From Song Dynasty Pleasure Districts to Gen Z’s Third Spaces: How Medieval China Mirrors Modern Youth Culture

Name: Why Gen Z Culture Is Basically Medieval China
Uploaded: 2026-01-23T12:17:51.632173+00:00
Channel: Medieval Mindset
Description: Summary and key takeaways on From Song Dynasty Pleasure Districts to Gen Z’s Third Spaces: How Medieval China Mirrors Modern Youth Culture, covering The Rise

Medieval Mindset

Jan 23, 2026

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3 min read

YouTube video ID: pIWZM-FrC3I

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The Rise of Third Spaces

Home and work are the two primary "spaces" people occupy.
Historically, a "third space" (bars, guild halls, tea houses) offered a communal arena for leisure and social interaction.
Today’s younger generations crave these spaces again, seeking experiences over material goods.

Song Dynasty: The Original Urban Playground

The 12th‑century writer Mang Yuan Lao described the bustling capital of the Song era, highlighting 24‑hour tea houses, professional performers, and a vibrant restaurant culture.
A quoted passage shows a chaotic, menu‑driven dining experience that feels eerily similar to modern night‑out ordering.
The Song period marked the emergence of consumerism and a lifestyle culture focused on pleasure, snacking, and nighttime entertainment.

Gen Z’s Curated Living & Vibes

Modern youth pursue "curated living"—a Pinterest‑like aesthetic that values taste in music, fashion, and niche online personalities over pure monetary status.
Parallel to Song scholars who displayed status through tea, incense, and interior design, today’s status is shown through underground music, TikTok creators, and aesthetic experiences.
The surge of traditional Chinese medicine trends on TikTok (e.g., chi practice, hot‑water drinking) reflects a renewed fascination with medieval Chinese practices.

Looks‑Maxing: From Medieval Elixirs to Modern Hacks

Contemporary "looks maxing" includes diet, exercise, peptides, GLP‑1 drugs, and even bone‑smashing (tapping cheekbones with a hammer) to enhance facial definition.
In the Song Dynasty, the scholarly (Wen) class pursued a pale, refined look using specific diets and herbal cosmetics, while the warrior (Wu) class focused on bone density through striking sandbags or poles.
Both eras used external substances—medieval elixirs of rare minerals (sometimes toxic) and modern peptides—to hack the body for perceived superiority.

The Philosophy of "Locking In"

Medieval Chinese internal alchemy (Naidan) taught that refining chi, jing, and shen could transform the body into a "golden cinder."
Gen Z’s "locking in" mindset—cutting distractions to focus intensely on personal goals—mirrors this ancient pursuit of bodily and spiritual perfection.

Gambling, Pleasure Precincts, and Social Disruption

Song Dynasty "Watsi" (Pleasure Precincts) were 24‑hour zones where social rules were relaxed, fostering prostitution, gambling, and brotherhoods that sometimes challenged imperial authority.
Modern parallels: online gambling platforms, Discord gambling servers, and meme‑coin speculation serve as digital equivalents of the Watsi, allowing youths to gamble without physical presence.
Both eras show how disenfranchised youth turn to high‑risk activities when traditional pathways to success (imperial exams, stable jobs) feel unattainable.

Historical Cycles: From Tang to Ming to Today

Tang Dynasty identity was clan‑ or rank‑based, similar to feudal Europe.
Late Ming period saw a surge of individualism and self‑definition—young people identified by personal quirks rather than occupation, echoing Gen Z’s label‑centric culture.
The Ming renaissance collapsed under the Manchu conquest; the video speculates a similar systemic reset may await Gen Z (potentially AI‑driven).

Lessons from the Past

Human behavior repeats; the medium changes (physical districts vs. digital platforms).
Understanding medieval Chinese patterns helps contextualize modern youth trends and may guide more effective societal responses.

Call to Action

The creator invites viewers to support via Patreon for deeper medieval content, podcasts, and reading lists.

The parallels between Song Dynasty urban culture and Gen Z’s quest for third spaces, curated aesthetics, and body optimization reveal that while technology evolves, the core human desire for community, status, and self‑expression remains timeless—making history a crucial lens for navigating today’s challenges.

Frequently Asked Questions

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Helpful resources related to this video

If you want to practice or explore the concepts discussed in the video, these commonly used tools may help.

