From Douyin to Xiaohongshu, two faces of "county town aesthetics"

Explore the social significance behind "county town aesthetics" and analyze the two different expressions on Douyin and Xiaohongshu and their cultural roots. Recommended for readers who are interested in contemporary youth culture and social aesthetics to learn more.

1. "Frustrated Youth" and "Fashionable Aunt"

The recently popular "county literature" may be something that can break down the defenses of young people in Beijing, Shanghai, Guangzhou and Shenzhen as well as young people in county towns. It does not refer to a literary theme, in fact, it is actually a visual style, and sometimes it is more appropriate to call it "county aesthetics."

Frustrated youth and fashionable aunt are the two most popular topics. Even further, the former mainly comes from Douyin, and the latter mainly comes from Xiaohongshu.

The former are like the confused young people in the films of Jia Zhangke and Lou Ye, who are at a loss given by the times. In photos, they often look into the distance with empty eyes, showing ambitions and sentimentality that are incompatible with the background.

Common elements are handsome men and beautiful women with subtle makeup, and clothing that tends to be from the migrant worker period of the 1980s and 1990s. The colors are darker and lighter in saturation, and are matched with some old buildings and street scenes that were common in the 1980s and 1990s.

One comment on TikTok sums it up as "Find a pair of handsome guys and beautiful girls, put on Sima faces, stand under the overpass and take some gray-toned photos. Congratulations, you've won a set of county town literary photos with millions of likes on TikTok." At the same time, the background music must be sad, and there is a 90% chance that it will be "unable to get out, unable to see through."

The latter was also called "county town socialite" some time ago, which was an imagination of independent women more than ten years ago. During the Chinese New Year, they carried large and small bags of new things from the city, wore fashionable clothes that no one had ever seen, and mingled with children.

In the past, fashionable aunt was a symbol of independence, but now she has become a representative of a declaration.

Her image is brighter than the former, but her clothes are often tacky, such as the noble fur coat that can't support her aura, the colorful business suit with shoulder pads, the colorful suspender skirt, the plastic-textured sandals, etc.

We often see them weaponizing sexiness and beauty, preferring images and descriptions like "madwoman in the attic", and showing their individuality and strength by achieving the freedom of self-dressing. But sometimes the sense of refinement is so strong that it has nothing to do with the county town.

But the two have more in common than differences, the most prominent of which is a stubborn desire to transcend the environment. The former expresses this with drooping mouth corners and tears in the eyes, while the latter uses clothing and makeup to show strength and sexiness, thereby showing distance from the environment.

2. Return to daily life and advocate cheapness

The background of "county literature" often reveals an anti-refinement and anti-consumerism tendency, embracing affordability and cheapness. Compared with higher-definition camera shooting, this type of photos often use CCD and built-in flash that have been around since the beginning of the century. The poor pixels and the accompanying retro filters are just right. The shooting backgrounds are often vegetable markets, parks, dusty streets, crowded service trade markets, and other daily life scenes that are usually not related to "filming".

Because of the chaotic elements and messy background, it is far from the well-maintained Internet celebrity attractions, and has nothing to do with exquisiteness. But everything in these daily scenes has more friendly, more energetic, and more lovely qualities. The muddy dirt in the vegetable market is brought by the vegetables just picked from the fields, the fitness equipment in the colorful park has traces of people coming and going, and the dusty streets where electric vehicles travel freely are proof of the wild growth and vitality of the community.

They also have no qualms about telling everyone the prices of the clothes they wear. Unlike fashion bloggers who proactively post famous brand names, they often show a mirror-reversed screenshot of a Pinduoduo purchase (because directly posting a link will be restricted, and without taking a screenshot to point the way, it may not be found).

Here, cheap and affordable are positive words. To be honest, the total cost of my outfit is no more than 100 yuan, and I feel more relaxed walking on the streets of the county town. The same applies to whether to wear makeup or not. The simplicity of not dressing up at all and the excessive heavy makeup both imply the various restrictions and cheapness of the county town. Not dressing up is because there is not much need in the familiar society, and people will see each other if they look up or down; dressing up is the shame of self-dressing in this atmosphere and the urgent need to get out of it, as well as the accumulation and excessive effort that is ultimately presented by limited knowledge.

