Why Gen Z Culture Is Basically Medieval China

The other day I was thinking about it

and I realized, you know who these dang

Jenzers remind me of? The Song Dynasty

from medieval China. Anyone else been

feeling this way lately? No, it's just

me. Well, let me explain what I mean.

There's all this new data to suggest

that younger people these days want to

spend their money on experiences, not

physical items. I think it reflects this

growing hunger for third spaces. And if

you don't know what third spaces are,

let me just quickly break it down for

you. Basically, your two main spaces are

home and work. And historically, the

third space was somewhere in the middle.

Maybe it was the bar or the guild hall

or the tea house. These have all but

gone extinct recently or have become

prohibitively expensive and young people

are feeling it. They want the third

spaces back. This maybe feels like a

very 21st century vibes-based

phenomenon, but it's actually extremely

Chinese. The Song Dynasty was the first

era in history to have what we would

consider as a lifestyle culture where

the cities were actually designed for

pleasure and snacking and nighttime

entertainment just like so many downtown

areas are today. There was this 12th

century writer named Mang Yuan Lao who

wrote this fascinating memoir called The

Record of a Dream of Splendor at the

Eastern Capital. It's one of these

shocking works from the Middle Ages that

I love reading because it seems like it

was written by someone recently instead

of someone a thousand years ago. He

writes this whole nostalgic reminiscence

of the song Capital City Kiang and talks

all about the 24-hour tea houses and the

professional performers and storytellers

and the specific vibes of the different

districts. There's this one section

where he talks about restaurant culture.

I'll just quote the full thing here and

you tell me if this sounds familiar.

When the guests arrive, a single person

holding chopsticks and a menu questions

all of the seated guests. The men of the

capital are extravagant and they demand

a hundred different things. Some hot,

some cold, some warm, some regular, some

extremely cold, and things like noodles

laced with lean and fatty meat. Everyone

orders something different. The waiter

takes the orders and draws near a

counter where he stands in line and

recites the orders off from the start. I

don't know. This to me literally sounds

like a night out in 2026. I'm positive

this isn't what you would picture in

your head when you hear the word

medieval. Also, just to give you a

historical timeline here, this is

basically China on the eve of the

eventual Mongol invasion. And it's a

time and a place where consumerism is

starting to flourish and it's becoming a

core identity for younger people.

Bringing it back to Gen Z, I've noticed

that there's this big obsession with

what I would call curated living. I

don't know, maybe I'm not describing it

accurately, but it is super vibes-based.

like life is [music] one big Pinterest

board. Think of terms like cozy games or

the aesthetics of going on a walk around

the city with an iced matcha. It's this

sort of return to the Song Dynasty

scholar gentleman urban ideal. Your

status [music] isn't just about money,

although that'll obviously always be

important. It's about your taste. Back

then, it was about your taste in tea and

incense and interior design. Now, it's

more so about your taste in underground

music and niche Tik Tockers. The youth

don't want to be told what's cool

anymore by commercials and MTV with big

corporations [music] calling the shots.

They want to create their own

experiences. They want to get medieval

Chinese again. Also, semi-relatedly,

there's been a big surge in traditional

Chinese medicine trends among Westerners

on Tik Tok recently. You see it

everywhere. A number [music] of Chinese

American influencers have been sort of

introducing these ancient concepts like

Chiang practice or drinking hot water

instead [music] of cold water and the

internet has been going crazy for it. So

maybe medieval China is making a

comeback in more ways than one. We won't

just focus on the Song Dynasty here.

There's more to China in the Middle Ages

than just that one period. But I do have

a few more song boxes I want to check

before we continue. Before we do that,

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go ahead and do that as well. Back to

the video. Maybe you've heard of the

modern phenomenon of looks maxing. Or

maybe you aren't chronically online and

have no idea what I'm talking about.

Basically, looks maxing is the new

version of the age-old concept of

getting hot, although it goes way beyond

diet and exercise and a little Botox.