Song Dynasty History Book Recommended

Provides in‑depth context on medieval Chinese urban life and culture, helping readers understand the historical roots of modern third‑space cravings

Amazon →

Chinese Tea Set Porcelain

Authentic tea sets let users recreate the 24‑hour tea house experience described in Song Dynasty memoirs, enhancing personal aesthetic rituals

Amazon →

Incense Burner For Home Use

Allows modern users to emulate the scented environments prized by Song scholars, supporting the curated living vibe

Amazon →

Traditional Chinese Herbal Medicine Book

Offers safe, historically grounded herbal recipes that echo medieval elixirs, satisfying the growing interest in ancient wellness practices

Amazon →

Adjustable Dumbbell Set

Supports contemporary looks‑maxing and fitness routines while echoing the medieval focus on bone strength and physical refinement

Amazon →

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Full Transcript YouTube

The other day I was thinking about it
and I realized, you know who these dang
Jenzers remind me of? The Song Dynasty
from medieval China. Anyone else been
feeling this way lately? No, it's just
me. Well, let me explain what I mean.
There's all this new data to suggest
that younger people these days want to
spend their money on experiences, not
physical items. I think it reflects this
growing hunger for third spaces. And if
you don't know what third spaces are,
let me just quickly break it down for
you. Basically, your two main spaces are
home and work. And historically, the
third space was somewhere in the middle.
Maybe it was the bar or the guild hall
or the tea house. These have all but
gone extinct recently or have become
prohibitively expensive and young people
are feeling it. They want the third
spaces back. This maybe feels like a
very 21st century vibes-based
phenomenon, but it's actually extremely
Chinese. The Song Dynasty was the first
era in history to have what we would
consider as a lifestyle culture where
the cities were actually designed for
pleasure and snacking and nighttime
entertainment just like so many downtown
areas are today. There was this 12th
century writer named Mang Yuan Lao who
wrote this fascinating memoir called The
Record of a Dream of Splendor at the
Eastern Capital. It's one of these
shocking works from the Middle Ages that
I love reading because it seems like it
was written by someone recently instead
of someone a thousand years ago. He
writes this whole nostalgic reminiscence
of the song Capital City Kiang and talks
all about the 24-hour tea houses and the
professional performers and storytellers
and the specific vibes of the different
districts. There's this one section
where he talks about restaurant culture.
I'll just quote the full thing here and
you tell me if this sounds familiar.
When the guests arrive, a single person
holding chopsticks and a menu questions
all of the seated guests. The men of the
capital are extravagant and they demand
a hundred different things. Some hot,
some cold, some warm, some regular, some
extremely cold, and things like noodles
laced with lean and fatty meat. Everyone
orders something different. The waiter
takes the orders and draws near a
counter where he stands in line and
recites the orders off from the start. I
don't know. This to me literally sounds
like a night out in 2026. I'm positive
this isn't what you would picture in
your head when you hear the word
medieval. Also, just to give you a
historical timeline here, this is
basically China on the eve of the
eventual Mongol invasion. And it's a
time and a place where consumerism is
starting to flourish and it's becoming a
core identity for younger people.
Bringing it back to Gen Z, I've noticed
that there's this big obsession with
what I would call curated living. I
don't know, maybe I'm not describing it
accurately, but it is super vibes-based.
like life is [music] one big Pinterest
board. Think of terms like cozy games or
the aesthetics of going on a walk around
the city with an iced matcha. It's this
sort of return to the Song Dynasty
scholar gentleman urban ideal. Your
status [music] isn't just about money,
although that'll obviously always be
important. It's about your taste. Back
then, it was about your taste in tea and
incense and interior design. Now, it's
more so about your taste in underground
music and niche Tik Tockers. The youth
don't want to be told what's cool
anymore by commercials and MTV with big
corporations [music] calling the shots.
They want to create their own
experiences. They want to get medieval
Chinese again. Also, semi-relatedly,
there's been a big surge in traditional
Chinese medicine trends among Westerners
on Tik Tok recently. You see it
everywhere. A number [music] of Chinese
American influencers have been sort of
introducing these ancient concepts like
Chiang practice or drinking hot water
instead [music] of cold water and the
internet has been going crazy for it. So
maybe medieval China is making a
comeback in more ways than one. We won't
just focus on the Song Dynasty here.
