II. Factory Life and Smart Family:An Early 2000s Youth Style in China

China

Smart is a subcultural style that emerged in the 2000s China. The term “Smart”

has been used since then as a reference for young people coming from rural areas in

China to big cities mostly in Guangdong Province to earn a living in factories at a

young age.

The Chinese term “ sha ma te ” was at first translated from English “Smart” by

Fuxing Luo in the 2000s, who is called the “father of Smart” and is considered the

most famous person from this group nowadays. 44 According to an interview in 2021

by the Chinese news website, The Paper (Peng Pai), he first used the English word

“smart” , which means both clever and fashionable, and translated into the Chinese

word si ma te (斯马特). To be more powerful, he changed it into “ sha ma te (杀马特)”

“ sha ( 杀)” , which means “to kill. ”45 Since then, the Chinese term almost has

nothing to do with the English meaning. And for people outside this subculture, this

term is more often used in a negative or ironic way.

This chapter starts with the discussion of the media discourse around Smart

style, which is essential for two reasons. First, because there is little academic

research on this subculture, and this thesis has to rely heavily on documentaries, news

reports, and journal articles. Social media contents are used as well, which links to the

second reason. Smart was born in the 2000s, a time when the Internet was developing

fast and when more people started to engage in the online space. As a result, this is a

44 The Paper. “ding zhe sha ma te jiao zhu chui de tou, he ta liao le liao ren sheng (顶着杀马特教主吹的头，和他

聊了聊人生).

”45 The Paper.

“ding zhe sha ma te jiao zhu chui de tou, he ta liao le liao ren sheng (顶着杀马特教主吹的头，和他 聊了聊人生).