Merging extremes: “Nuevo” East Asia

If there’s one thing studying in Beijing this summer has taught me, if not the fact that toilet paper is a luxury and that walking with your caged bird is apparently a thing, it’s that Asian Tiger nations have a distinctly unique way of reconciling traditional with modern, the East with the West. It seems difficult to imagine Seoul or Singapore having ever been a place where escalators and vending machines don’t give you advice, a place where a patch of grass isn’t fenced off. Yet this futuristic glamor belies a deep-rooted tension between tradition and modernization that has reconciled itself into a “Nuevo” East Asia.

It’s a phenomenon that could exist only in the most particular of circumstances. Bound by long-standing traditions, yet fervently desiring to be deemed as “modern,” East Asia has come to adopt means to reconcile these drastically different worlds and brand itself as a rival and counterpart to the Western Hemisphere. However, this isn’t just a whirlwind westernization that East Asia is helplessly following, but a deliberate process of fusing local traditions into a Western standard of modernity, an unprecedented “nuevo” culture.

One of the most popular manifestations of this can be found in plastic surgery. Especially with the release of the Miss Korea candidate photos this past summer, in which over a dozen contestants appeared to look identical, plastic surgery has risen to the forefront of East Asian stereotypes. After all, there is no denying that plastic surgery has come to dominate a sizable portion of South Korea’s economy, and that thousands of women from neighboring countries now visit for the sole purpose of going under the knife. Yet what is rarely understood is the rationale behind such a phenomenon. In East Asian nations where having western features has become ideal, plastic surgery is merely one more means to modernization. Even former Korean President Roh was asked to undergo double eyelid surgery to be seen as more “modern” during diplomatic talks. It seems no wonder that the Chinese word for having a modern appearance, "yangqi," can also mean Western.

Tiger parenting can also be seen as a manifestation of Nuevo East Asia. Few nations have experienced the rapid economic development of Asian Tiger nations, and even fewer its Malthusian competition. Tiger parenting has come to represent a means of training the youth to rival the West amid this competition, pushing children harder in their studies to train them to become the best. I once asked my mother why she had been so hard on me when I was a child, why the only cartoons I had known were my Reader Rabbit CDs and the only games I had played were my Lion King typing games. She replied it was simply to help me survive. What with Confucianism putting so much emphasis on education, East Asia has adapted to fuse oriental tradition to reach a Western standard of modernity.

This is significant to Princeton on several levels, most especially in how we view our international student body and cultural studies as a whole. It’s all too easy and much too common to typecast cultures by single characteristics, developed or developing, traditional or modern. However, this is neither an accurate nor comprehensive categorization that does justice to any nation or us as scholars. What it does do is limit our capacity to explore the spectrum of cultures and understand how they interact, making us overlook the hybrid cultures and nuances that make our globalized world unique. This open mentality is something I’ve had to work on myself this past summer and something I sincerely hope to see more of this year on campus.

Ye Eun Charlotte Chun is a sophomore from Seoul, South Korea.She can be reached at ychun@princeton.edu.