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Not everything that comes out of China is tasteless, they produce plenty of good stuff.
Wukong and Marvel Rivals are good, though they're not my kind of game. There's Genshin Impact which is pretty good though again, gacha isn't my thing. How is that not tasteful? They made up a huge original fantasy world that captivates millions of people just like Star Wars. Mechabellum and Dyson Sphere Program are quite strong in the strategy genre, which is my thing. There are a bunch of Chinese mods for even fairly obscure games like Star Sector that got translated back into English for people for people to play here. You can't make game mods without craftsmanship, nobody does that seeking a profit.
And there are plenty of good translated Chinese novels, as mentioned downthread. The Three body problem series for one, how is that not tasteful or sophisticated? It dares to break some conventions and says that treehugging and spiritualism isn't such a great idea, let's embrace technology. It points out that men are getting more effeminate and soft over time and projects this trend into the future in a mildly unsettling way. It has a wide range of original ideas in an expansive universe, truly alien aliens...
China is a very big country! You can't judge the entire output of such a huge country from a single film. It's like watching the highest grossing American movie Avatar, and concluding that all American culture is CGI moralist slop with no deeper meaning or value than 'empathetic scientists good, mining and military bad'. And maybe there are a few exceptions.
If someone came to that conclusion about the US you'd assume they had an axe to grind against America. There is more to American film than Avatar, there is horror, comedy, superheroes, romance, oscarbait... There is more to American culture than one Hollywood film, as we all know because America projects their entertainment all around the world. Plus a huge number of non-Americans speak English.
China doesn't project its culture all around the world, much of it is never translated (especially smaller, niche products). So you see a bunch of slop like Honour of Kings (Chinese DOTA) and some gems and think 'oh it's mostly slop with some exceptions' because you never see the niche products in the first place. They're not vomited out at you by a gigantic global media system. You don't look for them and they might not be in English (or have a lame sounding name like Honour of Kings). You get the equivalent of Chinese Avatar and Call of Duty, never see Chinese Homestuck or Worm or Factorio. And you hear about some Chinese gems but never see a gem in your own preferred areas.
I think this is probably the answer in the thread that best captures what I think about this. China does produce a fair bit of good media of its own, it's just that it is exceptionally insular and most of the media that gets made domestically also gets consumed domestically. And once you add some cultural unfamiliarity into the mix as well as a Place, China effect that creates a bit of an aversion to most native Chinese media, virtually none of their media ends up making it into the Western cultural consciousness. It's basically the opposite of Place, Japan.
The funny thing is that our attitudes towards China used to be the opposite of what they are today; Western countries had a fascination with everything Chinese for a long while. Sinophilia basically infected the entire western world throughout the 17th and 18th centuries, to the point where Louis XIV adopted Chinese-style ball attire and ordered the Trianon de Porcelaine to be built on the grounds of Versailles, a building that was meant to emulate the Tower of Nanjing. Chinoiserie spread throughout Europe and hugely influenced the development of the Rococo style. Granted, the influences it included were not limited to Chinese culture, but in the main Chinese styles were the trends Western artists and architects borrowed from when developing their syncretic fusion.
Then the Opium Wars happened, disrupting trade, then after a brief resurgence in interest in Chinese culture, China became a Marxist state and self-mutilated a whole bunch during the Mao era. Meanwhile, the Perry Expedition (initially just meant to secure a safe harbour for America in the Pacific) opened up Japan and the Meiji Restoration propelled it at turbo speed into modernity. And now people seem to view everything Chinese as nothing but authoritarian PRC bullshit, whereas even after the stagnation of Japan's economy people seemingly can't get enough of Japanese culture, both traditional and modern - I mean, look at how many words for snow there are in Japan. And Korea, apart from a number of its pop culture exports, may as well not exist as a country in most people's minds - despite its recent modernisation, there's still this lingering idea of it as an insignificant Asian backwater in all other respects. Korean traditional culture? What is that? What are you even talking about?
