A new phrase is sweeping social media in China: “the aesthetics of economic upturn.”
While there are many semantic (money and taste), visual (lighting), and ‘anemoiac’ (‘good times’) similarities between this and the US centered ‘boom boom aesthetic’ as defined in 2024 by Sean Monahan; this local manifestation is specific to the nostalgia surrounding millennial era economic reform in China.
With that is a key differentiator, this connotes the aesthetic memory of the aspirational Chinese middle-class more than the gilded villains of ‘Boom Boom’s’ 1 percent – and traces its lineage to the class aesthetics of Tu Hao and Tu Wei, which we wrote about here.