But this kind of simplicity and beauty is also what they admire. The cheap beauty of small places is also full of life, and perhaps presents life itself more realistically than exquisiteness. In this sense, "county literature" at least adds a narrative that advocates returning to daily life and real life, and tells the existence of those who are not satisfied with their lives outside the mainstream narrative.

3. Imagine the county town and find a chance to breathe

In fact, while "county town literature" is popular, some critical voices have always existed in parallel. These criticisms have more or less revealed the weakness of the core of this style.

A typical and personal criticism is that I am a child from a county town, and I never felt that my county town was so pathetic and dilapidated, and I felt offended by being "represented". This actually reflects the problem of unbalanced development in the process of modernization. Different county towns have different faces and different levels of development. Focusing on dilapidated and damp alleys and calling it "county town literature" has silenced some real county towns.

Another criticism points out the floating undertones of this style:

"People who lack experience of the lower classes of the county town only imagine the county town as a place of truth, goodness, beauty and endless money. In reality, the county town is only a more cruel society, with unimaginable prices and inferior goods, complicated human relationships, mouths opening and closing, face projects, necessities that money can't buy, and your dignity, freedom and justice are bound to be displayed on the shelf where money can't buy goods."

Whether imagining the county town as a place of greater bitterness and hatred, or describing it as a beautiful world with a slow pace and stable life, moving back and forth between the two extremes, the entire spectrum is fabricated out of thin air.

An appropriate metaphor is that "county town literature" is another kind of Orientalism. It seems to be studying and describing objective things, but in fact, people who are not in the living situation are just gazing from a high position. For many people, the county town is a concept that is a mixture of imagination and reality.

"County Town Literature" is about finding fragments of memory, combining ancient county town elements with improvements and creations made from related works, to construct an aesthetic style that is not truly visible in the county towns of the 1990s and 2000s.

In addition to this popular image style on social media, there are also many films and TV shows that showcase the style of county towns. The high level of discussion of works focusing on county towns, such as "The Long Season" and "Moses on the Plains", is related to the style of county towns in the 1990s.

In recent years, with the rise of writers in Northeast China, the small towns in Northeast China in the 1980s and 1990s have become a widely read image. In the process of urbanization, some county towns have become cities. Some people lived in county towns as children, and when they grew up, they moved to cities with their parents or went to college. The fragmentary experience of county towns lingers in the minds of many Chinese people. On social platforms and various literary works, the image of county towns has been evoked and written again.

For many people, the concept of a county town is familiar. When talking about the 1990s, some people write "Flowering Flowers", but more people write "The Long Season". Young people wearing plain hoodies, long-sleeved T-shirts, and leather jackets look into the distance with unconvinced eyes, and behind them are crooked electric poles in the mossy alleys. The photos of frustrated young people in such county towns may be due to the frustration and unsatisfactory reality, and they are eager to return to a similar structure again, hoping to seek a little encouragement.

Or the blurred pixels, the crooked composition, the posture of squatting beside the flower bed, the padded professional suit, some nostalgia, but also exactly what some people's mothers looked like when they were young. The county town referred to in county town literature is the place where some people set out, a harbor, a childhood and a hometown that no longer exists.

The desire to return to the county town of the millennium, the border between reality and the future in the process of modernization, is perhaps more like finding a safe place through the filter of warmth rather than indulging in the past.

Dongshan, a photographer, shared with me: "I think county town literature is essentially similar to Hong Kong-style movies and Hong Kong-style photos. County town-style photos are actually an imaginary small town style from 20 years ago, which is a constructed atmosphere that does not exist."

Although it is suspended, the core is actually nostalgia. "But I also came from a small place. The small place in my memory has its own ups and downs, its own happiness and sadness. When we watch the sunny days, we will be attracted by the hormones in it."

Author: Siweichi; Source public account: Wu Duidui (ID: 260746)