The Swiss watchmaker Swatch has apologised and removed an advert featuring a model pulling the corners of his eyes, after the image prompted accusations of racism and calls for a boycott on Chinese social media. Internet users heavily criticised the “slanted eye” gesture made by the Asian male model as racist. In a post on Instagram and the Chinese social media platform Weibo on Saturday, Swatch acknowledged the “recent concerns regarding the portrayal of a model” in the advert and said it had deleted the promotional material worldwide. “We sincerely…
Tag: Life and style
The rapid rise of Luckin coffee: is this the end of the Starbucks supremacy?
Name: Luckin. Age: Seven – it was founded in October 2017. Appearance: 20,000 locations and counting. Locations doing what? Serving coffee. It’s a giant coffee chain. Oh yeah? If it’s so giant, how come I’ve never heard of it? Because it started in China. Isn’t China better known for tea? Yes, but they have drunk a lot more coffee since Starbucks opened its first outlets there in 1999. Luckin overtook Starbucks as China’s biggest coffee chain in 2023. If Chinese people want Chinese coffee, so be it. It’s a big…
‘Mom, am I the missing twin?’: the story of two babies separated by the Chinese state – and their emotional reunion
One night in September 2009, a widowed mother in Texas named Marsha was up late at her kitchen table, scrolling through correspondence, when she opened an email that would change her family’s life. It was from an acquaintance who was sharing a newspaper article – as it happens, an article I’d written from China – about government officials who had snatched children from impoverished families to supply the lucrative adoption market. The article featured an interview with a nine-year-old girl speaking wistfully about her identical twin who had been taken…
The sweet story of how a chance meeting led to Australia’s ‘old baby cake’ going viral on Chinese social media
When Paul Adam sees a long queue forming in front of his patisserie in the northern suburbs of Sydney, “That’s when I know I’m going to start working hard,” he says. In the weeks since one of his cakes went viral across several Chinese social media platforms, that has been nearly every day. The gluten-free hazelnut, meringue and chocolate mousse cake, with lorikeets stencilled in icing sugar on top, is, by Adam’s estimation, “only a cake” but it seems to mean much more to the customers queuing for it, some…
Yolo review – smash-hit Chinese boxing drama is a tale of personal transformation
Jia Ling writes, directs and stars in this boxing drama with a twist: there’s not really very much boxing in it. In this smash hit from China, we’re introduced to Du Leying (Jia) as a no-hoper; the perspective, in fact, of the supporting characters and the film itself is that it would be hard to imagine a bigger loser. She’s 32, lives at home, doesn’t adhere to traditional beauty norms (particularly as regards body weight), and her boyfriend is cheating on her with her best friend. When this affair is…
The Last Year of Darkness review – candid and intimate dive into Chinese club culture
Ben Mullinkosson is a film-maker and skateboarder from Chicago who brings an effortless, freewheeling intimacy to this immersive and sensual study of the underground club scene in Chengdu in central China. The title is enigmatic, but it seems to refer to the imminent closure of a club called Funky Town where his subjects have been hanging out; the darkness is the club’s darkness, which is enfolding and welcoming and reassuring, a neon-detailed night in which nothing matters but youth, beauty and the pleasure of the moment. Mullinkosson is utterly at…
My path to inner peace, via ‘Dalifornia’ in southwest China
Nine months after I moved to Dali, in the autumn of 2020, I finally set off to climb Cangshan, the high mountain which towers over this valley in southwest China. Each morning, I had looked up at the top of its imposing ridge line, 2,000m above the village of Silver Bridge, north of Dali’s historic old town, that for a while I called home. Eighteen glacial gorges separated the 19 peaks, each carved by a running stream. Ever since moving there, I had fantasised about standing on top of that…
A Christmas that changed me: I dragged myself to work – and had one of the best moments of my life
I spent the Christmas of 1998 in Wuhan, working as an English teacher. Everyone has heard of this Chinese city now, thanks to coronavirus, but back then the name meant nothing to much of the world. My knowledge was certainly scant when I arrived in February of that year. Nothing could have prepared me for the heat and humidity of a Wuhan summer, and the odour of fermented tofu deep-frying outside the university gates at 7am certainly took a while to get used to. Ten months later, however, I’d got…
South-east Asia’s quirky, sweary shopping stars cashing in on livestream selling
There are times when other customers browsing the malls in Gifu city, Japan, seem to wonder why Kenneth Gongon Watanabe is buying so many items, and why he is talking so energetically on his phone. But the goods in his trolleys – which can range from hoards of shoes and anime socks, to stacks of Japanese sweets and matcha latte powders – are not for him. They’re actually being bought by dozens of customers in Watanabe’s home country, the Philippines, who follow live on Facebook as he browses the shops.…
Full-time children: the twentysomethings who may never grow up
Name: Full-time children. Age: 21 and up. Appearance: Coming to a doorstep near you. What kind of job is “full-time child”? Just what it sounds like: being someone’s child, the whole time. How does one get into that sort of game? By default. By default? By having no other role or function in life. I don’t understand. Full-time children are young adults who, finding no suitable employment, simply move back in with their parents to retrain as offspring. And what does that entail? Hanging out, eating free food, accepting handouts.…