You're listening to Roundtable.
I'm Steve today with Yang Yang and Yuxia.
Coming up, move over Gen Z trends.
The latest identity young people are claiming for themselves is...
Old school human.
It's a deliberate step back from the hyper digital world, but what does it actually look like?
Today we'll explore why a generation is choosing to slow down.
After that, your office water cooler.
You've got one.
And yes, it is a place to refill your cup when you're feeling thirsty, and perhaps even share a hello or two with a co-worker.
It must be safe and clean, right?
Wrong!
Those giant water jugs in your office may look innocent enough.
But they are your next sickness waiting to happen.
Stay tuned for that.
Our podcast listeners can find us at Roundtable China on Apple Podcasts.
And don't forget that we love to hear your voice, too.
So send your voice notes our way with any of the things that you might want to share on any of the issues that we discuss here on the show.
Roundtable Podcast at QQ.com.
Once again, Roundtable Podcast at QQ.com.
And now.
Lately, a new label has been quietly trending on Chinese social media.
It's a term that translates roughly to old school humans.
But here's the interesting part.
Instead of being assigned by others.
Many young people are now happily claiming that title for themselves.
It's a conscious embrace of a slower way of living in a hyperdigital world.
So what's behind it?
Why has this become cool now?
I guess it kind of points to a growing sense of digital fatigue among the younger generation perhaps.
In China, I think we can agree, Yang Yang and Yushan, that the next cool, fun, trendy thing, the new tech, the new whatever, is always the thing online that everybody wants to follow.
But this is seemingly a step in reverse.
So I'm going to give you a little bit of a quiz to find out if you are vintage human or not.
But first I want to let you know exactly what it means, So I'm going to give you some questions.
Multiple choice.
You just answer A or B, and then we'll see how we go.
You ready for question number one?
Oh, yeah.
When the weather turns cold, which one sounds more like you?
A, style comes first as long as it looks good, or B, warmth first, the full survival kit first?
Autumn pants tucked into socks, hat, down jacket, scarf, no skin exposed whatsoever.
Can I guess what your answers are going to be?
Tell me if I'm right or wrong.
Go ahead.
Yushan, you are going to say warmth first.
B. And Yangyang, you are going to say style comes first as long as it looks good.
A. Precisely.
I thought so.
You just described me by reading B, you know?
But I also wear awesome pants tucked into my socks, so I'm tilting towards A.
You're straddling the fence.
All right.
Question two.
Remember your answers, please.
Question two, when you're thirsty in winter, what do you reach for?
A milk tea seasonal limited flavor.
Or B a thermos with tea bags maybe something that's good for your health.
Do you want to take another guess?
Yes.
Wait, am I just doing this?
You guys can leave and come back.
I'll just answer these for you.
No, you go ahead this time.
Well, I always want to drink healthy things.
So like thermals with tea bag, that's my ideal situation.
But in reality...
I always go for a milk tea.
You've seen how many tea sets I've had.
I've had a tea mug just for brewing tea.
I've had a tea set with a little pot just for brewing tea.
And I've had a gourd just for storing dry tea in it.
So be.
Yushan and I sit next to each other in the office.
And one day I asked you.
How many teapots do you have?
Only one.
It looked like a whole lot more.
All right, question three.
I think we see where this quiz is going, but I'll continue on.
Question three.
Choosing where to eat.
What wins?
A a pretty meal that looks great on camera, good for social media.
Or B a small local place with real kitchen vibes and homestyle flavors.
Definitely A.
Hey, I do social media.
I need photos.
Okay.
I'm going to write on the wall and maybe inclined to choose A2.
But that really depends on the occasion.
For me, I'm all about old school, tastes good.
I don't care.
Small diners.
I don't care how it's presented to me at all.
Unless, of course, it's a special occasion.
But just generally speaking, yeah, I'll go for that one as well.
All right, question four.
You are shopping for clothes.
What usually happens?
A you chase the seasonal must-have, or B you browse for a long time and you still pick the classics.
Totally a B. Well, can I say both?
Because you always have one less clothes in your wardrobe.
Oh my goodness.
You guys haven't seen Yang Yang, guys.
He walks into the office every single day.
The office is like a T-state.
Runway?
It's a runway for Yang Yang.
Thank you.
All right.
Question number five.
This is the last one.
This is a yes or no question.
In group chats.
Do you ever casually drop a meme that you just learned about, even though everyone else moved on from this meme weeks ago?
No, I only drop in cat memes.
Latest ones?
That's worse.
Well, my answer is yes, because that's the purpose of scrolling your TikTok or Instagram, right?
Yes.
Dropping out the latest memes.
All right.
