If you want to be a certain kind of person, the right way is to try to be that person, and the easiest way is to pretend to be that person. Those faint whiffs of falseness seem harmless, and so they spread more easily.
Sometimes you have to admire those who make up paragraphs –
The leader told a joke that was not funny as usual, and everyone laughed as usual, but Wang Gong was the only one who did not laugh. The leader wondered: Why are you not laughing?
The first time I saw this, I was able to get to the bottom of it.
We seem to be surrounded by people who are always “pretending”.
Those who don’t have money pretend to have money, and those who have money pretend to be aristocrats.
Businessmen pretend to be grandchildren in front of officials, and corrupt officials pretend to be clean in front of the people.
And then there are people, like Wang Gong and his colleagues in the paragraph, who pretend to be happy and respectful, who are not hurting anyone, but just want to protect themselves, and have to be wrapped up in this “masquerade”. The lucky ones, like Wang Gong, will have the day to take off their masks; the unlucky ones, perhaps, will have to wear them for the rest of their lives.
In 1818, Qing Dynasty writer Li Ruzhen’s novel “The Mirror and the Flower” was released. The first of these is the “two-faced country” in which people have two faces, one in front of the other, but the other is very ugly and vicious, hideous and nasty, which cannot be easily revealed. And especially strange is that the more the front of that face is righteous, good-looking, kind-hearted or innocent, the back of that face is more obscene and treacherous, evil shape. Therefore, the two faces of the nation invariably wear a special hat to cover them, called the Haoran scarf.
A 200-year-old novel with the same satirical intensity of reality.
Normal social etiquette, normal learning is certainly not a masquerade; a masquerade is an illusory self-imagination, a forced self-play, a self-protection under authority.
What is more fake than fake is fake face. The word “fake” is the greatest harm to Chinese society.
When the fake becomes the surface, when the real becomes the undercurrent, the word harmony will also fade away.
The images on the cover of this issue and in the cover story are from the Mask series by the famous painter Mr. Zeng Fanzhi, thanks to his permission to use them.
The Guide to the “Fake” People
If you want to be a certain kind of person, the right way is to try to be that person, and the easiest way is to pretend to be that person. Those faint whiffs of fakeness seem harmless, and so it spreads more easily.
By Yan Xiaoqing, China Weekly
An hour later, it was time for Zhu Ping’s “sisterhood”. This weekend, they met at NearbyTheTree Cafe in Sanlitun.
Changing into her new Chloe halter dress, Zhu Ping took a spin in front of the mirror. She was happy with the look. She was very satisfied.
The only thing Zhu Ping wasn’t happy about was that she had to take the subway from her apartment in Shuangjing to the party.
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The resonance of a small white collar
Zhu Ping is an employee of a foreign bank, and she has classified herself as a small capitalist since the day she started working.
“Well-dressed, aloof, financially independent, with a fixed social circle and high taste in life.” is her definition of petty.
“I’m not sure I’m going to be able to do that.
Zhu Ping will solidify these definitions in her own life. She doesn’t have a lot of clothes in her closet, but every single one of them is designer clothing in premium fabrics. Every weekend, she goes to a cafe for a “sisterhood” meeting. “The company’s main focus is on the development of a new product, which is a new product for the company.
Zhu Ping says she is very frugal. Her salary is more than 6,000 a month after taxes, which is not high in Beijing, so she can’t spend a lot of money, and saving money is what allows her to be organized and enjoy a high quality of life. Even if Zhu Ping feels that the subway is not worthy of her new $3,000 dress, she will not be ruthless enough to take a taxi. In Beijing, Zhu Ping hardly ever took a taxi.
Now when she returns home for New Year’s Eve, Zhu Ping takes her family down to the restaurant to eat. She’s not used to drinking the plain water at home, so she has to buy bottled water to drink, and she’s not used to using the squatting pits in the bathroom. The students in the hometown often say, “Xiao Zhu has made a fortune.”