There's more to China in the Middle Ages
than just that one period. But I do have
a few more song boxes I want to check
before we continue. Before we do that,
just a quick plug. If you like my
content, which of course you do, you
should definitely join my Patreon link
in the description. You'll get access to
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with weekly episodes, the Medieval
Mindset book club, voting rights on
topics and titles and thumbnails, the
essential medieval history reading list,
special videos that don't get posted on
my main channel. So, sign up now. And if
you're not subscribed to this channel,
go ahead and do that as well. Back to
the video. Maybe you've heard of the
modern phenomenon of looks maxing. Or
maybe you aren't chronically online and
have no idea what I'm talking about.
Basically, looks maxing is the new
version of the age-old concept of
getting hot, although it goes way beyond
diet and exercise and a little Botox.
Young people, I would say especially
young men, are exploring all of these
scientific avenues to try and improve
their looks. The most medieval seeming
looks maxing method is called bone
smashing. And it's been promoted over
and over again by probably the most
famous looks maxer, a 19-year-old
streamer named Clavicular. Looks maxer.
Bone smashing, clavvicular. I understand
this all might sound ridiculous to you,
but stick with me because it's
interesting. Also, don't you want to
understand the youth? Anyway, the way
clavvicular describes it, bone smashing
is when you take a tiny hammer and tap
hard along your cheekbones and your
jawbone. It causes a temporary swelling
that lasts for a few hours and makes
those bones look more defined. So, it's
something you might do just before a
night out so you can look more masculine
to any ladies you meet. Maybe at this
point this isn't a crazy revelation, but
it turns out young guys in medieval
China had the same insecurities that
modern men do. And they even went about
similar methods of soothing their
anxieties. During the Song Dynasty
period, there was this really
interesting tension between the Wen
class who were the more literary refined
scholars and the Woo class who were the
more marshall and physical warrior cast.
Depending on which group you belong to,
you'd basically looks max to make sure
your outward [music] appearance matched
what you represented. So that meant
young men who were part of the scholarly
class went to these extreme lengths to
achieve this sort of refined, pale
physical aesthetic with slender features
to essentially highlight the fact that
they never had to work with their hands.
They'd even use specific diets and
cosmetic aspects of traditional Chinese
medicine to maintain this look that
would instantly signal to everyone that
they were part of the intelligencia.
Those in the military class, basically
who we would consider to be the
modern-day Chads, focused primarily on
bone strength. I don't know, maybe that
sounds familiar to you. It wasn't just
about muscle, although of course they
made sure they were in great shape. It
was about theqi energy within and
physical density. You wanted to look
like a brick wall. That was kind of the
physique they were shooting for. It's
important to note, of course, that they
weren't hitting themselves in the face
with hammers like modern looks maxers.
Their routine usually included things
like hitting [music] sandbags or poles
to increase their bone density. There
was a 20th century French scholar named
Jacques Chernet who specialized in
Chinese history. And he talked a lot
about how these aspects of appearance
became kind of a coded language of your
class. In the incredibly hierarchical
society of medieval China, if you didn't
have the specific [music] look, you were
culturally invisible. It seems like a
lot of young men and young women too
feel this way today. If you just look up
the term looks maxing on YouTube or Tik
Tok, the insecurity is overwhelming, but
it's understandable. We were all
vulnerable teenagers once, too. But you
see these guys giving each other ratings
on a scale of 1 to 10 and recommending
which specific steroids or looks maxing
techniques to try so they can bring
their flagging features up to speed.
This includes peptides which as far as I
understand are these amino acidbased
performance enhancers and the use of
GLP1s like ompic which I feel like
people associate with an older audience
but there seem to be a shocking amount
of young people taking them. The
medieval Chinese were actually big on
this kind of thing too. They were
obsessed with elixirs made from rare
minerals and herbs that were designed to
lighten the body and extend life. A lot
of these were incredibly dangerous and
even included mercury. And I'm sure in
the next 10 years or so, there will be a
bunch of studies showing the horrific
side effects of looks maxing and
peptides. The idea behind this medieval
Chinese looks maxing was essentially the
same as the idea behind the modern
version. using some kind of external
chemistry or method to hack your
