s business core. Someof the stores had daily sales of over 100pairs, and the buyers were mostly youngsters. In addition to Warrior shoes, othersymbols of the 1970s, such as stripedsailor shirts and gym suits, swung backinto fashion.
Walking the street of Nanluoguxiang,a shopper’s attention is easily capturedby the creative merchandize in the windows of some trendy shops: the classic thermos (for constant tea-making),enameled tin cups, matchboxes andgreen canvas bags have all bounded backafter several decades of obscurity. Yesterday’s mundane necessities are today’smust-have fashion accessories.
No flies on Plastered 8 T-shirt, atrend-setting store run by British fashion designer Johnson Hill. Hill has dugin and taken the Chinese name JiangSenhai, and on his premises you feeltransported back to the Beijing of the198os. Enamel washbasins, old sheetiron toys and velocipedes delight, butthe T-shirt is the signature product inthis store. All designed by Hill, the patterns include "3-yuan metro ticket," "oldhouse number plate," and "vintage posters." Hill likes to reminisce himself, andsays that innovating by remembering islike holding a conversation between thegood old days and the present, betweenChina and foreign countries. He continues, "The goods in my store are notmere duplicates of old things, but havea modern touch and even elements ofWestern fashion. Youngsters like themvery much."
Wu Yaguang asserts that in the pastpeople preferred to decorate their homeswith reproductions of famous paintings,but now they have lost interest in thathabit. Nowadays, more clients chooseto replace paintings with embroidery orporcelain fragments. Sometimes, usedfurniture or household articles are alsorecycled for decorative purposes. Theynot only highlight the host’s personalityand hobbies, but also his sense of funand upbeat modernity.
The return of the "Fabulous 5os" in2010 is one of the hottest trends in international fashion circles. The clear signsare the Louis Vuitton umbrella-shapedskirts, and the colorful rain boots wornby many female stars. Does not all thisimply that, for urbanites, nostalgia ismore about fashion than memory?
Consumable Retro
Nostalgia, that mellow and sad emotion, has been codified, commodifiedand embedded in a range of red-hotfashions driving the growth of retrorelated consumption.
Miss Zhu, a frequenter of supermarkets, has discovered a new yogurt product that does not contain fruit or grains.Packaged in plastic bowls, no straw is needed to consume it. "It tastes likewhat I drank in my childhood," explaiusMiss Zhu, and she recommended it toher friends. Soon, she found that otherfamous brands were promoting similarproducts.
A little investigation on the trend revealed that a dairy company in QinghaiProvince was the first to produce this kindof traditional yogurt. The company successfully realized industrial productionof traditionally home-made yogurt, andto stress the product’s local characteristics, they named it "Qinghai TraditionalYogurt." A stampede of customers chasedthe product down as soon as it appearedon the market. Tourists to Qinghaistocked up on it, buying crates at a time."Qinghai Traditional Yogurt" has arousedthe attention of many dairy enterprises.Some have followed suit and flooded themarket with similar prdducts.
A wave of nostalgia has also sweptthe cosmetic industry. Classic domesticbrands, such as Pehchaolin (Baiqueling),Yumeijing, Fenghua and Miracle (Miqi),have risen from the ashes and created abuzz on the Internet. On trade websiteslike Taobao and Paipai, many onlinestores sell only these traditional Chinesebrands. Miss Zhou reflects on consumerattraction to the products, "I used Pehchaolin and Yumeijing when I was achild. Their effects are still good afterall these years, but it has been so hardto find them." She shared her 20-yearexperience with netizens discussing oldChinese brands on BBS, and observed,"Many friends of mine have started touse these classical domestic cosmeticsagain."
Romanticizing the past works well forentertaimnent products as well. Audience shares of TV series such as GoldenWedding, Wang Gui and An Na, Bloomof Youth, Romantic Life, and CorpsYears have reached record highs. In theyear 2010, director Zhang Yimou’s newmovie Under the Hawthorn Tree soldover RMB 160 million, setting a newbox-office record for art films in China.A netizen posted, "There hasn’t been amovie that touched my heart in years-not since I cried while watching TheBridges of Madison County on a planebut Under the Hawthorn Tree made mecry in public for the second time. Thismovie has magic that it awakens the ageof innocence in everyone." Meanwhile,Echoes of the Rainbow and Post-8o alsomoved many audiences to tears.
Liu Tao, a professor of advertisementscience at Henan Agricultural University,explains that the einotion of nostalgiais a longing for the past, and it can easethe pain brought about by the consignment to oblivion of everything one hasknown. Transferred to consumption, animpulse to buy will ensue. Manufacturers can draw customers with appropriateadvertising and marketing that triggersthe many hidden cravings concealed by arememberance of things past.