Zhu Ping took the trouble to run her life so that she could look more like a petty. “I feel a sense of accomplishment when my classmates gather around me and ask about this and that.” But Zhu Ping didn’t tell her classmates back home that when she first started working, she didn’t even eat lunch in order to save money to buy a bag because it was expensive to eat lunch near the CBD. These things, only in the most private sisterhood, they will speak out self-deprecation, and then comfort each other.
People in different positions will find a posture that suits them, and often, people in their positions can easily get lost.
For example, in the fashion world, it’s all about the “rich”.
The editor of a famous fashion magazine said that her circle is a circle of people who are more interested in food than in clothes than in men.
There’s a story in the circle.
A beauty editor in her twenties was in the tiktok for high-end cosmetics, saying she didn’t use MaisondelaVANILLELaMaisondelaVANILLEMer, except for Evian, which is an expensive cosmetics brand for middle-aged and above, not at all suitable for young girls.
There are some people who use this segment to satirize fashion editors, who are paid thousands of dollars to pretend to be noblewomen with brand name giveaways.
“We get a lot of opportunities to go abroad, to shows or dinners. Some editors who are new to the industry get lost. They take photos abroad, five-star hotels, and fashion dinners, bragging about the luxurious, high-quality life they lead, and even get lost in all that luxury, thinking that such a life is theirs. In fact, it is very hard to be a fashion journalist, there is no such thing as a slow pace and enjoyment, experience these high quality just work.” The above fashion magazine editor said.
In fashion circles, even if people can see that someone is pretending to be noble or rich, few people will say so. “There are times when posturing is a special need in our industry and people are used to it.”
“In fact, whether it’s pretending to be cynical, pretending to be petty, pretending to be literary or pretending to be aristocratic, it’s a personal choice, and it’s harmless. But there are more and more ‘pretend’ of all kinds, and the brothers around us always like to put themselves on a certain position in life. I just want to satirize them and give them a wake-up call.” In July 2010, Jay set up a group on Renren to give his brothers a wake-up call.
A guide to pretending
Like Jay’s group, there are a variety of “pretending”-related groups popular on social media sites.
The hottest of these groups, where members like to tease and troll about the costumes around them, are the “costume guides.
“Pretending to be garlic in Starbucks”: “Pretending to be a person of status at Starbucks is a form of performance art. Pretending to be garlic is art too! First you have to bring a magazine, what? The Reader? According to the bible of cheapskate style, even magazines like National Geographic and
TIME (the current affairs magazine Time) only reveal your vulgar little middle-class style, so at least take a copy of Economist (the business and financial magazine with a strong position, The Economist) …… “
“Thirteen People Must See,” “Ten Tips for Pretending to be Petty,” “Can You Drink Coffee, White Collar,” “The Fake Fan’s Guide,” “The Laws of Nobility,” “How to Pretend to be an Economist,” “The American Guide,” “The Britannia Guide,” “Building an International Celebrity,” all sorts of guides are in vogue.
These guides are not only all-encompassing, but also detailed.
Forum discussions like this are common –
The owner: “I actually saw a silly x playing classical music on a cool music box today.”
First floor: “You should tell him not to use such a folk software as Cool Me.”
Floor 2: “Dude must have gone to Bility without studying the guide seriously.”
The owner replied to the second floor: “What’s Bility?”
There are many replies downstairs: petty, non-mainstream, niche, yangchunbaixue, alpine flow, literary, cynical ……
After opening the “pretend” group, Jay found that it wasn’t just the guys around him who were pretending.
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“In the age of the Internet, there are all kinds of ways to spread information that show girls a lot of unrealistic things, sports cars, champagne, coffee shops. The girls’ values have been led away by these things, and as a guy, the only way to get the girls’ attention is to make yourself more in line with their ideas, so you have to act.” Jay now feels sad and helpless to “pretend”, “who does not pretend ah, more or less all will pretend.”