biological limits and achieve this sort
of superior physical state. The Chinese
wrote a lot of things down and
thankfully a lot of them have survived
over the centuries like the 7th century
physician Sun Samo's essential formulas
worth a thousand gold pieces. It was
basically this manual for longevity and
physical refinement. And if you're
familiar with the European concept of
balancing the four humors, this was
along the same lines. somehow describes
the body as this chemical system that
can be balanced or enhanced with
specific substances. This idea went even
further with the medieval Chinese
concept of Naidan or internal alchemy,
which taught that the body was composed
of three main ingredients, chi, jing,
and shen that could be forged into a
golden cinder if you were locked in
enough on your physical discipline.
Locked in is a good term to use here
because this sounds just like the trend
of locking in that has been popular with
Gen Z for at least 5 years now. If
you're not familiar, it just means
cutting off outside distractions and
focusing intently on some kind of
personal goal. So maybe getting your
side hustle off the ground or working
out more regularly or whatever. It's
become sort of a cult online, especially
among the gym community. And based on
what you see from these fitness
influencers, it's like your [music] pump
and your physique are proof of an
internal moral victory, like a victory
of the will over the laziness of your
base body. A medieval naan practitioner
literally thought the same exact way.
They knew that their physical health and
their outward [music]
radiance was proof that they had
successfully cultivated their soul in a
way that others couldn't or hadn't.
Young people seem way more into fitness
now than they did even 10 years ago. I'm
not sure if that's a co thing, but
[music] I love to see it. There seems to
be a lot of conversation around the idea
that your body is the one status symbol
you can't really buy. You can buy a
Bugatti or a nice watch or whatever, but
you can only achieve a truly amazing
physique through countless hours in the
gym. So, it's really the most impressive
thing you can have. There's also this
quote from the video game Discolesium
where a bouncer says to the main
character, "Your body betrays your
degeneracy." And that always sticks in
my head when I don't want to go to the
gym. I just felt like including that. I
like tossing random tidbits into these
videos. Now, most of what I've been
talking about so far has come from the
Song Dynasty, which lasted for a few
centuries, right smack dab in the middle
of what we would consider the Middle
Ages. But the Middle Ages lasted almost
a thousand years. So, what about the
rest of medieval China? You know what?
I'm really glad you asked that. First of
all, the Middle Ages happened
differently in China than they did in
Europe. Basically, even though there are
quite a few Song Dynasty parallels, Gen
Z is actually in more of a late Ming
phase. That's right, I said it. In the
earlier Tang Dynasty, which lasted from
618 to 907 AD, your identity was defined
by your clan or your rank in the
military. Basically, how people's
identities have been defined for most of
human history. You were a cog in the
great chain of being. And the same thing
was true in medieval Europe. You existed
within a feudal system put in place by
the divine mover. By the late Ming
period, which went all the way into the
17th century, there was this rise in
individualism that started to run so
deep that it turned into the same kind
of identity crisis and obsession with
labels that we see among Gen Z today.
You see, Chinese society had reached a
level of complexity to such a point that
people started to define themselves by
their personal quirks and not their
family or job. So instead of saying I am
a soldier, a late Ming young might say
I'm a connoisseur of rare incense who
suffers from melancholy. In a similar
way, you'd be hardressed to meet a young
person today who primarily identifies by
their profession or their nationality.
Find me a 22-year-old who introduces
themselves as Garrett the American
plumber, and I would genuinely be
shocked. I'm sure Garrett will now show
up in my comments to prove me wrong
because that's how YouTube works.
Instead, just like the Ming youth, young
people now might identify as a neurode
divergent creative with a hyperfixation
on looks maxing. It's this obsession
with self, and it can be dangerous
because you stop viewing yourself as
part of a wider community and start
squeezing yourself into these ever
smaller and more specific boxes. [music]
The late Ming period was a kind of
renaissance that ultimately failed. It
was this explosion of individual
expression and art and looks maxing and
everything else, but it was cut short by
the Manchu conquest in 1644. I honestly
think we're going to see something
similar with Gen Z in the coming years.
They're in this period of extreme
self-exression and pursuit of individual
destiny [music] right before a massive
systemic reset comes. Maybe that's AI,
maybe it's something else. Only time