It's fascinating to me how these fashion trends evolve overtime, and it seems like people's perceptions are very tenuously linked to the quality of that country's output at best. They reflect geopolitical relations more than they do any kind of impartial evaluation of quality. (It's not just media either, I've been on a bit of an East Asian travel kick recently and have visited some travel forums as a result, and it's this phenomenon on steroids; I could document some of the truly terrible takes I've heard but we'd be here for hours.)
I don't think this is really mysterious. The average Place, China is a dump. It's filled with ugly buildings, dirty streets and ramshackle infrastructure, and weathered, third world people with rotting teeth wearing tacky clothes. If you see a beautiful photo, it's either a place where nobody lives, a tourist destination kept clean by the government, an enclave for the very rich, or some combination. The "OMG cyberpunk!!" posts of China are mostly new construction covered in LED lights or monitors that, because TIC, will mostly be nonfunctional and/or falling apart in <5 years.
The average Place, Japan is mostly clean and recognizably first world. Its inhabitants dress in a minimal, classic style that is seen as sophisticated and somewhat retro by westerners (well, except the yanki, who dress like gopniks). The temples and shrines are real, living religious institutions. The buildings are small, quaint, but well-maintained, clearly cherished by the inhabitants. Photos of Place, Japan are of course posted selectively, there are ugly places in Japan, but the worst squalor in Japan is not even in the same league as average squalor in China.
As a kid I fell in love with Chinese history and culture. As a young adult, I moved to China only to find that Chinese culture had been killed in 1949 and some bleak, lower form of civilization which aped the worst impulses of the West was wearing "China" as a skinsuit. I found more of what I was looking for in Taiwan and HK (before the takeover), but by then I had made other life plans.
I always wish I could have visited China and seen it at its height. I can't imagine being proud of what the PRC has made of one of the richest, greatest civilizations humanity has produced.
I don't disagree that your average Place, China is almost certainly going to be more third-world than your average Place, Japan, and there are very real issues there, many of which are a result of the PRC's truly disastrous policies. But considering how many people go to Southeast Asia and absolutely love it, I'm not necessarily sure first world-ness is something people are generally looking for (as tourists, not as inhabitants). People travel en masse to places like Bali despite the fact that "real" Bali isn't something to look forward to; poverty is pretty rife in many parts of the island and Denpasar is packed full of slums. But travelling to Bali has effectively become something of a fashion trend, Bali is the buzzy tourist-friendly place you go to see the good side of Indonesian culture, and you can ignore as much of the mundane or the bad as you want. I grew up in Malaysia, a country people tout as a good place to visit, and what Malaysia is really like isn't necessarily what most tourists experience. In other words, people go to shitholes all the time, ignore the bits they don't want to see, and love it. There's nothing wrong with travelling like that, either; you're not obligated in the slightest to do things that'll make you feel miserable. But I'm not sure if China's third-world nature is the main factor here.
When I talk about finding "bad takes in travel forums", I mean the stuff I've seen is as bad as stumbling upon threads asking why it is that China has seemingly no truly historical sites, just hollow recreations and cash grabs. Then someone else says the Cultural Revolution destroyed absolutely everything in China, then someone else comments down in the thread "You know where the real historic stuff is? Japan." This despite the fact that many Japanese sites are also just recreations and reconstructions; places like Senso-ji or Osaka Castle were rebuilt in concrete in the 20th century. Kinkaku-ji is a new construction, Takkoku no Iwaya in Hiraizumi is a new construction, and so on. The majority of historical sites in Old Kyoto, despite it being spared bombing during WW2, don't predate 1788 due to a fire that ravaged the city. People still travel to these sites in Japan in spite of the fact that much of what's there isn't exactly original, and enjoy it, and that's fine, and of course there are also authentic historic sites in the country (Himeji Castle, Golden Hall of Chuson-ji, etc). But I'm wondering how in the world people forgot that there's an entire ancient walled city, Pingyao, in Shanxi province, that still houses 20,000+ people while retaining all of its traditional architecture and its urban planning from the Ming and Qing dynasties. It is not only the best preserved proper city in China, but all of East Asia. Then there are towns in Anhui like Xidi and Hongcun, which are representative of traditional non-urban settlements in China during the 14th to 20th centuries - many of the buildings there are very old, and a lot of these towns still have traditional economies and clan-based social structures. Then there are the old tea forests and ethnic minority villages of Jingmai Mountain, where the locals still cultivate tea using methods dating back to the 10th century and perform Tea Ancestor ceremonies and festivities. The thought that crosses my mind is disbelief in the vein of "you seriously couldn't find anything to your taste in all of China? What the fuck it's the size of ten countries how is that possible". There are many authentic places where old China can be found, they're just a bit farther out; you can't expect to visit Beijing and get that kind of experience. The CCP sucks, but they don't possess MCU powers; try as they might they can't snap their fingers and make literally thousands of years' worth of rich historical and cultural heritage vanish overnight.
