For many young Chinese, the future doesn’t look so great: The job market is dire, wages are falling and competition seems endless. To cope, some are recreating scenes from the early 2000s, when the economy was growing rapidly.

对许多中国年轻人来说，未来看起来并不那么美好：就业市场严峻、工资下降、竞争似乎永无止境。为了应对这种情况，有些人正在重现21世纪初经济快速增长时的场景。

They are sharing images online of internet cafes, high-rises covered in blue glass and unusual youth sub-cultures. Here is how one post reads:

他们在网上分享网吧、覆盖着蓝色玻璃的高楼以及不同寻常的青年亚文化的图像。其中一篇帖子内容如下：

You wake up to the sound of your mother’s voice. It’s a normal weekend in 2008.

你醒了？现在是2008年的一个平常的周末……早晨，妈妈叫你起床...

After breakfast, you accompany her to the hair salon. On the way, you pass buildings with blue windows.

吃过饭后，妈妈要你陪着去理发店。路过了一栋蓝色玻璃大楼。

She takes you to KFC for lunch, your favorite.

中午妈妈带你去吃了肯德基，真的好好吃啊。

You run into some strangely dressed people, who call themselves “Shamate.”

路上遇到了一些比较另类的人，好像叫“杀马特”。

Once it gets dark, you go home. You think to yourself, if only every day could be this happy.

天黑了要回家了。要是每天都能这样开心就好了。

In memes, animations, old photographs and retro playlists posted online, people are recalling brightly colored exercise equipment; the ping of QQ, an early messaging platform; traditional dark-wood living room furniture; and the song “Beijing Welcomes You” from when China hosted the 2008 Summer Olympics.

在网上发布的迷因、动画、老照片和复古歌单中，人们回忆色彩鲜艳的健身器材、早期即时通讯平台QQ的滴滴声、传统的深色木制客厅家具，以及中国举办2008年夏季奥运会时的歌曲《北京欢迎你》。

The trend has given rise to a digital subculture known as Chinese Dreamcore. It’s more than just nostalgia, online creators, artists and experts say. The genre serves as a “new type of digital pain reliever for young people in modern times,” as one blogger put it.

这一趋势催生了一种被称为“中式梦核”的数字亚文化。网络创作者、艺术家和专家表示，这不仅仅是怀旧。正如一位博主所言，这种类型成了“当代年轻人的新型数字止痛药”。

It is an aesthetic that echoes a nostalgia and dreaminess popular elsewhere, like the revival of 1980s style in the United States, captured in the fandom for shows like “Stranger Things.”

这种美学呼应了其他地方流行的怀旧和梦幻情怀，就像美国1980年代风格的复兴在《怪奇物语》(Stranger Things)等剧集的粉丝群体中得到体现。

On Chinese social media sites, posts described as Chinese Dreamcore often begin with the idea that one has traveled back in time to wake up in one’s childhood home.

在中国社交媒体网站上，被描述为“中式梦核”的帖子通常以穿越时空、在童年家中醒来的意向作为开头。

中国热门社交媒体应用小红书上，标签为“中式梦核”的帖子。

Posts tagged with Chinese Dreamcore from Xiaohongshu, a popular Chinese social media app.

来自中国热门社交媒体应用小红书上带有中式梦核标签的帖子。

Han Xiaoqiang, an associate professor at Southeast University in Nanjing who studies media, described such posts as a form of fantasy and wish fulfillment, a bit like Doraemon, the Japanese anime character who goes back in time to help his friend build a better future.

南京东南大学研究媒体的副教授韩晓强将这类帖子描述为一种幻想和愿望的满足，有点像日本动漫角色哆啦A梦——他回到过去，帮助朋友创造更美好的未来。

“They use nostalgia to return to a dream because they can’t change anything,” he said. “Their childhood dreams were brilliant, but as adults they find society isn’t what they expected,” he said.

“们用怀旧的方式回到过去的那种想像。他们什么都改变不了，”他说。“小时候的梦想是非常非常的灿烂的，但是他们成年之后发现，整个社会不是他们想像的那样。”

Chinese Dreamcore’s primary fans are from Generation Z, born in the late 1990s and 2000s. They witnessed the rise of the internet and China’s rapid transformation from a still-developing country to a major power, rivaling the United States. For many of them, scenes from their childhood had simply vanished.