will tell. Anyway, [music] we just
briefly stepped outside of the Middle
Ages. So, let's bring things back a few
centuries for our next comparison.
>> [music]
>> I want to go back to those Song Dynasty
third spaces we talked about earlier.
One of them was the Watsi or the
Pleasure Precinct, which sounds pretty
good already. Basically, during the
[music] Song Dynasty, the government
moved away from these strictly managed
residential wards and allowed for the
growth of pleasure precincts [music] or
Watsi. If you've ever seen The Wire,
this was kind of like the medieval
Chinese equivalent of the Amsterdam
experiment. The Watsi were these chaotic
24-hour zones where all the basic social
rules were temporarily suspended, kind
of like the medieval equivalent of the
unregulated internet. Now, if you let a
bunch of young men loose in an area with
no rules, the first thing they'll be
interested in is prostitution, but in
the modern day, you already check that
box with online adult content and
gooning. After those urges are
satisfied, literally the very next thing
they want is to gamble. It's a tale as
old as time, and it was a big problem in
the Song Dynasty pleasure districts. And
it's an even bigger problem now on
private gambling Discord servers and
even huge publicly accessible apps like
DraftKings and Bet DSi. I see so many
young people now who are almost turning
online gambling into a sort of career
path. And guess what? They did the same
thing back in the day, too. You see all
kinds of criticisms from the Song
Dynasty officials like Sema Guang who
laments that young men are abandoning
the plow and the book to chase the flip
of the die. There's also this modern
sociologist named Beverly UN Thompson
who writes great stuff about
subcultures. And she's noted that fringe
groups usually start to form when the
mainstream promise of hard work equals
success is broken. In the Song Dynasty,
your ticket to success was passing the
imperial exam. But you could study 30
years just to fail an exam that only had
a 1% pass rate. [music] That's a bad
bet. Young people now are seeing the
same thing. Their parents bought houses
and supported an entire family on a
modest single income and now they can
barely afford their rent. In this kind
of paradigm, why wouldn't you open up
DraftKings and put everything you own on
some ridiculous parlay? Why wouldn't you
dump your whole portfolio into some meme
coin in the hopes it'll take you to the
moon? We might think of this younger
generation of gambling addicts as just
irresponsible kids whose frontal loes
aren't fully developed yet, and that's
definitely part of it. But they're also
making a desperate calculated attempt to
exit a system that has already failed
them. Going back to the Watsi, the
pleasure precincts, the reason they
never fully took over society is because
you had to physically go to them. There
was a spirit of anonymity. Basically,
what happens in the Watsi stays in the
Watsi, but you still had to go engage in
these acts in a somewhat public place
and deal with the internal shame of
that. Now, with the internet, young
people can indulge in all of their most
base desires without ever even getting
off the couch, and it can literally cost
them their entire future. It's worth
noting, too, that when you have a bunch
of young, desperate people gathering in
one place for a set objective, it can
create a sort of ideological powder keg.
So, in the Watsi, these guys formed
gambling brotherhoods. And the song
Penal Code tried constantly to break
them up because they feared the
brotherhoods were becoming more loyal to
each other than to the emperor. Now, you
might get into a private Discord server,
ostensibly to do some gambling and trade
some insider tips, and next thing you
know, you're radicalized into committing
some horrific public act [music] of
terror. This feels like a good place to
land the plane. Because the main point I
want to make with these videos is that
time is a flat circle and we're
essentially repeating the patterns of
the past over and over again. There's
the old saying that those who don't
study history are doomed to repeat it.
But it seems like even when we do
[music] study history, we're powerless
not to make the same mistakes. The
difference now of course is that these
things are happening on a massive global
scale with the full weight of tech
companies and government institutions
behind them. A soldier in the Song
Dynasty might drunkenly head to the
Watsi and lose his monthly wages and
that was it. A young 20some now might
obsessively bet his entire savings on an
app on his phone and ruin his whole life
before it's even started. This is why we
need to pay attention to these trends
and recognize that even though human
behavior hasn't changed, how we respond
to it can. But what do you think? Has
this video found you at a very medieval
Chinese time in your life? Let me know
in the comments. As always, I'm John.
This has been Medieval Mindset. And
remember, the past isn't gone. It's
simply waiting to be rediscovered.
It's good for me.