Psychological studies point to a connection between a reminiscent moodand dissatisfaction, frustration, or fearof the real world. When it is difficult tofind comfort in the present, people turnto the past. China has been in a periodof rapid social transition and development for sometime, and sooner or laterthe time had to come to pay for thepursuit of material pleasures and highend lifestyles. The bill usually arrives inthe form of physical and psychologicalfatigue. So viewing nostalgia in a morepositive light, by indulging an impetusto remember the past, one can adjustattitudes, release stress, deepen self-understanding, and cultivate confidence."Chinese people, especially the youth,are nostalgic," comments Chen Huizhong, an associate professor of sociology at Huazhong University of Scienceand Technology. "This is evidence of therapid changes in Chinese society. Newthings substitute for many older thingsuntil their total assimilation is effected.Nostalgia is a reconstruction of the past,and a foundation of the fnture."
Eat, Drink, Remember
As the class bell rings, young men andwomen walk into "Beijing No.8 School,"bare but for a podium, a blackboard, andsome desks. On the blackboard is written"A New Term Begins." A "teacher" settlesthe "students" down and hands out "testpapers." Then with the utmost seriousness class begins writing answers to theirtest. Looking through the window on thisscene, you might think it is a real schoolbut you’d be mistaken. "Beijing No. 8School" is actually a restaurant. Thepodium is a cashier. The desks are dining tables, and each test paper is a menutopped by several quiz questions. If thecustomer gets the answers right he orshe wins a "student card" that is actuallya membership card. With enough creditson the card, the customer can upgradehis service and participate in the restaurant’s "extracurricular activities."
Masking itself as a school, the restaurant has paid attention to creating a distinctive decor. The ashtray on every desklooks like a transformer. Nintendo is in acorner. Posters of famous cartoons, suchas Astro Boy, Me Liang’s Magic Brush,and Three Monks are plastered all overthe walls. In the open space behind theschoolroom, a hopscotch design drawnwith chalk adorns the floor. Everythingin the restaurant is emblematic of thepost-1980 generation childhood. HanTong, the "headmaster" of "Beijing No. 8 School," explains that this restaurant is a"theme restaurant" for those born in the1980s.
Hart Tong is a partner in "Beijing No. 8School," having started it with his friendYuan Bao in early 2009. In the beginning,their restaurant was an ordinary business with a disappointing turnover, likelydue to its location in one of the city’sless prosperous areas. To sustain theirbusiness the owners came up with theidea of opening up a theme restaurant.Han and Yuan both belong to the "post8o" generation. They used their favoritechildhood memories to decorate the restaurant and stipulated that only "post1980" diners are allowed in. Like magic,their exclusive business started to thrive.Sometimes customers have to wait in longqueues for an available table. "People donot just come for dinner," explains HanTong. "Our restaurant is also a community platform for the post-80 generation.Everything here calls up memories thatthe guests share and discuss. In a familiarenvironment, people communicate andmake friends more easily." Mr. Wang, afrequent customer of the restaurant, toldus: "Every time I come here, it is a journeyback to the past. I can play video and cardgames with my friends. I seem to be backin school."
Post-1980 nostalgia drives many diseussion boards on the Internet. It is easyto find threads about childhood toys,stationary, textbooks, snacks, and petphrases. Some of the posts are clickedover 100,000 times per month.
Statistics show that over one millionpeople who were born in the 1980s areso-called "city ants," young commutersliving in low-rent apartments in the suburbs, and nearly 100 million are the "newgeneration migrant workers." The sizeof the "snail group," referring to youngcity dwellers with decent jobs but sparedthe stress of meeting payments on a newapartment, is still unknown. The post-80generation has survived three decades ofChina’s social transformation. Their childhood was happy, as they normally grewup in better conditions than the previousgeneration; they have also been blessedwith more knowledgeable parents and lesspareutal pressure. Now, most of the post80 generation has joined the workforee.Lessons in the hardships of life are morecommonly what they struggle with now:the difficulty of finding a job, the stress ofwork, and all kinds of competition. Getring lost in the mental mists of childhoodeases the pain and discomfort wrought bysocial upheaval.
Wearable Nostalgia
Wu Yaguang is a designer at an interior decoration company. He has a keeneye for fashion and enjoys collecting related information. His wardrobe is dominated by major brand names. Not longago, he bought a pair of Warrior (Huili)shoes, just because the Hollywood filmstar Orlando Blume wears them.
In the 1970s, the name "Warrior"represented all the brands of sportsshoes in China. Many fashion-mindedyoungsters in that period sought to own a pair of Warrior shoes, but they nevertbeless faded out of public sight. Manyforeign sport brands poured into Chinawith the start of the country’s reform andopening-up period. But in 2010, Warriorstands again on the cutting edge of fashion, riding a wave of nostalgia and a focus on individuality. Within two months,ten Warrior stores opened their doorsin Chongqing City’s business core. Someof the stores had daily sales of over 100pairs, and the buyers were mostly youngsters. In addition to Warrior shoes, othersymbols of the 1970s, such as stripedsailor shirts and gym suits, swung backinto fashion.
