'Bobo' Lifestyle, Bestseller Draws Chinese

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Last updated at: (Beijing Time) Saturday, December 28, 2002

'Bobo' Lifestyle, Bestseller Draws Chinese

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A small downtown flat, a fashionable car, a cup of coffee at Starbucks, a copy of Marguerite Duras' work by the bed -- some young Chinese urbanites had just found their social identity as the "bourgeois", when a new book stirred once again their uneasy frame of mind.

"Bobos: an emerging social class" has drawn crowds of readers at a major bookstore in downtown Beijing. Few can resist the temptation of its bright green cover with colorful sketches of a jungle, a cross-country jeep, a coffee cup, a laptop and a relaxing, carefree lifestyle.

A cashier at the bookstore said the book had sold "extremely well", but refused to comment any further on its sales record.

"The 'bourgeois' are out of fashion overnight," said Miss Li, a white collar worker for a foreign firm in Beijing, "All my friends are talking about the 'Bobos' and I have to find out about the differences."

Though it has been two years since American writer David Brooks wrote his best seller "Bobos in Paradise", the concept is still quite new even to young urbanites who are always leading the fashion in China.

As Brooks put it, the bourgeois bohemians -- "Bobos" in short -are the "cultural consequences of the information age" and a blend of the ambitious, enterprising bourgeois and the innovative, counterculture bohemians.

A commentator in Beijing, however, believed the dream to be a "Bobo" was still faraway for young urbanites like Miss Li.

"To be a 'Bobo', you should love art, have passion, be unconventional and have enough money," he explained.

Many Chinese magazines have put up cover stories about the "Bobos" to draw readers.

"If the word 'Bobo' has brought us any new idea," commented one author, "it could be that commerce and consumerism have replaced certain ideas, authors or music pieces to be the mainstream of ourculture -- what book you read does not really matter, but how you are dressed does."

A "Bobo" would always show his contempt for money, though he may admit that he cannot do without it, he said.

It is hard to talk face to face with an actual "Bobo" in China,as the small group is present only on the most fashionable magazines and websites, where they run "Bobo" clubs and forums andtell some of their life experiences.

One "Bobos" web page even tells in detail what "Bobos" are, whether you have the potential to become one, and how. Your attitudes toward many things in life -- work, educational credentials, money and Italian fashion -- all count, it says.

"But don't take it too seriously," warns one magazine story, "After all, the 'Bobos' are not our mainstream culture, far from it."

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