Historicizing East Asian pop culturebut also “a multi-directional flow and a highly interactive ongoing process that is created, and
possibly sustained, by digitally empowered fan consumers” (Kim 2013, 14).
These regional flows of popular culture have been washing across East Asia for decades, but
“Pop Culture China” has only recently entered the East Asian pop culture scene. Here, Pop
Culture China is discussed as having two distinct communities of producers and consumers.
Pop Culture China can first be described as “the dense flow of cultural economic exchanges
between geographically dispersed Chinese populations” (Chua 2011, 114; 2012). According to
Olivia Khoo, the cultural community of Pop Culture China can be “formed through the circu-
lation and consumption of popular culture among dispersed Chinese populations” (2014, 729).
Particular entertainers and Chinese-language films (e.g. Wong Kar-Wai’s films) are traversing
geographical spaces in the PRC, Taiwan, Hong Kong, Singapore, and beyond. Pop Culture
China can also be understood as enhanced by the PRC’s “growing influence over the produc-
tion and flow of screen media” (Curtin 2010, 117). China’s rise to the regional and global stage was
emphatically shown during the opening and closing ceremonies of the 2008 Beijing Olympics,
which were directed by the state’s favored filmmaker, Zhang Yimou (Curtin 2010, 2013). The
PRC’s cultural policymakers “are hoping that the next cultural wave will be one from China—
one that will gain China’s status as the cultural core of Asia,” but its future still remains unclear
(Keane and Liu, 2013). Its status has been enhanced by the growing importance of mainland
China as a consumer of cultural products. For example, it currently ranks as the second largest
market for U.S. films. Nonetheless, mainland Chinese pop culture “still occupies a different
realm from ‘our’ East Asian (post)modernity” because it “has not yet mastered globalized styles”
(Iwabuchi 2010, 151).
The long succession of East Asian pop trends indicates that American pop culture is no
longer the single or even the primary reference point in the region. In emphasizing that the
reign of the singularity of American cultural products has been broken, Chen (2001) points out
that American mass cultural products are only some among a range of choices available to young
people in Asia. The increasing number of cultural references internal to East Asia has resulted in
the creation of hybrid cultural products in the region, influenced by Asian as well as American
pop culture.
The considerable volume and wide circulation of pop flows within the region is clearly
indicative of changes in cultural tastes and trends in East Asia. People who were once not only
separated by national and linguistic borders but were also more or less indifferent to each other
now enjoy the same pop cultures; in turn, both the content of their cultural products and the
experience of consuming them at roughly the same time without regard to national borders
enable these people to know each other better and to better imagine each other’s communities.
In his exploration of Japan’s consumption of Hong Kong and Korean cultural products, Koichi
Iwabuchi (2008) observes that the two-way flows of popular culture have helped people notice
human faces and recognize the attractiveness of their cultural neighbors. These regional flows of
pop culture both reflect and promote specific kinds of connectivity and sharedness among people
in East Asia. The enthusiastic reception of the drama-mediated representations of people in Japan,
Hong Kong, and South Korea, for example, signals a sense of coevalness among Asian audiences,
a common orientation that constitutes cultural proximity (Cho 2011; Iwabuchi 2002, 2004).
articulating East asian pop culture as a mélange of iterations
The decades-long development of popular culture in East Asia outlined in the previous section
suggests that it is a substantial and cohesive entity. As a way of articulating its particular historical
narrative, I suggest reframing East Asian popular culture as a mélange of recurring regional pop