{"id":3749,"date":"2026-04-09T05:00:00","date_gmt":"2026-04-09T05:00:00","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/facesjournal.com\/?p=3749"},"modified":"2026-04-09T05:00:00","modified_gmt":"2026-04-09T05:00:00","slug":"chinamaxxing-isnt-a-new-trend-european-aristocrats-have-been-doing-it-for-centuries","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/facesjournal.com\/?p=3749","title":{"rendered":"\u2018Chinamaxxing\u2019 Isn\u2019t a New Trend, European Aristocrats Have Been Doing It for Centuries"},"content":{"rendered":"

The West\u2019s curiosity with Chinese-inspired design didn\u2019t start online; instead, today\u2019s fascination with Chinese aesthetics has deep and surprisingly familiar roots.\u00a0<\/p>\n

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Scroll through social media right now and you\u2019ll find a steady stream of Chinese aesthetics repackaged for global consumption. Whether it\u2019s the power of Shanghai Fashion Week<\/a>, the viral appeal of plush collectibles like Labubu dolls, or starting the day with a mug of warm apple-boiled water and qigong stretches: this is what the internet has dubbed \u2018Chinamaxxing\u2019.\u00a0<\/p>\n

Once dismissed as old-fashioned or niche, these aesthetics have suddenly found themselves in vogue amongst those in the West with a TikTok account. All the while, offline (read: the real world), China dominates as a global superpower. And it’s this omnipresence in news and culture, together with the ever-shifting perceptions that the US and China hold on one another, that has sharpened the West’s fascination with the country today.<\/p>\n

Like most online movements, Chinamaxxing offers only a partial view, packaging fragments of a vast culture into something digestible and highly shareable. But the impulse and fascination with a stylized, curated version of Chinese culture is far from new.<\/p>\n

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The Banqueting Room at the Royal Pavilion in Brighton from John Nash’s »Views of the Royal Pavilion» (1826)<\/figcaption><\/figure>\n

In fact, you only have to look back to the 17th and 18th centuries, when Europe fell hard for what it understood (or misunderstood) to be \u2018the East.\u2019 Increased trade with China during the High Qing era brought an influx of porcelain, silk, and lacquerware into European homes \u2013 luxury goods that quickly became markers of taste and status.\u00a0<\/p>\n

From this grew chinoiserie, a decorative style that translated cultural admiration into interiors, architecture, and the curation of objects that were less about accuracy and more about creating an atmosphere. Chinoiserie wasn\u2019t interested in faithfully reproducing China. Instead, it thrived on interpretation. Despite its name deriving from the French chinois<\/em> (meaning \u2018Chinese\u2019), designers borrowed freely from across Asia, frequently collapsing Chinese, Japanese, and even Indian motifs into a single aesthetic.<\/p>\n

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Bamboo-replications, hand-painted motifs and silk textures are key tropes of chinoiserie \u00a9Brighton Royal Pavilion<\/figcaption><\/figure>\n

Hand-painted wallpapers filled with fantastical landscapes, pagoda-style rooflines, delicate fretwork, lacquered furniture, and an entire cast of dragons, exotic birds, and improbable gardens created an escapist vision of a distant, harmonious world.<\/p>\n

Royal patronage helped accelerate the trend. George III’s fascination with all things Chinese saw him encourage a scholarly exchange of sorts, where British architects, academics, and scientists were sent out with trading companies in order to bring back as many ideas as possible. London\u2019s Kew Gardens opened shortly after in 1759, housing hundreds of new species of flora clippings from China and the Western New World. The Great Pagoda was completed in 1762 as a gift for Princess Augusta, as one of several Chinese buildings designed for Kew by Sir William Chambers.<\/p>\n

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The Brighton Pavillion, commissioned in 1787, takes a more Middle Eastern-inspired architectural approach for its exteriors<\/figcaption><\/figure>\n

In 1787, the Prince Regent, who would later be crowned King George IV, commissioned Brighton Pavilion as his newest holiday retreat. Despite lying on England\u2019s south coast, the architecture ditched notions of nautical design for something more Middle Eastern-inspired \u2013 an onion-domed, bamboo-lined, lantern-lit Chinese palace like no other of its time.<\/p>\n

See also: How To Bring Regencycore Into Your Home<\/a><\/em><\/p>\n

Nowhere was this more apparent than in the rise of the \u2018China Room.\u2019 By the mid-18th century, having one had become a quiet flex among Europe\u2019s upper classes. At Harewood House, the late-18th-century interiors incorporated Chinese wallpapers and porcelain as part of a broader display of global taste, while Burton Constable Hall and Claydon House leaned more heavily into decorative fantasy, with intricate fretwork, lacquered surfaces, and densely layered ornamentation.<\/p>\n

