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PaperclipPerfector  5mo ago (text post)   27660 thread views

Culture War Roundup for the week of April 13, 2026

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Not who you're responding to but Li Gong in her day was enormously popular.

Now she is stunning.

As usual I have to insert that I cannot speak for Japan, but in my my experience Japanese don't make much commentary on Chinese models, actresses, etc. The same cannot be said about Koreans--meaning Koreans are regularly commented on as kirei or kawaii, or, since I am in Kansai, meccha kirei na hito. (Lit. very pretty person.) I guess there were some Taiwanese who were known --notably Vivian Tsu, though I haven't seen her around in years (probably because she's about 50 now and has no doubt had facial surgery which irrevocably altered the cute image she had in the 90s/2000s). Some women are probably part Chinese though, and just don't trumpet it over PR.

A side note: More buxom (by Asian standards) women are rarely top tier actresses or models here. They end up, in their brief career spans during youth, doing so-called "gravia" or semi nude books and calendars (グラビアアイドル is a term) or pornography. At times they transition to the mainstream (as in the late Ai Iijima) but that's almost unheard of.

"gravia"

The typical English transliteration is "gravure".

I probably knew that, thanks.

Well I don't know how sorry I feel for them. You can mourn a world where they feel that's their lot in life, but no one's twisting their arms (as far as I know) to take off their tops. It's lucrative in the short term and I think historically very much exposed the girl to abuse (from agents, scouts, management) as well as public ogling. In the sense that an unworldly or unsavvy young woman is duped (or drugged!) sure, it's too bad. It's potentially tragic. It's infuriating. But there's a naïvete that I find a bit cloying in certain girls, if it is naïvete at all--it might just be that they're disingenuous in the style of the burikko if you're familiar with that term. Add to that a certain different cultural approach to sex and it is what it is. Outright rape and abuse certainly does exist, though, and I suspect was more of a common routine in the past. If there's anything good about Post your own porn sites or camgirl type business, it's that to some degree the girls can have more control and not be gang raped on camera for ten grand or however much a pittance they have historically been paid.

Exceptions in my mind, or situations where I'd genuinely feel pity, are where the girl, due to her endowments and the sleaziness of those around her, was, at puberty, treated as a sexual plaything by a relative (fondled or worse) and internalized this pathologically. I've heard terrible stories.

Also curious how big a regional skew there is to this. Based on my travels in China I'd say that the Northern provinces tend to produce a higher average attractiveness for both genders, but a lot of that's the height and relative sturdiness.

I've always found it funny that mainland Chinese always refer to Shanghai "southern", when from a geographic perspective it's near the geographic latitude median and if accounting for population density, probably north of that. At least in my experience, the people from places like Jiangsu, Nanjing, Shanghai, Hangzhou seem a lot more similar to people from Beijing than than to people from Guangdong.

Isn't it usually along the Huai? That was the point of division for the Jin (晉) and the Sixteen Kingdoms, as well as the Southern Song and the Jin (金). This puts the entire Yangtze delta area unambiguously within the "South", rather than it being bisected by the Yangtze into North and South, at least if you follow the old course of the river before it became a Yangtze tributary.

(I realise I'm nitpicking and this comment is more being a pedant for the other commenters, as you clearly suggest that the Yangtze delta is "Southern" in another comment)

With a huge caveat that I'm not a historian, let alone a military historian of classical China, my understanding is that:

  1. Riverine warfare becomes much more important starting with the Huai, at least in comparison to cavalry warfare, and northern states tended to have significantly weaker maritime capabilities due to the lack of necessity for this in conquering the North China Plain;

  2. An inability to exert power along the Huai river and Huainan for a southern state means that a northern state is able to exert much more initiative in trying to attack the Yangtze proper;

  3. Conversely, being able to hold the Huai river/Huainan gives a lot more slack for a southern defender before an invader can reach the Yangtze.

So it is perhaps less that the Huai is exceptionally defendable as much as that the Huai river and gatekeeps the Jiangnan area; a northern state able to dominate the Huai river and its surrounds is more likely to be a credible threat to the south both in terms of maritime capability as well as logistically. On the other hand, a southern Chinese state that was capable of exerting power over the Huai would not necessarily find itself being able to dominate the plains north of it.

This is of course only part of it. As you know, another way of conquering a southern state based on the Yangtze is from upstream, as with the eventual conquest of Wu, or the fall of southern Song after the fall of Xiangyang.

Ah, I figured there must be a historic reason so I appreciate the added context. China is certainly not unique in this regard, considering the "Middle East" is in the western half of Eurasia and the "Midwest" is in the eastern half of the US.

So when Chinese say "southerners", are they referring to everyone from Shanghai to Hainan to Sichuan? If that's the case, are there real unifying cultural reasons or is this more of a definition by exclusion on the part of northerners to group "everyone that isn't us"?

Still as a Westerner I'd say the Northerners are more likely to turn my head aesthetically. I did a jiujitsu tournament in Beijing and I was shocked at my division having good numbers at 100+ KG and big, beefy local Chinese. Admittedly mostly from Tianjin or further North than that but compared to the largely Southern overseas diaspora it was a pretty big shock to me.

Zhang Ziyi

I had such a crush on her when I saw Crouching Tiger, Hidden Dragon and House of Flying Daggers as a child. Still would today, honestly.

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