Europe vs. China: Different Time, Different Universes, Different Rhythms (Part 1)

Time: Europe’s Gracefully Slow vs. China’s Efficient Fast

I often slip into a kind of constant hallucination when traveling in the European continent, that familiar sci-fi feeling of being on a space cruise ship moving through time and space. Especially when I’m on the road, taking a train to the next town, hopping on a bus to the next destination, or crossing those historic streets lined with old buildings that have stood for centuries. Moments like these remind me again and again that I come from the future, because Shanghai is too modern, too futuristic, compared with what is in front of my naked eyes. The sensation is close to what Michael J. Fox feels in Back to the Future, that sudden nerve jolt of stepping into another universe.

This stimulates my pulse to dive deeper beyond the surface, from simply observing to understanding the fundamental differences between brands born in Europe and those born in China. What hidden truths lie within such different philosophies and wisdoms, aesthetics, and ways of understanding the world?

This week, I tap into a different concept of time: Europe’s gracefully slow versus China’s efficient fast.

Time seems not that important in Europe, and people even slow down intentionally. On trains heading to different cities, I often spotted passengers next to me casually flipping through an old magazine or immersing their heads in the crossword puzzle inside it. What impressed me most was that many of them, including Gen Zers, were holding a very thick printed book, perusing it on the fast-moving metro. This is almost unimaginable in today’s China, where everybody is impatiently swiping their phones all the time on the metro, fearing missing something or constantly irritated by any second of boredom.

Photo by the author in the Paris Metro

This slow-moving scene suddenly struck my soft spot for those good old days when we were arguing till we were red in the face, guessing what the correct answer was to the crossword puzzle in the day’s newspaper in the office. I miss those days when I had a pen in my pocket all the time, ready to rack my brain to crack those puzzles whenever I was on the move in the early 2000s, when grabbing a newspaper or a cheap magazine on the go was so easy and convenient.

Now I have become the only person walking down the streets of Europe, tightly holding a power bank in my hand instead of a pen or a book, constantly recharging my phone like a lifesaving oxygen mask, and falling into hopeless anxiety whenever the signal turns red.

There is a twenty-year time gap between Europe and China. While the Chinese seize every moment and every second to catch up with the world, we unconsciously rush toward an uncertain future and inevitably lose this damned chill (该死的松弛感)in a way that is both pitiful and envious. And, without exception, we end up getting sick with modern disease, accompanied by a chronic FOMO syndrome.

Like the two sides of a coin, life in China has never been so convenient compared to 20 years ago, thanks to technology evolving rapidly and being applied to every corner of society. We are now living in a place that feels 20 years ahead of Europe in terms of digitalisation and sophistication. This caught me off guard before I landed in Europe, as I had long held the stereotype that Europe is a far more advanced society (it still is, just not in the way China is, where digitalisation and technology applications permeate almost every aspect of daily life).

Chinese people are living in a future ahead of Europe, surrounded by cashless payments, super apps like WeChat and Red Note that cover almost everything, livestreaming, vertical dramas, social commerce, instant commerce, and AI applications starting to permeate daily life and become part of everyday routines. Chinese people might be among the most digitally discerning tribes in the world. While Europeans still rely heavily on email to confirm bookings and receive notifications, the Chinese move through various apps and WeChat mini-programs, simply because they have proven to be faster, more convenient, and highly reliable.

One incident says it all. I took the train from Milan to Paris and saw all the passengers get off the train in the middle of nowhere, while I was the only one who remained seated until they came over and told me, urgently, that I needed to get off too, because we had to switch to another train to Paris. They had all received an email notification. I hadn’t, because I booked the ticket on the Omio app, with no email involved. I suddenly became the clueless “laowai” as the Chinese jokingly call foreigners, left completely in the dark. I realised I had come from a different planet: a planet of apps and mini-programs, abruptly ejected onto an email planet that China passed through long ago, without even noticing when.

This tells a lot. One of the key points is the totally different mindsets and attitudes toward time and the future.

