As can happen, I ‘the customer’ am often wrong about things here, so I welcome correction if I have got the wrong end of this. I was looking at my different translation software last night and then asking around in person too and it seems there is no precise word in Chinese for kitsch. It can be called ‘vulgar arts’ or similar combinations, but nothing cuts to the bone quite in the way that the word ‘kitsch’ does. I remember reading a while back the book by Gilo Dorfles ‘Kitsch: An Anthology of Bad Taste’ a collection of rather perceptive critical essays on the subject. One thing that stuck was the discussion over the etymology of the word. It seems that it was first used in Munich and soon after within Italy, because these two places had the greatest problem with kitsch in the mid 19th Century. I was just looking online now and refreshed my memory with this summary of kitsch which says more or less the same: http://csmt.uchicago.edu/glossary2004/kitsch.htm
In the context of China it becomes interesting for me to revisit this idea of kitsch. I think the fact that the term does not properly exist is interesting, not because there is no kitsch here but rather because there is not a problem with kitsch. From my Western point of view I can easily be led to believe this country is drowning under a tidal wave of it yet, the nuances that distinguish kitsch (e.g. a false sentimentality) from merely low or popular tastes do not seem to apply precisely. I feel nervous dismissing things here as merely kitsch as I am not aware of everything they represent. Still, I have to admit I do pass a suspended sentence of kitsch over a great many things as that is the term that best captures what they appear to be to me. I should also add that I have seen evidence of camp, though this was in the home of an American so these standards are more fitting.