Young people, I would say especially

young men, are exploring all of these

scientific avenues to try and improve

their looks. The most medieval seeming

looks maxing method is called bone

smashing. And it's been promoted over

and over again by probably the most

famous looks maxer, a 19-year-old

streamer named Clavicular. Looks maxer.

Bone smashing, clavvicular. I understand

this all might sound ridiculous to you,

but stick with me because it's

interesting. Also, don't you want to

understand the youth? Anyway, the way

clavvicular describes it, bone smashing

is when you take a tiny hammer and tap

hard along your cheekbones and your

jawbone. It causes a temporary swelling

that lasts for a few hours and makes

those bones look more defined. So, it's

something you might do just before a

night out so you can look more masculine

to any ladies you meet. Maybe at this

point this isn't a crazy revelation, but

it turns out young guys in medieval

China had the same insecurities that

modern men do. And they even went about

similar methods of soothing their

anxieties. During the Song Dynasty

period, there was this really

interesting tension between the Wen

class who were the more literary refined

scholars and the Woo class who were the

more marshall and physical warrior cast.

Depending on which group you belong to,

you'd basically looks max to make sure

your outward [music] appearance matched

what you represented. So that meant

young men who were part of the scholarly

class went to these extreme lengths to

achieve this sort of refined, pale

physical aesthetic with slender features

to essentially highlight the fact that

they never had to work with their hands.

They'd even use specific diets and

cosmetic aspects of traditional Chinese

medicine to maintain this look that

would instantly signal to everyone that

they were part of the intelligencia.

Those in the military class, basically

who we would consider to be the

modern-day Chads, focused primarily on

bone strength. I don't know, maybe that

sounds familiar to you. It wasn't just

about muscle, although of course they

made sure they were in great shape. It

was about theqi energy within and

physical density. You wanted to look

like a brick wall. That was kind of the

physique they were shooting for. It's

important to note, of course, that they

weren't hitting themselves in the face

with hammers like modern looks maxers.

Their routine usually included things

like hitting [music] sandbags or poles

to increase their bone density. There

was a 20th century French scholar named

Jacques Chernet who specialized in

Chinese history. And he talked a lot

about how these aspects of appearance

became kind of a coded language of your

class. In the incredibly hierarchical

society of medieval China, if you didn't

have the specific [music] look, you were

culturally invisible. It seems like a

lot of young men and young women too

feel this way today. If you just look up

the term looks maxing on YouTube or Tik

Tok, the insecurity is overwhelming, but

it's understandable. We were all

vulnerable teenagers once, too. But you

see these guys giving each other ratings

on a scale of 1 to 10 and recommending

which specific steroids or looks maxing

techniques to try so they can bring

their flagging features up to speed.

This includes peptides which as far as I

understand are these amino acidbased

performance enhancers and the use of

GLP1s like ompic which I feel like

people associate with an older audience

but there seem to be a shocking amount

of young people taking them. The

medieval Chinese were actually big on

this kind of thing too. They were

obsessed with elixirs made from rare

minerals and herbs that were designed to

lighten the body and extend life. A lot

of these were incredibly dangerous and

even included mercury. And I'm sure in

the next 10 years or so, there will be a

bunch of studies showing the horrific

side effects of looks maxing and

peptides. The idea behind this medieval

Chinese looks maxing was essentially the

same as the idea behind the modern

version. using some kind of external

chemistry or method to hack your

biological limits and achieve this sort

of superior physical state. The Chinese

wrote a lot of things down and

thankfully a lot of them have survived

over the centuries like the 7th century

physician Sun Samo's essential formulas

worth a thousand gold pieces. It was

basically this manual for longevity and

physical refinement. And if you're

familiar with the European concept of

balancing the four humors, this was

along the same lines. somehow describes

the body as this chemical system that

can be balanced or enhanced with

specific substances. This idea went even

further with the medieval Chinese

concept of Naidan or internal alchemy,

which taught that the body was composed

of three main ingredients, chi, jing,

and shen that could be forged into a

golden cinder if you were locked in

enough on your physical discipline.