In China, after twenty years of rapid development in an era of economic upswing, our mindset and behaviour have been locked into a mode of “chasing” all the time, afraid of being left behind by the world, or by time itself. Some analysts argue that this collective mindset is shaped by the “Century of Humiliation” (百年耻辱), which left a long-lasting psychological imprint on national pride. Others point out that China is simply hardwired to industriousness, placing a high value on hard work and returns. Either way, this survival mode has driven China’s continuous, almost miraculous economic growth over the past two decades.

Now this strong economic engine is finally cooling down as everything begins to change, yet our mindset still lags behind. We cannot stop. We rush into the future because we firmly believe tomorrow will be a better day (明天会更好), as the classic Mandarin song goes. Coincidentally, technology has helped reinforce this belief, even turning it into a mirage. Today, it is AI. Almost every technological innovation is seeded here, quickly adapted, and scaled at speed in the hope of materialising fast into commercial success, EVs, robotics, AI, and more, all mixed with anxiety driven by geopolitical power plays. The whole society is deeply entrenched in this survival mode, leaving little room to pause and reflect on what these waves might bring.

We have been living in a bubble of digitalisation for so long that it has become a comfort zone, a way to buffer against other equally pressing pressures in life: high unemployment, deflation, the spillover impact of the real-estate downturn, and the involution brought by a more competitive environment with scarcer opportunities and resources. Can technology and digitalisation alter the course of this downturn after an era of booming growth? It seems they are not the remedy, but part of what makes it worse.

As growth slows, more and more Chinese people are realising that future jobs may disappear and be replaced by AI, as digitalisation has already changed the logic of revenue growth and disrupted how we work, spend, entertain ourselves, and ultimately how we think and respond to an environment evolving at an unprecedented speed.

Many signals suggest the whole society is collectively fatigued by over-digitalisation. After years of a hyper-online lifestyle, people have become accustomed to one-click instant gratification, meeting desire, releasing dopamine, a habit that feels like digging a hole in one’s pocket and burning money fast, money that will be badly needed in the future.

It starts to change when every penny counts. People have started to feel fatigue from this constantly active online life and from shopping festivals like 6.18 and Singles’ Day (11.11), which have turned ordinary days into dopamine-fuelled consumption rituals engineered by GMV-chasing tech giants, first Alibaba and JD.com, and now joined by Douyin and Red Note, which own, operate, and profit from the platforms themselves.

After years of chasing euphoria accompanied by dopamine release in these shopping extravaganzas, with the firm belief that a better future was in sight, the Chinese are now forced to march into a future out of expectation for the first time after 20 years of economic boom, as consumption downgrading is set to remain a long-term life pattern that Chinese consumers must adapt to.

According to Chinese consumer research firm Syntun, this year’s Singles’ Day recorded total sales of 1.695 trillion yuan (approximately $238 billion) across all platforms, up 14.2% year on year. The pace of growth, however, slowed significantly compared with last year’s 26.6% increase. On the contrary, China is turning into another paradise for the frugal, with warehouse-style discount stores such as ALDI, Pang Dong Lai, and HotMaxx swarming with hordes of people seeking the best bargains every day.

The tide is changing.

This 20-year time gap is nothing in the span of human history, yet it passed too quickly for anyone living in fast-paced China to pause and think before making the next move. We ran too fast, rushing twenty years ahead of Europe, only to arrive at a nowhere filled with anxiety and panic. No wonder Chinese people are increasingly yearning for a more tactile, slower lifestyle, mixed with nostalgia for the 1990s or early 2000s, wishing they could turn back time.

Some savvy brands quickly captured the signal of online-life fatigue and turned to immersive experiences as a solution. According to Jing Daily, offline presence has become the new luxury, with brands like To Summer, Melt Season, and Documents jumping on the wagon to create spaces where people can slow down and chill from the hustle and hassle of life.

This is a clear heads-up for brands: if you are still defaulting to “more digitalisation,” “more AI,” or “more tech-integrated experiences,” it may be time to think twice. The tide is turning.

In the next episode, I will slide into the Chinese way of practicality and usefulness versus Europe’s philosophy of “uselessness,” and explore how this difference shapes the way brands are built.