I have seen every age demographic from babies to grandmas wearing totally outrageous earmuffs, girls and boys. I've seen Winnie the Pooh, Santa Claus, rabbits, bears, pompoms, hands, footballs. Mine are camouflage. The earmuffs say a lot about Anyuan life. There is no irony or cool involved in wearing earmuffs, its cold, ears are vulnerable, we wear earmuffs. We won't die without them, but we'll be a bit more comfortable with them. As far as I can tell, the cool kids (and these are seriously in the minority) wearing beanies don't make fun of the earmuffed masses, instead they turn a blind eye and get on with spitting noisily and showing too much same-sex affection. It's a similar principal to driving, if you just ignore the fact there are vehicles approaching from every direction and keep heading wherever it is you want to go, everyone else will ignore you and let you get on with it, especially if you honk your horn as much as possible. It's only if you actually collide with anyone that it becomes a problem, as I imagine it would become a problem for a cool kid if I forced him to wear fluffy pink playboy earmuffs. So to sum up the Chinese mentality in one word- earmuffs.