We Were Smart (杀马特我爱你) is a documentary film about “Sha Ma Te” (杀马特) subculture in China, directed by Li Yuan and released in 2018. The film explores the history, influence, and identity of “Sha Ma Te” subculture through interviews with former and current “Sha Ma Te” enthusiasts, as well as cultural critics and academics. The documentary also reveals the previously underrepresented subculture in China's mainstream media to the public. 

"Sha Ma Te” is a style of subculture that emerged in China between 2008 and 2013, similar to the "emo" or "goth" subcultures in the West. "Sha Ma Te" characterized by exaggerated hairstyles and alternative, inexpensive clothing. They  also emphasizes black and red color schemes, sharp and edgy styles and images, and typically includes items such as black leather jackets, pointed boots, backpacks, hairstyles, and more. They gather on Chinese social media platforms such as QQ and engage in activities like styling themselves, video chatting, and playing online games. The main participants of this subculture are young people, particularly the new generation of migrant teenager workers who strongly identify with the group's identity. The “Sha Ma Te” phenomenon was marked by idol changes and organizational splits. 

According to Dick Hebdige, subcultures share two common features: a working-class attribute and a style constructed through bricolage. The factory life of "Sha Ma Te” migrant workers from rural areas is characterized by extreme hardship. They typically engage in repetitive and mechanical work, endure long working hours, and receive low wages. Furthermore, they lack a support network of family and friends in the city and often face neglect or exclusion. Their living conditions are extremely poor, as they reside in crowded and unsanitary factory dormitories or rented houses. They face extreme economic instability, are unable to obtain medical insurance or other benefits, and occupy a marginalized social status. As a result, their lives are marked by insecurity and uncertainty, with a lack of basic human rights and social protections. Besides, bricolage is an alternative use of commodities that constructs a unique consumption ritual and style that distinguishes subcultures from mainstream culture, expressing a sense of identity and prohibited meaning. The "Sha Ma Te" style's bricolage feature is evident in their self-narrative, as they consider their image to originate from Visual Rock, a popular music genre in Japan and the West, but without the accompanying music performance. Their appearance is created using inexpensive cosmetics, hair wax, and accessories; tattooing their bodies; redefining the use of some items, such as male Sha Ma Te wearing female accessories and clothing and transforming wigs and clothing into exaggerated styles. These cheap items are usually readily available to them. Later, there emerged cheap Sha Ma Te merchandise, such as virtual goods and character models in online games like QQ Speed, Xuan Dance, and JJT; and specialized the Sha Ma Te clothing on e-commerce platforms like Taobao and urban and rural shops. Hebdige contends that such bricolage reflects how subcultures construct a fixed style through various commodity objects, breaking the expected use of commodities.

The “Sha Ma Te” subculture is a unique aesthetic and cultural phenomenon that defies simple classification into categories such as Kitsch or Camp. According to Tomas Kulka states in Kitsch and Art, Kitsch is a form of popular art that reinforces dominant cultural values and cliches through easily accessible and sentimentalized images that appeal to the masses. While "Sha Ma Te" culture may embody some of the characteristics of Kitsch, such as easily accessible and sentimentalized images, it also challenges mainstream culture and values in significant ways. Thus, the "Sha Ma Te" subculture is a complex and multifaceted cultural phenomenon that cannot be entirely captured by Kulka's definition of Kitsch. On the other hand, in Notes on Camp, Susan Sontag defines Camp as a mode of aestheticism that celebrates artifice, exaggeration, and theatricality, and enjoys "bad taste" or unconventional things. In this light, the "Sha Ma Te" culture can be seen as an example of Camp, as it celebrates exaggeration and theatricality through unique fashion styles and appearance, intentionally incorporating "bad taste" or unconventional elements. The subculture revels in the artifice of pop culture and employs humor and irony to critique mainstream culture. Therefore, the "Sha Ma Te" culture exemplifies the sensibility of Camp in its celebration of artifice, exaggeration, and unconventional aesthetics.

Previously, "Sha Ma Te" 's aesthetic was widely dismissed and ridiculed in mainstream Chinese society. However, upon closer examination of the group and its stories, the relationship between this subculture's aesthetic and structural social injustice becomes more apparent. Today, with wider spread and reflective research about "Sha Ma Te", this subculture starts to be seen more as a reflection of the problems of modern monolithic development cities, and as such, the subculture's themes and concerns are relevant to a wider audience. 

Through the above description, it's clear to understand the basic characteristics and distinct subcultural features of the "Sha Ma Te" youth group in China. Unlike the "queer" subculture, the "Sha Ma Te" group is not explicitly or clearly expressing any demands or rights, and their resistance to social injustice is difficult to detect from their behavior and culture. the "Sha Ma Te" subculture is based on the complex social structure of urban-rural dichotomy and is mainly composed of the new generation of migrant workers in the 1980s and 1990s. However, their subcultural identity is only a form of self-expression in their leisure time and does not necessarily align with their true selves outside of online media, but instead reflects their deeper social identity. The resistance of the "Sha Ma Te" group is vague and not directly expressed in their daily activities, and they have not utilized their collective strength to fight for political and economic rights. Instead, their subcultural identity temporarily allows them to ignore work and material and ideological pressures in their everyday lives. The challenge that subcultures represent to hegemony is not directly produced by the subculture itself, but rather indirectly manifested in the styles they deviate from.

