While I was away, my hosts introduced me to a new (to me) genre of videos about day-to-day life in China. My favorites were food videos by an omnivorous Australian woman who lives in China, videos about bizarre beauty trends, and a day-in-the-life video that suggests that much of China is a weird Potemkin village, where things look normal, but lonely people sink into a world of meaningless (and economically crazy) consumerism.

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I’ll start with Blondie in China—real name Amy Lyons—the Australian woman who is now permanently based in China with her German husband. Some have accused her of being a Chinese propagandist, and she is, in a way, because her videos are positive and enthusiastic travelogues.

But her real focus is the food. Amy is a true omnivore whose very well-produced videos share her eating experiences across the length and breadth of China, including such delicacies as pigeon anus (which you’ll see beginning at 16:26 in the second video, which does promote the wonders of modern but is mostly about food).

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Before I get to the second video, though, here’s a typical example of Amy getting out of the big city and showing how real Chinese eat:

And now, here’s the pigeon anus video you’ve been waiting for:

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It’s fascinating to see how the people across that vast nation eat, including some exotic foods that would never make it onto an American plate. And while China does have American fast-food restaurants, it puts a unique spin on them:

What’s clear is that Amy is a woman with a fast metabolism, a high pain threshold, a low revulsion response, and a cast-iron stomach.

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Moving from exotic food to weird cultural practices, I recommend Wonny. I haven’t been able to learn much about him, but he seems to be a Chinese-language speaker and is very attuned to some of the oddities of modern Chinese influencer culture.

It appears that for many Chinese, who are lacking a traditional culture because the communists destroyed it, and who have money to spend, there are no brakes on their pursuit of the next beauty trend. While they may not be claiming, as Americans do, that they are the opposite sex, so they need to slice off their own genitals, that doesn’t mean the Chinese are immune to self-destructive trends of the kind we in America might call “looksmaxxing.”

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Wonny, in a series of startling videos that seem to be based on reality, talks about all sorts of deadly beauty trends, like waist shrinking, a plastic surgery empire to make everyone look like a woman who copies the Korean beauty aesthetic, and the maniacs who pursue the perfectly shaped mouth:

When the Chinese go weird, they go weird on an epic scale.

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Finally, there’s Mia Chen, who started video blogging to practice her English after she returned from a stay in Australia. Her videos are “day in the life” videos, and they show a culture that’s quite high tech, incredibly crowded, very lonely for people without family, and obsessed with acquiring garbagy geegaws because they’re too cheap to pass up (for example, five utility knives for $0.01, including shipping):

Whatever is keeping China’s economy afloat, it’s not the normal rules of supply and demand. Something is deeply off here.

Watching Chen’s video of a massively crowded yet disconnected society with a seemingly robust economy that generates goods without profits leaves one wondering how long China can keep going at this rate. In this way, China contrasts strongly with Singapore, which is a mostly Chinese island nation that is intensely business-focused while remaining tightly tied to recognizable market principles.

In any event, if you’re not planning to travel to China anytime soon, I highly recommend visiting it on YouTube. You’ll be fascinated by what you find.

Image created using AI.