Well, you can do your own math, but if you chose more B's than A's.
Then you, Sean, you might be secretly living a vintage human life.
All right.
So let's have a chat about this.
I mean, I guess the good news is, you know if you're listening, and you answered mostly bees, and I did as well, by the way.
You're not alone.
A lot of young people though, they are embracing what they're calling this old style living.
So what does it look like?
How does it manifest itself further?
Well basically, it's a lifestyle pattern that is quietly emerging in China, which is just opposite to the common idea that young people today are all about chasing trends, social media, shareable meals and the latest must-see events.
So take red notes the social media dominated by young users, it's now quickly becoming a hub for these vintage humans.
What are people posting about?
Well, such as herbal tea kettles uh, crochet projects and old tv drama or dramas and captions.
Like You know, I'm officially diagnosed as an old-style human.
Diagnosed.
Yeah, like it's a disease.
In a good way.
We just covered something called elders becoming social media influencers.
So now we're coming back to this vintage.
Comparing with whom?
The older generation, they're becoming pop, like really posh and fashion stylish.
And while we become, you know, I'm hugging my tea kettles.
You know, fashion is a cycle.
We have an expression in English.
I wonder if you have it in Chinese, like someone is an old soul.
Yeah, you have that too.
Something mature like in maturity, maybe on a part of it, but it's more like you know, they tend to enjoy older music than what's on the charts these days.
Their opinions, or the way that they think, tends to be more on the parental side than on the teenager side, even though they might only be like 21 years old or something like that.
We call that type of person.
An old soul.
I don't agree with all of this, though.
You know, there's one blogger.
She talked about her old style friend group.
And this is what she said.
You know, everybody else is going out for the latest fancy brunches.
But her friends brought along lamb soup, handmade noodles or a spicy hot pot.
And when they dressed up for afternoon tea, it ended up being a street side bakery stall instead of a chic cafe.
And then, when they got their tickets for an event, it wasn't for a pop concert, but for a traditional Chinese comedy.
Art of performances.
I mean, that just sounds like fun stuff to do.
Yeah, and I tend to believe that as young people, we really like to chase all kinds of Tags or, if not, labels that can make ourselves stand out a little bit, whether it is the most trendy stuff or nowadays.
We fall for, like vintage, human and the whole style of embracing the comfort, the nostalgic feeling.
Of childhood rather than chasing the hottest trend all the time.
So that's just like the tolerance of coexisting different vibes.
While this person, they can also become trendy and sometimes, and then reserved to that cozy feeling some other time when he or she chooses to.
So does this matter, Yang Yang?
Does this make any difference?
Or is this just kind of a flash in the pan?
This will be gone very quickly.
What do you think?
Well, I think there's much more going on than just a simple lifestyle choices because, you know, when we look back, traditionally young people are expected to chase trains, embrace fast pace.
Yeah, that's not new, right?
Yes.
And sometimes I was wondering that why we have to chase the latest trends when it is not practical and comfortable.
So I think this trend is a very good example.
It shows that by taking advantage human lifestyle, young people nowadays prioritize practicality, comfort and stability over flash and novelty.
So in that case, beauty standards yield to function and Procedure yields to value.
So in that way, young people are reclaiming control of their own pace.
This is not surprising to me.
I remember when I was in university, I was in poetry class and the professor was talking about how Poetry styles and writing styles get recycled and what was once popular a long time ago will suddenly become popular again.
And then we had a group discussion about that and he said, you can find that in art everywhere.
You find it in movies, you find it in music, you find it in fashion particularly, right?
Yeah. or even hairstyles they were popular in the 80s and they'll make a comeback for a period of time in fashion you know bell-bottom jeans were hot in the 70s and then they come back you know in the mid-teens or what have you so this is just an example of you know trends coming and going and now an older trend has become a newer trend or rather just How young people are preferring to live and don't afraid to demonstrate the fact that they prioritize comfort over stylishness.
Is this performative at all, do you think?
It could be.
It might be.
But how can we know?
Depending on the purpose of why you're sharing your life like this.
I guess for people like, for example take myself as an example I dress like I don't care for the majority of the days when I do not need to be in front of the camera.
But it's not really that I feel it's...
I'm lazy to dress up or stuff like that.
It's more like a strategic withdrawal.
Like I'm harnessing my energy and preserving my inner self, instead of just chasing for what's trendy.
For some people, it might just be a new selling point on social media.
I don't know.
I hope not.
But as long as it's bringing you comfort, I guess, why not?
I say go for it.
This isn't hurting anyone.
Exactly.
You like what you like, right?
You're listening to Roundtable.
I'm Steve today with Yushan and Yang Yang.
Coming up, is your water cooler trying to kill you?
