Chinese headwear fad grows like weeds | Hacker News Reader

Chinese headwear fad grows like weeds

nytimes.com

72 pointsanigbrowl38 comments

“Bean sprouts are still our most popular item,” said Zeng Wen

The most common explanation on the streets was that the floral fascinators just looked cute — “meng meng da,” in a cloying term made popular on the Internet.

I suspect a pun here. The meng character is 萌, which literally means "sprout"[1], and is related to the Japanese "moe" concept[2].

[1] https://en.wiktionary.org/wiki/%E8%90%8C

[2] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Moe_(slang)

I agree it seems to qualify as something considered cute.

Just to be clear, from what I can tell, 萌 means "sprout" as a verb, and has no noun sense. "Sprout" the noun appears to be 芽 (yá); so 豆芽 (dòuyá) "bean sprouts".

萌 meaning cute isn't just related, it's a direct borrowing from Japanese.

"meng" also reminds me of the Aomori-ben dialect word "megoi" (alternative to "kawaii") which almosts sounds like "mengoi" with the nasalized/velarized "g".

I was in Shenyang last month. They sell this stuff in every corner. In every shopping district where I saw young people, many of them wore these things. I bought a few of them myself. People just think they're cute.

Interestingly, my elders tell me that wearing flowers or plants on your head used to mean that you have been sold as a slave.

“Nobody knows what it means, but we do it anyway.”

This one comment sums up pretty much the entirety of Internet "culture", see for example neknominate, the ice-bucket challenge, etc.

Just because the reasons are not immediately obvious does not make them non-existent. Rather, it makes them so much more interesting as they can reveal emotions/thoughts/urges that have hither-to been hard to express, without an appropriate medium or unacceptable socially.

Putting plants on your head might seem strange, but that's why it's interesting to explore. It's a shame that we in this thread band together to disregard this behaviour (like talking behind someones back, it is seemingly to defend our own culture and behaviour. "our way is the right way").

Yeah, I rather liked the way some of the sprouts looked. I certainly won't be the first to sport one of them, but I might be an early adopter if someone with more guts tries it out first ^^

“early adopter”? It’s already a fad!

I suspect this is more about fashion.

I want to believe this idea came from Adventure Time

http://adventuretime.wikia.com/wiki/Ancient_Sleeping_Magi_of...

Perhaps its a reaction to all the pollution.

But is it actually weird? Tell me you've never seen a girl with a flower in her hair in the West. Of course, you have.

Not in a long time -- regrettably ;) flower tattoo seems the best hope nowadays

My daughter often wears a flower from our garden in her hair - depending on what's in season. The rest of the year, she's got hair clips that include flowers.

Once in ten years.

A more objectively verifiable guage of Western culture: when was the last Hollywood movie featuring a young woman with a flower in her hair?

Well, the next Disney is about a girl in the Pacific Islands. She probably will have a flower in her hair.

http://www.imdb.com/media/rm4007390464/tt3521164

You’ve never seen a girl wearing a flower barrette?

Judging from google images, that could be what I saw 10 years ago, though I thought it was a real flower.

If you're going to San Francisco

Reminds me of the scene in WALL-E.

Perhaps people like the idea of new life (single sprout) in the concrete and smog jungle

Isn’t it more of a recurring motif?

I can confirm this is true. I saw many people sporting them when my wife and I were visiting Beijing, Shanghai, and Suzhou a month ago. My wife even bought a pair (antlers: http://laurenandmarc.blogspot.com/2015/09/suzhou-china.html) Mostly women wear them, but also some men. Street food vendor, young student, worker, etc, everybody seems to like them.

Saw a pair of large antlers stuck to the top of a car yesterday.

Did this book just make it over to China? https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Daisy-Head_Mayzie

I am reminded fondly of Life on Forbez.

I think it's a response to people feeling farther from nature than they ever have.

I like the idea people are finding some tie to nature endearing.

When I noticed this, it was summer. Now, it is almost winter.

The merchants are geniuses, the clip parts break if you barely touch them the wrong way. Brush up against someone and it's time to drop a few yuan to get a new one.

Don’t shoot the messenger.

Looks like an outtake from Nathan Barley.

Seems a bit creepy to me, like something sprouting of a corpse.

It doesn't look so creepy when you are in the middle of a busy shopping district and seeing tens of very much alive young people walking around with such things.

I wore a few of them myself.

Yeah, it seems more like a harmless fashion/fad to me. Looks a little weird since I've never seen it before but ultimately, it's not much different than the thousands of other adornments people stick on themselves.

Why is this on hacker news?

I wondered that myself. The perennial answer seems to be a variation upon "if it's of interest to the HN community, then it's a valid item". Given the passion of many here to avoid "becoming Reddit", I find this free pass for non-tech/non-startup content baffling.

Must be a slow news day.

Not really, it's just too weird for me

When the West said Japan was weird, the Chinese took that as a challenge.

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