The emergence of the "Sha Ma Te" subculture can be attributed to changes in the urban-rural social structure relationship within the context of China's modernization process. This process necessitates urban expansion and the concomitant decline of rural areas, leading to the capitalization of agricultural production and the concentration of economic resources and opportunities in urban centers. Consequently, rural areas experience limitations in accessing these resources and opportunities, and this is compounded by the transfer of labor resources from the agricultural to the industrial sector. The transformation of agricultural production to industrialization is a direct consequence of capital's intervention and control of rural society. Underage rural youths are exploited as potential urban labor, further eroding the traditional structure of rural communities. Therefore, the emergence of the "Sha Ma Te" subculture can be understood as a response to the social structural changes engendered by China's modernization process. The difficulties that rural youth face in attaining employment, establishing families, and achieving upward mobility in society can engender frustration and marginalization.

Due to China's Hukou system (which is a system of household registration used in mainland China), the urbanization level of modern Chinese society is far higher than the urban population growth rate. In other words, the human resources in China have contributed greatly to urbanization and industrialization, but these populations have not synchronized with urbanization. This has resulted in new migrant workers being not only economically poor but also lacking the subjective identity they once had in rural communities. They lack effective expression logic of rights in their new living space, so they are unable to improve their unjust social resource allocation, such as their disadvantaged position in issues such as medical insurance and education opportunities. This unjust social resource allocation is manifested in the reality of the urban-rural binary social structure. Faced with this urban-rural reality, the cultural expression of the new generation of migrant workers is powerless, and even the mainstream society's stigmatization of their subcultural identity is a tragedy they cannot avoid.

It is noteworthy that the disdain of the mainstream Chinese culture towards the subculture of "Sha Ma Te" does not necessarily come from the elite class. The various malicious names given to so-called "cultural poor" on the internet are not privileges of the upper class, but rather, they may come from the bottom rungs of society, who have yet to step into the threshold of the middle class. Zygmunt Bauman suggests that poverty is not only a result of economic and social structures but also how society perceives and understands poverty. He argues that ordinary people, who are neither rich nor poor, play a significant role in defining and perpetuating poverty by either accepting or rejecting the lifestyles of the poor. In other words, society must constantly construct, define, and differentiate heretics or the poor from within in order to maintain stability. Society can only build a sense of security and order by constantly dividing others internally and identifying the poor within the group. Most people, when faced with the "Sha Ma Te" group, can only continue to ridicule them using cheap electronic products, smoking low-quality cigarettes, wearing inexpensive clothes, and listening to tasteless music, so that those who are also homeless and have no support in the metropolis can find their own existence.

The emergence of the "Sha Ma Te" subculture in China represents a dual tragedy. The first layer of tragedy arises from the merciless and structurally unequal modern Chinese society in which the “Sha Ma Te” subculture takes root. The second layer of tragedy results from the “Sha Ma Te” group's powerlessness and lack of awareness regarding fundamental social inequality. While they are undoubtedly viewed with contempt by society, they can only escape into the flamboyant and surreal world of the "Sha Ma Te” subculture, characterized by unconventional behavior and appearance. The members of this subculture fail to recognize the significance of their own subcultural identity as an expression of the exploration by young migrant workers of new ways of life and experiences amidst urban expansion and rural community decline, nor are they aware that their existence is a result of the unreasonable urban-rural binary social structure. Nevertheless, even if the Sha Ma Te's pursuit of a new identity may lack practical significance, it represents a positive attempt by these young laborers to embrace new ways of life after leaving their hometowns. This attempt is externalized through their behavior and appearance as Sha Ma Te, which serves as a distinctive feature they must maintain. They can only obtain a true sense of identity and recognition of their rights by actively exploring new identities, which in turn leads to a determination to challenge the unreasonable social structure.

The colorful and unconventional hairstyles of the "Sha Ma Te" subculture, as depicted in the documentary "We Were Smart (杀马特我爱你)" represent a form of resistance against the monotonous and repetitive factory work they must endure. One young work in "Sha Ma Te" group said, "I wish my hair could fly with the wind and take me over the high walls of the factory." To fully understand the origin and symbolic significance of  “Sha Ma Te”, it is necessary to move beyond its aesthetic aspects and examine the political and economic predicament of the new working class under the dualistic economic development model. This predicament includes the lack of social and political rights for migrant workers, as well as the absence of welfare benefits in urban life. These challenges stem from the dualistic economic development model that characterizes modern commercial society. It is not only a predicament for the “Sha Ma Te” subculture but also a broader predicament for the new working class in contemporary China. Therefore, it is important to explore the social, political, and economic dimensions of the “Sha Ma Te subculture” to gain insight into the larger issues of inequality and social justice that they embody.

Work cited:

Wu, Hao. “We Were Smart: A Documentary on the Chinese Internet Phenomenon." 2012, www.youtube.com/watch?v=7a-kTorTeoI

Hebdige, Dick. Subculture: The Meaning of Style. Routledge, 1979. Chapter 2: "Style as Signifying Practice" pp 46-50.

Kulka, Tomas. Kitsch and Art. Pennsylvania State University Press, 1996.

Sontag, Susan. "Notes on Camp." Partisan Review, vol. 31, no. 4, 1964, pp. 515-530.

Bauman, Zygmunt. Work, Consumerism and the New Poor. Open University Press, 1992, pp. 29-47