Then tune in to Roundtable, where East meets West and understanding is the goal.
This is Roundtable.
I'm Steve today with Yangyang and Yushan.
If you're listening to this at your desk right now, take a look at that 18-liter water jug with the USB-powered pump sitting on top.
You see it?
It looks relatively modern, it looks very convenient, and also it looks really clean.
But new research suggests that these specific types of dispensers might be the primary source of your next sick day.
Today we're going to learn about the microbial autopsy of the water cooler in your office.
It is a little bit shocking news. this information that I'm about to share.
Let me start with this question.
We have one.
We have two.
In fact, we have two or three, right?
Yeah.
And they all have the pump on top, really convenient.
Yeah.
Do you use it?
Yeah.
No, not a chance.
No, never, never.
Interesting.
How many times a day do you use it, Yang Yang?
Maybe once a day.
Okay.
Yang Yang, please pay attention to the following information.
We're going to start with the contamination levels of the water bottles.
We'll start with the silicone tube.
You know the tube that goes from the pump down into the bottle?
It's really long, right?
It reaches to the bottom.
That tube that sits inside the jug is the most dangerous part.
Because it is always submerged in room temperature water, right?
Because it's not kept in the fridge or anything like that.
It's always room temperature.
It's also rarely cleaned and rarely scrubbed.
That tube is prone to developing what is called biofilms.
That means slimy, sticky layers of bacteria that anchor themselves to surfaces.
Those slimy, sticky layers of biofilm.
It's like a bacterial fortress and it's protected from light, it's protected from air and it slowly sheds those microbes into every glass or cup or bottle that you fill when the water passes by.
That's gross.
That's what I was trying to tell Yushun the other day when he was going over to the water jugs and then got a full cup.
I was like, Do you drink that every day?
He's like, well, yeah, like multiple cups every day.
I'm like, no.
Don't do that.
Don't do that.
Okay, so that's the tube.
Let's talk about the nozzle, right?
That's the cross-contamination point.
Oh, really?
Yep, this is where the water exits.
And the ick factor here, the gross part, is the water bottle or the cup that you're putting there.
They call this the refill trap because many people they'll press the fill, the rim of their personal bottle or cup directly against that nozzle and that transfers mouth bacteria to the spout.
See, you guys are transferring more than you think by using the same filter.
So the person who comes after you is essentially taking your mouth bacteria into their bottle.
And the person that came before you...
They are giving their mouth bacteria directly to you.
Yang Yang, what do you think about that?
That's more disgusting than the last one.
It's getting grosser and grosser.
And this one is just kind of a public service announcement, this last little one.
But the power button, you know, the power button you press to make the thing turn on.
Yes.
Think of that as like an elevator button or like toilet button or a subway handle.
Right.
Think about how many people are touching that.
It's almost never sanitized or disinfected.
And researchers found that these buttons are primary vectors.
That means methods of disinfection, transmission for cold and flu viruses.
What about water dispensers?
Are those better than just a pump?
The water dispensers meaning, like the stand up kind of a machine thing that you put a bucket of water on top, upside down.
Yeah, it goes down, with a One tap for hot water, the other for cold water.
Is that thing better than the pressing pump we just mentioned?
These are better as far as I know because they don't have the tubes inside.
But you're still that nozzle point.
You know if you hold your cup under it when the water turns on.
That's okay.
But a lot of people will put the rim of their cup against those things too.
So again, you're transferring the mouth bacteria there.
Now there is some good news here.
The water inside the jug is safe because it's sealed obviously, and your supplier is reputable, no doubt.
That means it's sterile and that means it's free from bacteria when it arrives.
Okay, the good news is over.
Because the minute you break that seal and insert that pump, the air and potential contaminants are introduced into the bottle itself.
And if the pump's intake tube wasn't sanitized before you drop it in, you are essentially seeding.
You're planting seeds in an otherwise clean environment.
So make sure that you sanitize those tubes.
You can boil them, those silicon tubes.
You can boil them in some water for at least five minutes and i guess you should do that.
From what i read, it's about once a week or so that you should do that, and do it for about five minutes in total, Or just live like me.
You drink hot boiled water and leave it until it falls down back to room temperature.
After I saw this story, I used to use that water bottle too.
And after that, I'm like, only in emergency situations.
Otherwise, I might end up in the emergency room.
So there you go.
Stick to the bottled water from the shops sometimes, I guess.
All right.
That will do it for today's roundtable.
Thank you very much for sharing your time with us today.
Thanks to Yang Yang.
Thanks to Yushan.
And my name is Steve.
We hope you enjoyed the show as much as we did.
Have a good one.
And please do come back and join us next time.