The Art of Pretending is a masterful book that teaches the art of unobtrusive pretending. The author, Lawrence Whitted Fry, had no idea that this book, originally intended as a satire, would become an overnight bestseller in petty circles. The turning point was the introduction of the book to China by Southern Publishing.
Lawrence breaks down “pretending” into 18 areas: movies, books, plays, and girlfriends. The most important thing in the business of pretending is one’s own acting style, and after that, one just needs to expand one’s profession and eventually become seemingly omniscient.
Lawrence said “The Art of Pretending” was originally written to satirize some facetious pretenders. “Sometimes pretending can lead to serious consequences. But pretending to be a highly cultured person or a hipster who adheres to an avant-garde lifestyle is foolproof.”
Jay says, “The ludicrous ‘high point’ of the guide is to bring together the little pretenses of many people in real life.” When it comes to why people pretend, Jay believes, “People are generally insecure and start out simply by pretending a little to cover up their weaknesses and shortcomings, and then over time start to exaggerate their strengths and strengths to lend a sense of vanity and superiority.”
From coffee to wine
To pretend, you have to use some kind of tool.
The “guide to pretending” makes sure to point out where to go to pretend to be a certain way. The “guide” will point out which places to go to in order to pretend to have a certain identity, such as Houhai, 798 and One Way Street Bookstore in Beijing, Tianzifang, 1933 Slaughterhouse Creative Park and Hongfang Cultural Art District in Shanghai, Yihe Road Public House District and Pioneer Bookstore in Nanjing, and Sha Mian and Xiaozhou Village in Guangzhou.
The most popular place to pretend to be petty is Starbucks.
There’s a saying in the top office buildings: “If I’m not in the office, I’m in Starbucks.” In China, Starbucks coffee is equated with the petty lifestyle.
In the early years of Hong Kong movies, white-collar workers liked to walk into the office with a cup of coffee.
“When they (coffee) arrived in Shanghai, it became almost fashionable. Sitting in a cafe, you can see the city’s style. There is a beauty sitting by the window with bright red lips, holding a newspaper at the tip of her ten fingers as she reads. And the ladies in the Shanghai cafes, that season, the color of the pop on the mouth is brown, like the color of an asthmatic who is ill when he is deprived of oxygen.” In “Coffee in the Morning, Tea in the Afternoon,” Chen Danyan sums up the metropolis where coffee was introduced to China in a fashionable way.
In many literary and film works, coffee is the perfect companion for white-collar, petty debutantes, and the aromatic drink is symbolized.
Carrying a cup of coffee is a gesture, the subtext being that you have a certain status and taste. The company’s main focus is on the development of a new product, the “new” product. The company’s newest product is a wine.
The Wine Guide advises newcomers: “Don’t worry at all about not knowing how to drink wine, because not many people really do, so pretend. You can’t read a wine label full of foreign languages, and you can’t read it at all, and you can just quote a wine that you can’t easily remember, as if you have tens of thousands of bottles of good wine hidden in your house.”
The New Yorker’s China correspondent, Yvonne Ou, described a father and son in the wine business in China. “In China, the consumption of wine as a luxury has a function of showing off.” The way importers deal with wine that doesn’t sell is to raise the price. “Consumption of foreign wine is a sign of moving into the middle class, and the reason Americans became enthusiastic about wine in the 1960s was also because TV commercials and jet service then sought to market wine as a so-called quality of life, and what’s happening in China today is probably the same old story.”
“I’m at the St. Estephe Grand Cru tasting,” “The tasting begins,” “The oak cellar tasting is good,” “The tiktok state of “people at the wine tasting” is indicative of the envy and jealousy of others.
At the end of the day, not only will others not be able to tell what is pretending and what is not, but they will not even be able to tell themselves.
If there is any harm, the harm of pretending points to yourself: if you don’t pretend well, you look ridiculous; if you pretend well, you are even more pathetic. What could be more loving than being yourself?