The modern Chinese snowman, seen all over Beijing recently during this coldest winter in 40 years, is an artifact of a unique relationship of workers to the product of their labor; a socialist innovation turned now towards a seemingly limitless future. The ephemeral quality of the snow-built base, coupled with the man-made, non-biodegradable materials used in decoration, promise to reveal a startling contradiction in the first thaw of spring, but this is of little consequence for a nation in the throes of perpetual growth.
Several prominent characteristics differentiate the Chinese snowman from its foreign cousins. To begin, this snowman is commonly found, not in parks or suburban front yards, but in public places, alongside crowded thoroughfares, a true snowman of the people.
Even more significant are the Chinese snowman’s accessories, created not from the natural world, but from the produce and detritus of consumer culture. The creators of the snowman above made innovative use of promotional flyers, folded in complicated ways (nodding, if derisively, at Origami and similar regional traditions) to create a colorful ensemble and express the bright outlook of many urban Chinese, for whom the future is filled with ever more wonderful things.
Not all Chinese snowmen share this optimistic expressiveness. The siamese snowman pair below, though possessing scarves of folded and wrapped newsprint half-buried in a fresh layer of snow, gaze mournfully towards a 烟酒 (yanjiu, or cigarettes and alcohol) shop, bathed in the green glow of the shop’s exterior sign. These snowmen, lacking arms or mouths, and with eyes buried or battered by snowfall, seem to symbolize those left behind in the nation’s great rush to get rich, those for whom the small, suicidal comforts of cigarettes and booze are some of the only pleasures that remain.
Why does the Chinese snowman take this form, rather than the 3-part body formed of large stacked snowballs that has become the Euro-American ideal? Can this be understood as resistance to the aesthetic imperialism of “The West”? As an attempt to assert a pre-existing tradition of snowman building which owes nothing to those colonial powers who hungered not so long ago to carve up the great Chinese nation?
Above is an example of the author’s Platonic ideal of a snowman (minus the feather boa, which rarely appears in the author’s Platonic ideals), also dating from the Seattle snowstorm of 08’. This snowman’s shapely curves, long arms made of branches, and sparse but lavish accessories, make it a classic of the form. The fact that such a construction is universally recognized as a snowman, even by Chinese visitors with contrasting cultural templates, is evidenced by the willingness of the excellent Chang Hong to pose alongside it.
From a materialist perspective, the differing national traditions of snowman-making have little to do with aesthetics and much to do with persistent labor formations. The Euro-American snowman is a product of inorganic solidarity, or specialized labor. While the work of snowball-rolling may be divided (often resulting in noisome disputes over who has responsibility for which segment), credit is also divided by task and allotted to individuals (points being awarded for innovative noses or unusual additions, for instance). The Chinese snowman is a contrasting example of organic solidarity, or undifferentiated labor, characterizing work which is often collective and rarely individuated. The single headed hump which has been shown in several iterations here, remains a product of a socialist economy, albeit one with many capitalistic elements. As such, the Chinese snowman is testament to the continuing influence of Marx-Mao Thought in a socioeconomic regime officially classified as 中国特色的社会主义 (socialism with Chinese characteristics). Long may it reign.
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