Temu as a form of soft power

I had ordered a bunch of stuff from Temu. I don't often do that, or, rather as often as some other people I know. The main brush on my Roborock S8 had broken, and I needed to get a replacement. That was the primary requirement. I first looked at the replacement part on Gigantti and Power, but as expected they were too costly. Somehow I got the idea to check for replacement on Temu, and I found a full set of replacement parts (main brush + brush + filter + mop) selling for a third of the cost of just the main brush.

Temu requires a minimum order of 25 euros, so I had to add some other things which I did not need, per se. I ordered a cover for my sofa, and a tissue paper stand.

The order from Temu arrived on the 1st. I went and picked it up today.

After completing my late night activity today, I thought, let me surprise Prerna. Let me get everything set up before she wakes up tomorrow. It would be a fun thing. Mostly, I just wanted to fix the robovac.

I fixed that first. Then I assembled the tissue paper stand. Then, finally I added the cover to the sofa cushions.

It was while adding cover to the sofas, I thought, this is a form of soft power. These dirt cheap products are introducing us to the Chinese way of thinking and living. Asian maybe.

See, this is what we used to do back home. Cover sofas with plastic. Cover TV with plastic covers. Cover TV remotes in plastic. There is so much dust. And of course we wanted to protect things from breaking.

But here in the west, this is not the norm. This is not how things are done. And yet, now, through Temu, a little bit of the Asian culture and values are seeping into the Western world. Just as the American culture has permeated through the rest of the world through the American cinema, music and TV shows.