“中式梦核”的主要粉丝群体来自出生于1990年代末和2000年代的Z世代。他们见证了互联网的崛起，以及中国从一个发展中国家迅速蜕变为可与美国抗衡的大国。对他们中的许多人来说，童年的场景已经完全不复存在。

In addition to grainy, low-resolution photos and videos of buildings and urban landscapes in the early 2000s, Chinese creators are also making eerie mash-ups of those familiar scenes — a reflection of the subconscious, hazy memories of one’s childhood.

除了2000年代初颗粒感强、低分辨率的建筑和城市景观照片与视频外，中国创作者还对这些熟悉的场景进行怪异的混搭——这反映了潜意识中模糊的童年记忆。

In a book of drawings published last year, Ai Kewei, a 35-year-old artist in Chengdu, combined memories from her childhood, like elephant-shaped playground slides and high-rise buildings topped with structures that she imagined to be alien spaceships. She remembers vividly the heat of the sun on long slow days; how everything around her was blue, including the water dispensers and the hand soap her family used.

在去年出版的一本画册中，35岁的成都艺术家艾可薇将童年记忆融合在一起，比如大象造型的游乐场滑梯，以及顶部带有她想象中外星飞船形状的摩天大楼。她清楚地记得漫长而悠闲的日子里灼热的阳光；记得周围的一切都是蓝色的，包括饮水机和家里用的洗手液。

Ms. Ai also recalls the sense of change once the internet arrived.

艾可薇还回想起互联网刚出现时那种变化的感觉。

When her family installed their first computer, she spent every day exploring the internet. “You didn’t know what would happen tomorrow,” she said. “Things were developing fast, but you felt the future was unpredictable and full of imagination.”

当她家安装了第一台电脑时，她每天都在探索互联网。“你不知道明天会发生什么，”她说。“那么发达，但是你就是觉得未来是不可预知的，充满各种想像的。”

Ms. Ai thinks that one reason people are attracted to Chinese Dreamcore is that they long for the simplicity of the dial-up era. “I think many people still miss the harmony and beauty of the early days of the internet — that feeling that the world would unite and that feeling of connection,” she said.

艾可薇认为，人们被“中式梦核”吸引的一个原因是他们怀念拨号上网时代的简单纯粹。“大家就是还是很想念从前那个互联网早期时代的那种和谐、那种美好，那种相信全球大家全世界会团结在一起的那种感觉，那种连接感，”她说。

For Li Haoran, who makes animations, her work is about saving parts of her childhood. The home where she grew up in Henan Province was demolished. She depicts scenes from the 2000s like swan-shaped pedal boats, as well as futuristic skyscrapers and buildings covered in the white tiles that were common at the time. These objects, she said, give her the “sensation of being hugged.”

对于制作动画的李昊冉来说，她的作品旨在保存童年记忆的片段。她在河南长大，老家已经被拆。她描绘了2000年代的场景，比如天鹅造型的脚踏船、充满未来感的摩天大楼和当时常见的覆盖着白色瓷砖的建筑。她说，这些物体给了她一种“小时候抱过我”的感觉。

“When I and many others see them, we feel a sense of familiarity,” she said.

“我或者是很多观众可能看了之后就会比较亲切，”她说。

The disappearance of those familiar and comforting hallmarks from the past is why Chinese Dreamcore is so emotionally resonant. Looking at these images, viewers “suddenly realize that they are losing something,” said Huang Heshan, a Beijing-based visual artist, whose series “Too Rich City” is seen as one of the early examples of Chinese Dreamcore.

正是过去那些熟悉和令人欣慰的标志的消失使“中式梦核” 在情感上如此引人共鸣。北京的视觉艺术家黄河山表示，看着这些图像，观众“发现自己正在失去某一些东西”。他的系列作品《秃力城》被视为“中式梦核”的早期例子之一。

Since the term began appearing on social media in the 2020s, Chinese Dreamcore has gone more mainstream. The aesthetic has appeared in video games, books, advertising campaigns, dinnerware at hot pot restaurants and packaging for medicine.

