 Why is Japanese and Korean culture considered way cooler than Chinese culture? Doesn't everybody just think we look the same? What's going on, everybody? Welcome to the Hot Pop Boys. We got a spicy one from Reddit for you guys today. The name of the thread is, Why is Korean and Japanese culture perceived to be so much cooler than Chinese culture in the minds of many people? Yeah, David, I feel like this is a question that we have wondered for a lot of our life. And it's really funny that Reddit brought it up because there's a lot of answers. Everything ranging from the modern day answers to having to do with anything past the cultural revolution. Some people mentioned some ancient answers, but ultimately we also want to talk about like, what is like the future going to be like, you know? Yeah, and we got some anecdotes from our own experiences, guys. So if you like these type of controversial topics, you're not going to hear them anywhere else. But the Hot Pop Boys, make sure you like, subscribe, turn on your notifications, Andrew. Let's get into the modern day reasons. All right, David, what's the number one kind of like answer that can kind of sum up why Japan and Korea are considered cooler than China right now? Well, they are way tighter with the US and Western society that has dominated the world for the past like 300 years than China is like way tighter. In fact, you can almost view in modern day 2022 China as oppositional to that. So one's basically homies with the US and one's almost like the rival enemy of the US. Now we're going to break down the mechanics behind all this. Okay, so Andrew, when you're the homies of the big dog, Andrew, there is something called cultural reciprocity. Now cultural reciprocity means that the US is the big dog, right? Or UK, you know, UK to Japan, the US to Korea. So they're sending over like code words, right? Like a coding language. And there's the streams of the coding language going over there to be learned. Then they're putting it through their local processing plant. And if they learn it good enough, Andrew, Japan and Korea can then produce products using the Western coding language that even the West is impressed by. Where the West is like, I never even thought of that. You guys took what we taught you guys and made something even cooler because you guys mixed it with some other stuff. Well, for example, let's just use Japanese car brands. Toyota, Honda, obviously cars were invented in America by the Ford company. But then Japan over time was able to develop these super reliable, super efficient cars, better and more efficient than American cars. And then also now, obviously K-pop, which is a product of kind of fusing, you know, Western pop music and styles with Korean culture. I mean, the Korean language, you know, a lot of people, they can't really tell the difference between certain styles of songs. So that K-pop is being sold back to America in the form of like BTS. Andrew, you cannot also forget about cartoons and comic books over there becoming animes and mangas. And of course, you know, some AV. Oh, oh, oh. Oh, also, I would say the Korean corn dogs, for example, such a blue collar American food, something that literally not even every American eats, but just like it's just carnival food. But now it's being sold back to America as a Korean corn dog because it's like upgraded. It's like the souped up super hot dog. Yeah. So basically when Korea and Japan are essentially like the little homies of the U.S., right? Not only are those pipelines to have cultural reciprocity be open, but I do think the one thing where you could argue is they still had to have that cool processing plant to even like process the coding language once they got it. So I think long story short to compare it to the situation that China's in, Andrew, not only are those pipelines way thinner and way more filtered, but you could argue the processing plant has just a lot more restrictions and you could even argue that the ancient processing plant is not as cool, you know, at a baseline to even spit back the products in cultural reciprocity. So obviously we can get into all these like, you know, sort of like communism and the great firewall and, you know, the way they censor things and disappear, fam bing bing or whatever. You know what I mean? Like we don't need to get into all that. I think all that stuff is like, you know, there's like 500 other channels you could get to that. So let's move on to Andrew, some of the more ancient reasons that were not discussed in the red of threat. I would say that even speaking on the ancient side, like the historical side, obviously there was a period starting back in the 1400s called the isolation period of China, where basically they closed themselves off to the rest of the world being like, Hey guys, we're pretty advanced. We're pretty good on our own. We don't need nobody else. We don't need to go off and explore it. And during that time, they actually fell behind in development because they were so just enclosed and they didn't see like other influences and how other countries were developing. And that is actually one of those like kind of stains in Chinese history when they look back and say like, oh, we could have made progress back then when everybody else was. Yeah, I think that China is a much, much older civilization. I do think Japan is also quite old, but obviously Korea not as old. But I would say that, you know, Japan and Korea, they almost have the mindset of like the kids. And you know, the kids always want to be up with the cool trends, but the mom or I think you could even on a timeline historical level argue that China, Andrew, is the grandma of the of the like Confucianism or the East Asian cultures. You know what I mean? In terms of the, you know, the other cultures took a lot of ancient influence. But the grandma cultures, Andrew, it's almost like your grandma, that's why the cool viral grandmas on TikTok always like get spread around so much because your grandma's probably not like that. Well, because grandma's literally represent the ancient