Then there's the example of South Korea, which is basically a first-world economy comparable to Japan at this point (in fact, its GDP per capita overshot Japan a while back, and its self-reported happiness levels are comparable last I checked; granted, they do have an ongoing military draft which certainly isn't ideal). As a tourist I had a great time there, and was surprised at how well maintained it was and how much traditional culture there was. The density of UNESCO sites there is higher than anywhere else in East Asia, and two members of my family (one of whom went on that trip with me) have travelled both to Korea and to Japan, and both preferred Korea. But we were actually almost discouraged from travelling there after coming across many threads which followed the same pattern - invariably, a poster would ask whether they should choose Japan or Korea for an East Asian trip, and almost unanimously the comments on such threads would advocate Japan as a destination, and state South Korea was comparatively boring, soulless, lacking in historical sites and nothing special. Our friends and coworkers who had travelled to both places also offered up the same opinions, and the only reason why we ended up picking Korea as our destination of choice was because said family member had already travelled to Japan before, and wanted something different. Frankly, I'm flabbergasted by people's lukewarm reactions.
In other words, I'm not so sure if Place, Japan is based so much in the actual reality of how Japan is, or is basically a fashion trend driven by Japan's dominance in media and electronics exports for much of the late 20th century. And I like Japan! I think it's a country with a lot to offer. But the way people endorse it over virtually every other East Asian country gets ridiculous sometimes IMO.
I can't do your thoughtful comment justice with a reply, but I'll say that your points are well noted and that I can't disagree with the main thrust. I suppose I was subconsciously reacting to both a (perceived by me) recent meta-contrarian pooh-poohing of Japan (although the Place, Japan meme is not completely wrong either) and (IMO astroturfed or trolling) posts fawning over heckin' based glorious cyberpunk AI dragon-shaped drone swarm China!! (sorry for all the parentheses)()()
It's probably time to log off for a while. (なんてね～)
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I blame Pinyin, you have to get certification to intuitively read that stuff. "Oh yes let's make 'q' represent the 'ch' sound" - statements made up by the absolutely DERANGED.
j/q/x and zh/ch/sh are different though. Any of those two pairs sound at least as different as say, "k" and "g" in English, and actually probably moreso.
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Pinyin makes more sense than English orthography (likely among the worst in the world). At least it's almost 100% regular so taking a few hours to learn the rules will serve you faithfully for almost every case.
Also, "ch" already represents a different consonant sound.
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Do you have a better system in mind? I don't like how it maps aspirated p and regular p to p and b myself, but I have no idea how to spell something like /ʈ͡ʂ/ (which exists in Polish and Slovak) and /ʈ͡ʂʰ/ legibly.
I always thought Taiwan's Wade-Giles is okay, and the short-lived Tongyong Pinyin was mostly even better. (A few of its steps I found to be backward: W-G's hs is a creative and portable way of representing the sound that is pinyin x, while Tongyong Pinyin puts s, which hides the lispy quality it has for most of those Chinese speakers that don't pronounce it alveolar (sh-like), and fails to perfectly disambiguate it from Pinyin s, which it sometimes writes as ss?)
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English's "let's make 'gh' represent the 'f' sound... sometimes" does not seem to deter people all over the world from enjoying English media, though.
Bough
Though
Cough
Only the English or madmen would make it so none of these words rhyme.
If you aren't already familiar with it, The Chaos is relevant.
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https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/MiHoYo
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