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While designed in the chinoiserie style, much of the interiors of Brighton’s Royal Pavilion borrow from Indian and Japanese styles \u00a9Brighton Royal Pavilion<\/figcaption><\/figure>\n

These rooms were designed to entertain, lined with imported (or import-inspired) porcelain, cabinets filled with curiosities, and walls covered in hand-painted wallpapers. Crucially, they were less a reflection of real Chinese interiors and more a staged illusion: most of the objects, while sometimes made in China, were created specifically for export or interpreted through European design. The result was an imagined version of China, assembled for display, conversation, and status.<\/p>\n

Even without the unifying force of the internet, this aesthetic wasn\u2019t confined to Britain. The Chinese House in Sanssouci Park is a gilded, playful interpretation of Eastern design, while Russia\u2019s Chinese Village, commissioned by Catherine the Great in the late 18th century, turned the idea into a full architectural experiment \u2013 proof that chinoiserie was becoming a continent-wide fixation.<\/p>\n

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The Great Pagoda was one of several Chinese buildings designed for Kew by Sir William Chambers \u00a9Historical Royal Palaces<\/figcaption><\/figure>\n

But for all its beauty, chinoiserie came with complications. Brighton Pavilion\u2019s architects, John Nash and Fredrick Crace, had never been to China, which might explain why the palace\u2019s decorative palm tree columns, hybrid dragons and gibberish Chinese characters were inaccurate. William Chambers, the architect behind Kew Gardens\u2019 Great Pagoda, did visit China, yet his rendition was still built with an inauspicious number of floors.<\/p>\n

At its core was imitation: an aesthetic built on what Europeans thought<\/em> China looked like, rather than what it actually<\/em> was. Many objects in these interiors were made specifically for export, tailored to Western tastes rather than reflecting authentic Chinese design. Others were produced entirely in Europe, filtered through imagination and second-hand references. The result was something visually rich but culturally distorted: a version of China that existed largely in the European mind.<\/p>\n

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Despite visiting China, Chambers still designed the Great Pagoda with an inauspicious number of floors \u00a9Historical Royal Palaces<\/figcaption><\/figure>\n

Some saw chinoiserie as frivolous and illogical; others viewed it as a sign of cultural confusion, or worse, a superficial engagement with a complex civilization. With hindsight, it\u2019s difficult to separate the aesthetic from the broader context of empire, trade, and exploitation that made these objects \u2013 and crucially this fascination \u2013 possible in the first place.<\/p>\n

Which brings us back to now. The current wave of Chinese-inspired trends may be faster, more digital and more self-aware, but the pattern feels oh-so familiar. Then, as now, elements of a culture are selected, stylized, and circulated for consumption. The difference is the medium. The instinct, it seems, hasn\u2019t changed much at all.<\/p>","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

The West\u2019s curiosity with Chinese-inspired design didn\u2019t start online; instead, today\u2019s fascination with Chinese aesthetics has deep and surprisingly familiar roots.\u00a0 Scroll through social media right now and you\u2019ll find a steady stream of Chinese aesthetics repackaged for global consumption. Whether it\u2019s the power of Shanghai Fashion Week, the viral appeal of plush collectibles like […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":3750,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":"","beyondwords_generate_audio":"","beyondwords_project_id":"","beyondwords_content_id":"","beyondwords_preview_token":"","beyondwords_player_content":"","beyondwords_player_style":"","beyondwords_language_id":"","beyondwords_title_voice_id":"","beyondwords_body_voice_id":"","beyondwords_summary_voice_id":"","beyondwords_error_message":"","beyondwords_disabled":"","beyondwords_delete_content":"","beyondwords_podcast_id":"","beyondwords_hash":"","publish_post_to_speechkit":"","speechkit_hash":"","speechkit_generate_audio":"","speechkit_project_id":"","speechkit_podcast_id":"","speechkit_error_message":"","speechkit_disabled":"","speechkit_access_key":"","speechkit_error":"","speechkit_info":"","speechkit_response":"","speechkit_retries":"","speechkit_status":"","speechkit_updated_at":"","_speechkit_link":"","_speechkit_text":""},"categories":[1],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-3749","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","category-general"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/facesjournal.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/3749","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/facesjournal.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/facesjournal.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/facesjournal.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/facesjournal.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcomments&post=3749"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/facesjournal.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/3749\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/facesjournal.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/media\/3750"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/facesjournal.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fmedia&parent=3749"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/facesjournal.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcategories&post=3749"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/facesjournal.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Ftags&post=3749"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}