from Hacker News

The Bling Dynasty – The Nouveau Riche in China

by tomsun on 1/5/15, 8:01 PM with 39 comments

• by rahimnathwani on 1/6/15, 12:55 AM

  One of my favourite slang phrases in Chinese is 土豪, for which the closest English equivalent I can find is nouveau riche.

  Gold-coloured consumer products (e.g. champagne-coloured iPhone) are described as 土豪金 (金=gold）。On Taobao, this will often appear alongside other colour choices (white, black, silver) described in more plain language.

• by unimportant on 1/6/15, 3:24 AM

  Wealth is a funny thing in China, because it hardly buys you a real lifestyle, as the author already hinted.

  I would argue that broke foreign students partying in Shanghai have more fun than local multi millionaires struggling to find stuff to buy and places to go that give them more status and better entertainment than average mid management joe.

  If you never thought that getting rich as a way to attain happiness was a trap in the west, then going to China will open your eyes...

• by throwaway9889 on 1/6/15, 2:06 AM

  The newly wealthy are pretty fascinating. The closest i can think of in the US that would relate to them are professional athletes.

  http://www.latimes.com/entertainment/arts/la-et-cm-arcadia-i...

  I would suspect in the near future (5-10) years there will be lots of "Antoine Walker" stories coming out of china. The one way to easily go through all your money and have nothing to show for it is to live like a rockstar in the US.

• by rafaelm on 1/5/15, 11:42 PM

  I find this subject of all the new rich in China very interesting. Is there any book or documentary that explains this phenomenon? I don't understand how this happened in China.

• by FLUX-YOU on 1/6/15, 1:29 AM

  >There are also 60,000 Chinese people worth at least $200 million—another line of demarcation between being wealthy and being a photon cannon of currency.

  Jesus christ, spend your minerals and gas.

• by manticore_alpha on 1/6/15, 12:07 AM

  Money doesn't buy taste, clearly.