Editor's Note:

As we are about to bid farewell to the year 2022, a year where we lived through happiness and accomplishments although life was accompanied by a pandemic, the Global Times staff of life and culture will share our observations on the cultural life of the whole year to offer a platform to remember what the country has accomplished in the cultural sector and the cultural life that we, the ordinary people, have enjoyed, and to help everyone get ready to embrace the New Year with hope and strength.

Scenes from The Scroll of Ten Years animation Photo: Courtesy of Amateur Human Observation Animation Group

No matter if it is a brooch designed after the art of the 1,500-years-old Longmen Grottoes or an AI artwork inspired by China's earliest atlas, these novel creations were only drops in the ocean that was all the cultural products that followed the "China chic" trend in 2022.

Also known as guochao, the trend is growing in diverse fields such as design, art, animation and handicrafts. No matter how wild one's creativity is, the cultural legacies of China, be they time-honored or newly-developed, are intrinsic to this trend. Just like a "book of sand" containing endless possibilities, China chic is a new path for tradition.

Keeping culture at your side

Bringing "widely-known Chinese historical icons into people's everyday lives" is a popular China chic theme, Wang Xingkui, a creative industries expert, told the Global Times.

The Remaining Charm of Longmen was a 2022 product-design project artist Jing Zhihao dedicated to the Longmen Grottoes, a UNESCO World Heritage Site in Central China's Henan Province.

Compared to standard souvenirs, Jing's set of brooches are far more amusing. He designed them based on a "Buddha foot" and a "gate" he saw in the grottoes and gave them interesting names based on Chinese idioms "Better to hug Buddha's foot than do nothing at all," which means putting in a last ditch effort and "Success through an Exam."

Jing told the Global Times that such designs can cater to people's "modern tastes," and that China chic is never about repeating history, but "rejuvenating" it and making it more in line with the times.

Just like individual designers like Jing, established cultural institutions such as the Palace Museum have also joined the China chic trend. Back in 2014, an article published by the museum, Emperor Yongzheng: Think He is Cute?, went viral online. The success of the article inspired the institution to be creative with more of its historical IPs.

The museum's new efforts were so successful that it expanded beyond standard souvenirs such as key rings to digital products such as online games and even skins for digital keyboards.

"This strategy makes solemn Chinese history more approachable for young consumers while also allowing young people to promote it by posting fun designs on social media," Zhu Xun, a marketing expert, told the Global Times.

Recently, Xinhua Net published the China Chic Young Consumer Insight Report 2022. According to the report, 74 percent of China chic consumption was made by people in their 20s to mid-30s. Young consumers today value aesthetics, technological innovation and emotional value more than they do price.

"It is all about having a piece of Chinese culture with you every day," Zhu noted.


A glimpse of the future

Trendy designs have also been turning to ancient art styles to tell modern stories.

The Scroll of Ten Years includes four animated scrolls inspired by Chinese classic art works such as Thousands Miles of Mountains and Rivers and the colored silk painting Picture of the Ode of the River Goddess. Each of the scrolls tackles different subjects such as modern buildings and ancient cultural wisdom.

The animation team put remarkable figures like pulmonologist Zhong Nanshan and agronomist Yuan Longping and dependable Chinese "yellow-suit" deliverymen together with classic depictions of mountains and clouds.

The scrolls have received a total of 40 million views online. The animation team's two core figures, Li Xin and Xue Gaoshou, told the Global Times that the familiar figures represent a shared Chinese moment and boost "China pride."

Some young designers, like Liu Jiayu and Tang Ziwei, are taking their "made-in-China" designs abroad.

On Ebay, fashion designer Tang Ziwei's T-shirts sporting images of the Chinese aircraft carrier Shandong became the latest favorite among global military culture fans.

Cultural creative products Photo: Courtesy of  Rongzao

Inspired by China's first self-designed and self-built domestic aircraft carrier, Tang's iconic navy bomber jacket has been trending among a wide arrange of consumers on domestic e-commerce platform Taobao since 2020, with netizens commenting, "I wear what I feel proud of."

"It is no longer about pleasing Western audiences with formatted Chinese elements like fans or red buildings, but showing the range of China's development," Tao Daliang, a cultural creator, told the Global Times.

At the 59th Venice Art Biennale, which kicked off in Italy in April 2022, Chinese artist Liu Jiayu brought her Streaming Stillness installation work to Europe. The cutting-edge 3D projection mapping work, based on the earliest Chinese atlas The Map of the Tracks of Yu, introduced long-standing Chinese wisdom to overseas audiences.

Working on developing his own digital video project showing the past, current and imagined future of the Guangdong-Hong Kong-Macao Greater Bay Area, Tao borrows "the book of sand" analogy to describe where China chic may go.

"Our inspiration will continue as long as our culture advances with the times. It is like a Chinese cultural 'book of sand' with endless pages."