Locked in is a good term to use here

because this sounds just like the trend

of locking in that has been popular with

Gen Z for at least 5 years now. If

you're not familiar, it just means

cutting off outside distractions and

focusing intently on some kind of

personal goal. So maybe getting your

side hustle off the ground or working

out more regularly or whatever. It's

become sort of a cult online, especially

among the gym community. And based on

what you see from these fitness

influencers, it's like your [music] pump

and your physique are proof of an

internal moral victory, like a victory

of the will over the laziness of your

base body. A medieval naan practitioner

literally thought the same exact way.

They knew that their physical health and

their outward [music]

radiance was proof that they had

successfully cultivated their soul in a

way that others couldn't or hadn't.

Young people seem way more into fitness

now than they did even 10 years ago. I'm

not sure if that's a co thing, but

[music] I love to see it. There seems to

be a lot of conversation around the idea

that your body is the one status symbol

you can't really buy. You can buy a

Bugatti or a nice watch or whatever, but

you can only achieve a truly amazing

physique through countless hours in the

gym. So, it's really the most impressive

thing you can have. There's also this

quote from the video game Discolesium

where a bouncer says to the main

character, "Your body betrays your

degeneracy." And that always sticks in

my head when I don't want to go to the

gym. I just felt like including that. I

like tossing random tidbits into these

videos. Now, most of what I've been

talking about so far has come from the

Song Dynasty, which lasted for a few

centuries, right smack dab in the middle

of what we would consider the Middle

Ages. But the Middle Ages lasted almost

a thousand years. So, what about the

rest of medieval China? You know what?

I'm really glad you asked that. First of

all, the Middle Ages happened

differently in China than they did in

Europe. Basically, even though there are

quite a few Song Dynasty parallels, Gen

Z is actually in more of a late Ming

phase. That's right, I said it. In the

earlier Tang Dynasty, which lasted from

618 to 907 AD, your identity was defined

by your clan or your rank in the

military. Basically, how people's

identities have been defined for most of

human history. You were a cog in the

great chain of being. And the same thing

was true in medieval Europe. You existed

within a feudal system put in place by

the divine mover. By the late Ming

period, which went all the way into the

17th century, there was this rise in

individualism that started to run so

deep that it turned into the same kind

of identity crisis and obsession with

labels that we see among Gen Z today.

You see, Chinese society had reached a

level of complexity to such a point that

people started to define themselves by

their personal quirks and not their

family or job. So instead of saying I am

a soldier, a late Ming young might say

I'm a connoisseur of rare incense who

suffers from melancholy. In a similar

way, you'd be hardressed to meet a young

person today who primarily identifies by

their profession or their nationality.

Find me a 22-year-old who introduces

themselves as Garrett the American

plumber, and I would genuinely be

shocked. I'm sure Garrett will now show

up in my comments to prove me wrong

because that's how YouTube works.

Instead, just like the Ming youth, young

people now might identify as a neurode

divergent creative with a hyperfixation

on looks maxing. It's this obsession

with self, and it can be dangerous

because you stop viewing yourself as

part of a wider community and start

squeezing yourself into these ever

smaller and more specific boxes. [music]

The late Ming period was a kind of

renaissance that ultimately failed. It

was this explosion of individual

expression and art and looks maxing and

everything else, but it was cut short by

the Manchu conquest in 1644. I honestly

think we're going to see something

similar with Gen Z in the coming years.

They're in this period of extreme

self-exression and pursuit of individual

destiny [music] right before a massive

systemic reset comes. Maybe that's AI,

maybe it's something else. Only time

will tell. Anyway, [music] we just

briefly stepped outside of the Middle

Ages. So, let's bring things back a few

centuries for our next comparison.

>> [music]

>> I want to go back to those Song Dynasty

third spaces we talked about earlier.