自从2020年代这个词开始出现在社交媒体上以来，“中式梦核” 已逐渐走向主流。这种美学已经出现在电子游戏、书籍、广告活动、火锅店的餐具以及药品包装中。

Some have taken a more literal approach to remembering the millennium. Liu Yujia, a 24-year-old photographer from Jilin, has traveled to more than 230 Chinese cities to capture architecture from the 2000s — a time when Chinese cities tried to outdo each other with new buildings that reflected an embrace of the future, sometimes to gaudy and strange effect. As a child, he stared in wonder at those buildings, which have steadily been replaced by sleeker and more modern versions.

有些人采取更直观的方式来记住千禧年。来自吉林的24岁摄影师刘育嘉走遍了230多个中国城市，拍摄2000年代的建筑——在那个时期，中国各城市竞相兴建新建筑，体现对未来的拥抱，有时会产生俗气和奇怪的效果。儿时的他曾对这些建筑充满好奇，而现在它们正逐步被更时尚、更现代的建筑所取代。

His photos include European-style castles, revolving restaurants and high-rises adorned with sci-fi-esque domes, geometric shapes, dramatic facades and, in one case, a large arrow — which he described in a caption as “pointing to the future.” Mr. Liu will spend a year traveling and photographing these buildings before they are gone.

他的照片包括欧式城堡、旋转餐厅，以及装饰着科幻风格的穹顶、几何形状和戏剧性立面的高楼大厦，其中一栋大楼上还矗立着一支巨大的箭头——他在图注中将其描述为“指向未来”。 刘育嘉打算花一年时间旅行并拍摄这些建筑，在它们消失之前留存影像。

China has not censored Chinese Dreamcore content, but state media have warned of the dangers of idealizing the past. An essay in a social sciences journal published by the Chinese province Gansu’s propaganda department said that, while Chinese Dreamcore provided an emotional outlet for China’s Generation Z, its “potential risks should not be ignored.”

中国还没有对“中式梦核”内容进行审查，但官方媒体已经警告过美化过去的危险。甘肃省委宣传部出版的一份社会科学期刊上的一篇文章称，虽然“中式梦核”为中国Z世代提供了情感宣泄的出口，但其“潜在风险仍不容忽视”。

“If Generation Z becomes uncontrollably immersed in the fantasy of Dreamcore, it could trigger cultural symptoms” such as existential crises and “hidden ideological threats” that could undermine young people’s development of “a healthy worldview and core values,” the article said in January.

这篇发表于1月的文章写道：“若Z世代情难自抑地沦陷于 ‘梦核’幻境，则有可能引发精神危机、审美困境、 资本操控、 意识形态安全隐患等文化症候， 影响其形成正确的世界观、 人生观、 价值观。”

While previous generations of Chinese artists used nostalgia and vintage iconography to criticize periods of political turmoil like the 1966-76 Cultural Revolution, Chinese Dreamcore is to some relatively superficial.

虽然前几代中国艺术家曾经利用怀旧和复古的标志来批判1966-1976年的“文化大革命”等政治动荡时期，但一些人认为，“中式梦核”相对表面化。

“It’s more like a trendy hashtag,” Mr. Huang said. “How many people can truly extract something valuable and profound from this hashtag remains to be seen and depends on whether it inspires any lasting work.”

“它现在反而更像是一种在网络上流行的一个标签，”黄河山说。“至于能有多少人能真的把它里面的一些有价值的有深度的东西能做出来，这个就要看以后它能不能留下这样的作品。”

Ms. Ai, who returned to China after studying in Britain, argues that the point of Chinese Dreamcore is not to criticize this current moment in China, which she said was still full of opportunity and progress. To her, it is about addressing the sense of dislocation in the face of rapid technological change and uncertainty.

曾在英国留学后回国的艾可薇认为，“中式梦核”的重点不在于批评当下中国的现状，她说，当下的中国仍然充满机遇和进步。对她而言，“中式梦核”是为了应对快速的技术变革和不确定性之下产生的错位感。

“It is about trying to find like-minded people also navigating this state of confusion or vulnerability. It’s looking for a virtual space where everyone can be at ease for a minute,” she said. “It’s seeing one’s sadness and saying, ‘I have it too.’ That’s healing, isn’t it?”

“它只是在去寻找大家在去在一个这种迷惘或者说脆弱的过程中去寻找同类，寻找一个能暂时用几十秒或者一分钟让大家安心的一个虚拟空间吧，”她说。“你的忧伤我看到了，我也有。这才是一种治愈吧。”