Walking the street of Nanluoguxiang,a shopper’s attention is easily capturedby the creative merchandize in the windows of some trendy shops: the classic thermos (for constant tea-making),enameled tin cups, matchboxes andgreen canvas bags have all bounded backafter several decades of obscurity. Yesterday’s mundane necessities are today’smust-have fashion accessories.
No flies on Plastered 8 T-shirt, atrend-setting store run by British fashion designer Johnson Hill. Hill has dugin and taken the Chinese name JiangSenhai, and on his premises you feeltransported back to the Beijing of the198os. Enamel washbasins, old sheetiron toys and velocipedes delight, butthe T-shirt is the signature product inthis store. All designed by Hill, the patterns include "3-yuan metro ticket," "oldhouse number plate," and "vintage posters." Hill likes to reminisce himself, andsays that innovating by remembering islike holding a conversation between thegood old days and the present, betweenChina and foreign countries. He continues, "The goods in my store are notmere duplicates of old things, but havea modern touch and even elements ofWestern fashion. Youngsters like themvery much."
Wu Yaguang asserts that in the pastpeople preferred to decorate their homeswith reproductions of famous paintings,but now they have lost interest in thathabit. Nowadays, more clients chooseto replace paintings with embroidery orporcelain fragments. Sometimes, usedfurniture or household articles are alsorecycled for decorative purposes. Theynot only highlight the host’s personalityand hobbies, but also his sense of funand upbeat modernity.
The return of the "Fabulous 5os" in2010 is one of the hottest trends in international fashion circles. The clear signsare the Louis Vuitton umbrella-shapedskirts, and the colorful rain boots wornby many female stars. Does not all thisimply that, for urbanites, nostalgia ismore about fashion than memory?
Consumable Retro
Nostalgia, that mellow and sad emotion, has been codified, commodifiedand embedded in a range of red-hotfashions driving the growth of retrorelated consumption.
Miss Zhu, a frequenter of supermarkets, has discovered a new yogurt product that does not contain fruit or grains.Packaged in plastic bowls, no straw is needed to consume it. "It tastes likewhat I drank in my childhood," explaiusMiss Zhu, and she recommended it toher friends. Soon, she found that otherfamous brands were promoting similarproducts.
A little investigation on the trend revealed that a dairy company in QinghaiProvince was the first to produce this kindof traditional yogurt. The company successfully realized industrial productionof traditionally home-made yogurt, andto stress the product’s local characteristics, they named it "Qinghai TraditionalYogurt." A stampede of customers chasedthe product down as soon as it appearedon the market. Tourists to Qinghaistocked up on it, buying crates at a time."Qinghai Traditional Yogurt" has arousedthe attention of many dairy enterprises.Some have followed suit and flooded themarket with similar prdducts.
A wave of nostalgia has also sweptthe cosmetic industry. Classic domesticbrands, such as Pehchaolin (Baiqueling),Yumeijing, Fenghua and Miracle (Miqi),have risen from the ashes and created abuzz on the Internet. On trade websiteslike Taobao and Paipai, many onlinestores sell only these traditional Chinesebrands. Miss Zhou reflects on consumerattraction to the products, "I used Pehchaolin and Yumeijing when I was achild. Their effects are still good afterall these years, but it has been so hardto find them." She shared her 20-yearexperience with netizens discussing oldChinese brands on BBS, and observed,"Many friends of mine have started touse these classical domestic cosmeticsagain."
Romanticizing the past works well forentertaimnent products as well. Audience shares of TV series such as GoldenWedding, Wang Gui and An Na, Bloomof Youth, Romantic Life, and CorpsYears have reached record highs. In theyear 2010, director Zhang Yimou’s newmovie Under the Hawthorn Tree soldover RMB 160 million, setting a newbox-office record for art films in China.A netizen posted, "There hasn’t been amovie that touched my heart in years-not since I cried while watching TheBridges of Madison County on a planebut Under the Hawthorn Tree made mecry in public for the second time. Thismovie has magic that it awakens the ageof innocence in everyone." Meanwhile,Echoes of the Rainbow and Post-8o alsomoved many audiences to tears.
Liu Tao, a professor of advertisementscience at Henan Agricultural University,explains that the einotion of nostalgiais a longing for the past, and it can easethe pain brought about by the consignment to oblivion of everything one hasknown. Transferred to consumption, animpulse to buy will ensue. Manufacturers can draw customers with appropriateadvertising and marketing that triggersthe many hidden cravings concealed by arememberance of things past.