One of them was the Watsi or the

Pleasure Precinct, which sounds pretty

good already. Basically, during the

[music] Song Dynasty, the government

moved away from these strictly managed

residential wards and allowed for the

growth of pleasure precincts [music] or

Watsi. If you've ever seen The Wire,

this was kind of like the medieval

Chinese equivalent of the Amsterdam

experiment. The Watsi were these chaotic

24-hour zones where all the basic social

rules were temporarily suspended, kind

of like the medieval equivalent of the

unregulated internet. Now, if you let a

bunch of young men loose in an area with

no rules, the first thing they'll be

interested in is prostitution, but in

the modern day, you already check that

box with online adult content and

gooning. After those urges are

satisfied, literally the very next thing

they want is to gamble. It's a tale as

old as time, and it was a big problem in

the Song Dynasty pleasure districts. And

it's an even bigger problem now on

private gambling Discord servers and

even huge publicly accessible apps like

DraftKings and Bet DSi. I see so many

young people now who are almost turning

online gambling into a sort of career

path. And guess what? They did the same

thing back in the day, too. You see all

kinds of criticisms from the Song

Dynasty officials like Sema Guang who

laments that young men are abandoning

the plow and the book to chase the flip

of the die. There's also this modern

sociologist named Beverly UN Thompson

who writes great stuff about

subcultures. And she's noted that fringe

groups usually start to form when the

mainstream promise of hard work equals

success is broken. In the Song Dynasty,

your ticket to success was passing the

imperial exam. But you could study 30

years just to fail an exam that only had

a 1% pass rate. [music] That's a bad

bet. Young people now are seeing the

same thing. Their parents bought houses

and supported an entire family on a

modest single income and now they can

barely afford their rent. In this kind

of paradigm, why wouldn't you open up

DraftKings and put everything you own on

some ridiculous parlay? Why wouldn't you

dump your whole portfolio into some meme

coin in the hopes it'll take you to the

moon? We might think of this younger

generation of gambling addicts as just

irresponsible kids whose frontal loes

aren't fully developed yet, and that's

definitely part of it. But they're also

making a desperate calculated attempt to

exit a system that has already failed

them. Going back to the Watsi, the

pleasure precincts, the reason they

never fully took over society is because

you had to physically go to them. There

was a spirit of anonymity. Basically,

what happens in the Watsi stays in the

Watsi, but you still had to go engage in

these acts in a somewhat public place

and deal with the internal shame of

that. Now, with the internet, young

people can indulge in all of their most

base desires without ever even getting

off the couch, and it can literally cost

them their entire future. It's worth

noting, too, that when you have a bunch

of young, desperate people gathering in

one place for a set objective, it can

create a sort of ideological powder keg.

So, in the Watsi, these guys formed

gambling brotherhoods. And the song

Penal Code tried constantly to break

them up because they feared the

brotherhoods were becoming more loyal to

each other than to the emperor. Now, you

might get into a private Discord server,

ostensibly to do some gambling and trade

some insider tips, and next thing you

know, you're radicalized into committing

some horrific public act [music] of

terror. This feels like a good place to

land the plane. Because the main point I

want to make with these videos is that

time is a flat circle and we're

essentially repeating the patterns of

the past over and over again. There's

the old saying that those who don't

study history are doomed to repeat it.

But it seems like even when we do

[music] study history, we're powerless

not to make the same mistakes. The

difference now of course is that these

things are happening on a massive global

scale with the full weight of tech

companies and government institutions

behind them. A soldier in the Song

Dynasty might drunkenly head to the

Watsi and lose his monthly wages and

that was it. A young 20some now might

obsessively bet his entire savings on an

app on his phone and ruin his whole life

before it's even started. This is why we

need to pay attention to these trends

and recognize that even though human

behavior hasn't changed, how we respond

to it can. But what do you think? Has

this video found you at a very medieval

Chinese time in your life? Let me know

in the comments. As always, I'm John.

This has been Medieval Mindset. And

remember, the past isn't gone. It's

simply waiting to be rediscovered.

It's good for me.