culture. So if you're talking about China is like, let's say the grandmother culture, but then Japan might have been the grand kid or the kid, and then Korea is definitely the grand kid. Yeah, yeah, yeah, I would say like there feels like Korea is like that grand kid who joined like an American frat and is like super pumped up and just super cool right now. Yeah. The super buff Asian guy in the white frat and then Japan's almost like the genius kid who kind of tested in the MIT but could be a little twisted. Anyway, guys, that's a video for another time. I think, Andrew, there's some Wu and Wen masculinity things. I think that, you know, that's like a whole another thing. It switches off every 500 years. But like China right now, Andrew is in a period where they like they really think like the cool scholar. It's almost like the librarian from Buffy the vampire slayer or valuing Q and James Bond actually over like James Bond himself because he's too Wu and like brutish. I think that that's obviously something that doesn't fully vibe with the West. I think in Japan and Korea, they have a little bit more of a balance. I'm not saying that they don't have the Wen side to which is more K-pop, but they definitely got the Wu side to which is more like K-dramas. Yeah. And I do think it's changing a little bit in China, especially with like the Wolf Warrior type movies where they're trying to have like they're going through their Chinese Rambo stage right now. Yeah, they're trying to show a little bit. Obviously, the whole policy of like make Chinese men like I guess men again kind of thing, you know, how they're like banning certain like Hey, man, we're not supporting. We just saying. Yeah. No, I'm just saying what's going on in China. I'm just saying that it's it's like kind of being more of a balance now. I think for a while though, it was when because there was no need for the Wu because there weren't as many wars being fought. When it's wartime, you need Wu during, you know, you want to develop and develop scholar time. It's when. Yeah. Yeah. I think that if we the Wu had been more consistently cultivated though, I don't know if the Mongolians and Manchurians would have been able to like take over China all those times. David, you saying you saying they don't want to mess with the Wu? I actually think a lot of large countries suffer from a cool issue. If you look at Russia, that's the one theoretically white country that's like nobody like thinks is cool, right? Not considered cool. Mexico imports a lot more music culture from Puerto Rico and Columbia than it exports to Puerto Rico and Columbia, right? Jay Balvin and the Bat Bunny goes in. It's not like they're necessarily exporting, you know, the other music outside. Yeah, I would say India too. I mean, India is the next biggest country next to China and I wouldn't say that India pop is very popular outside of India or outside of like Hindi speaking areas to be honest. Heavy, heavy domestic consumption and even just so people can understand what we're talking about like outside of talking about these like crazy countries that like nobody really like thinks about on a cool level. Even Japan, their J-pop music, which is like 1970s, 80s British pop focused, influenced has been a struggle to export outside of like the video game geek world because it's so domestically consumed. It's not necessarily necessarily in step with global charts. The way K-pop is almost like really in step with global trends like, you know, we have auto tune hip hop R&B in America. You're gonna have auto tune R&B hip hop in Korea. Yeah, I mean, I think again, like there's so many historical reasons that I beg people to never like overlook history. Maybe history should not define you, which I don't think it does necessarily, but it for sure gives a lot of context for modern day decisions because you have to understand countries are not like individual human beings that are like, oh, you know, I did that back in high school and I'm past that now. It's like, no, countries like they really remember this stuff and they really hold on the history, especially these world leaders. But David, let's move on to like talking about the future. Like the future predictions. How do you feel personally about it? I'll share my own feelings. Go. Yeah, I'm going to get into the future predictions first and then I'm going to get into some micro anecdotes that I have about this my future predictions are pretty much that you know, obviously China has like the worst pipelines for cultural reciprocity as well as a lot of restrictions on what it can produce internally, hip hop band, et cetera, et cetera, certain celebrities getting disappeared if they violate whatever, whatever. So I think that that whole process is going to be a work in progress and I it's going to be a slow climb up. So what are you saying? I can't imagine that it gets any lower than where it's at right now though. So like I know a lot of people are you are you giving up? No, no, no, no, no, Andrew. I'm not giving up because I still care sort of but I just I just am not counting anymore. I can't stop counting. I've stopped I don't want to make it a scorecard game. I know in Japan and Korean or they're still in they're like close enough where they're still like a scorecard like boom. I got anime. I got manga boom. I got kpop. I got kdramas boom. I got squid game boom. I got whatever if there was like tally marks in the cool game China's way behind now. I think you can argue what is cool and why do you want to be cool and why is only the West defining what is cool. But that's just where the word cool comes from. Well, they sort of like created the concept of literally remember growing up and her dad would be like cool. What is cool? Dude, they would that my dad literally said. I think he said, you know what I think is cool man. I think doing a math problem is cool. Like he's not wrong. He's not wrong. But in a Western sense, that's just simply not how the system works. We we have to go by just what is the current definition guys. I'm not saying it's right or wrong. I'm