"Cultured Youth": China's Hipster

Photo: Weibo.com

Hipsters are everywhere! Even in China, where they're called "cultured youths" ... or "dumbass youths," depending on whom you ask:

As the country’s middle class swells in number–and its people discover the pleasures and disappointments of a life spent pursuing material comfort–there comes the emergence of a distinct counter-culture. In Chinese, they are the wenyi qingnian, or wenqing for short, literally meaning “cultured youth.” It’s China’s closest equivalent to the alternatively beloved and reviled English word “hipster.”
What does a typical “cultured youth” look like? Baidu Baike, China’s version of Wikipedia, contains an entry on the term that quotes writer and musician Guo Xiaohan: “I’m a very typical wenyi qingnian. I like poetry, novels, indie music, European cinema, taking pictures, writing blogs, cats, gardening, quilting, making dessert and designing environmentally friendly bags.”

The photo above is of three cultured youths reading poetry aboard a Shanghai subway. Monica Tan of Tea Leaf Nation has the story: here.