not saying you have to buy by this, but if you do play this cool game, there is one definition of cool. Yeah, and it is very difficult to understand. It's like almost like so culturally contextual. You have to grow up here to fully grasp it or just be from a certain generation. I'll say this. I think it's really interesting because on a micro level it probably does affect your life, but a lot of people don't like to think about it. You know what's interesting and I was talking to my Southeast Asian friends about like these battles between East Asians and they were like, yeah, yeah, yeah, that's kind of for you guys because I think a lot of people in America don't even know what a Southeast Asian is and we almost like have no hope to be a part of that battle. So to be honest, we lend about like 0% of our time thinking about it. Yeah, no, for sure. I think it is a conversation of media. I mean, especially when it comes to representation of Southeast Asians, like it's it's interesting because Southeast Asians actually have a sizable population in America of the Asians, but they're not well represented in the media. And that's partially because obviously East Asians have that motherland industry that's pushing everything, whether that's Korean movies from Netflix that are getting popular, the K-pop industry, obviously Chinese movies and the influence of that market and everything. So yeah, it is it is a East Asian argument. Now I just want to be honest like I'm not taking this argument like emotional. I think it's kind of a fun conversation to have. And I think that's why we have to have this conversation on video because a lot of people like feel this pain like deeper and maybe we have at certain times in our lives, but I'm just like, yo, we just got to talk about it now. This is like therapy for some people. Also, yeah, the truth is guys and we always say this like every other video, everybody lives in the micro, mid and macro differently. Everybody distributes their IRL daily life experiences at a different exposure level. Like some people are literally not tapping the macro at all. Andrew, I would say a lot of girls have this ability to disconnect to themselves from the macro and just focus on the micro. My last story is I'll say is that like I do think it affects Chinese guys in a sense that we're like always going to K-Town to party and though even in the city like New York City where there's like 4x the amount of Chinese, Koreans still have 4x the amount of clubs, which means statistically they're trying at least 8x harder to be cooler whether that's some combination of, you know, natural inertia plus their own, you know, willpower and drive. Andrew, 8x? Andrew, if somebody's out trying you at something 8x, that's pretty significant. Yeah, no, I mean, you could say simply that like Japan and Korea for whatever reasons they chose to put in the work and Chinese just don't try as hard. I would say my final clothing closing statement is just like, hey, I think will China or Chinese culture ever be cool like Korean or Japanese culture? I would say probably not for a long time, but Chinese culture is going to make its impact. I think that it's going to be cool in its own way depending on what you value like if you value like the difficulty of learning Chinese or the beauty of the language, you know, that it is very beautiful but also very difficult at the same time. The complexities and the illustrious history things like that and you know the maybe the economic power behind it, which a lot of people that's why a lot of people are learning Mandarin is is almost more for the understanding of this even though they're kind of learning Mandarin almost like somebody studies like ancient Latin. It's not like for pop cultural coolness. It's for a little like hyper usefulness or a lingua franca. I will say this Andrew. I've flown Japan air. I've flown Korea air. I've obviously flown China air and I will say this. It's really funny. When you look at the foreigners on the flights to Tokyo, they always have a manga in their hands or something like that. When you look at people on the flights to Korea, they're always like Korea booze and they always have like k-pop or k-dramas on an iPad or the tablet and literally I's not making this up guys. You guys might think I'm making this up. I've seen mad foreigners on China Airlines Andrew with Dungeons & Dragons books like they have a love for just like ancient like super old things from like 500 600 years ago like esoteric things. I do think the people who dive into Chinese pop culture very deeply are different than those we a booze and Korea booze. Yes, but yeah, I mean, let me know in the comments down below what you guys think because I didn't we didn't want to list all the reasons because there's a lot of them but you let us know what you think about this question. Is it important to be cool? Is it important to be Western cool? How does it affect your life and what are the reasons why Chinese culture is not considered as cool as Japanese of Korean and I think there's a lot of great sub discussions that we could have had that stemmed out of this whether that's, you know, Southeast Asians feeling like they're left out of the macro Asian narrative or just like a bunch of like crazy ways that people deal with, you know, their macro culture not being considered cool and trying to adapt to other things. Oh, also another interesting thing is Andrew Andrew if you are a young kid and you want to be a superstar in Asia right now Andrew, you better learn Korean because that almost became like the NBA of Asia. Yeah, you know what I mean? Like if you're a tie and you want to be like a global pop star, I hope you learn Korean and go to Korea and get training. It's not saying that you'll never release an album in Thai, but like your first couple albums are going to be in Korea. Yeah, or be a Westernized elite kid from Indonesia. Anyways guys, we're going to just end this video here. Thank you so much for watching the hot pop boys and please let us know your thoughts down below. Until next time we out. Peace.