“To a guy like me, the Chinese New Year is just the new year” would not have been an uncommon phrase to read in an Instagram caption last week. That’s because recently, the millennia-old tradition of being Chinese has become the latest social media fad — and I must say, I’ve been doing it my whole life.
But after repeatedly seeing people online “at a very Chinese time” in their lives and reading “you will turn Chinese tomorrow” affirmations — with non-Chinese netizens talking about how they’ve started drinking warm water and doing other, often not specifically Chinese things — I began to feel conflicted.
The movement, dubbed “Chinamaxxing,” may seem to come out of nowhere, but it is the natural progression of a growing embrace of Chinese culture in America, rising dissatisfaction with U.S. politics, and good old absurdist humor. The videos have relitigated discourse around cultural appropriation — which they definitely are — as they often reduce Chinese identity to consumer goods, such as the viral Tangzhuang-inspired Adidas jacketsor reference generic East Asian stereotypes.
But it’s hard for me to blame people for, whether earnestly or ironically, wanting to embrace Chineseness, whatever that means to anyone. Because as far back as I can remember, I’ve wanted to be American.
I was born in Hong Kong, attended international school, and talked to adults who would wax nostalgic about the days of British colonial rule. I grew up watching American movies, listening to American music, and sought to learn about myself by surfing the American web.
The postcolonial scholar Ackbar Abbas wrote that Hong Kong was “not so much a place as a space of transit,” and a piece of academic writing has never resonated with me quite so much. He was describing the city leading up to 1997, when Hong Kong would cease being a British colony and return to China’s jurisdiction. Then, the city was “scrambling to define its own culture, not quite Chinese but also not just British either.”
But in simple terms, the China that Hong Kong was taken from wasn’t the one it would be returned to. During their time apart, China underwent a century of humiliation, a civil war, a communist revolution, rapid industrialization, and reform toward a market economy. For Hong Kongers, Chineseness is a complicated and ever-evolving set of terms. So this “becoming Chinese” trend, which operates with a simplified and rigid version of China, rubs me the wrong way.
Jimmy So wrote in The New Republic that “Western observers have long swung between two caricatures of China — booming economic miracle or iron police state — and then demanded to know which is ‘real.’”
For years, China would only be denigrated in U.S. media, whether legitimately or not, as it stood in opposition to the political and hegemonic stature of the States. The “becoming Chinese” trend is flawed, among many other things, but it represents to me a widespread acknowledgment of what anyone from anywhere should understand — a government doesn’t define a people.
As experts have pointed out, the “Chinamaxxing” movement comes after a period of increased interest in China in the American cultural imagination. The trend is hot off the heels of the Labubu crazeand six years into the massive success of TikTok, which was Chinese-owned until very recently. And last year, in a landmark case of influencer diplomacy, the popular YouTuber IShowSpeed livestreamed his visit to Chinashowcasing to millions of viewers that the country — which is as large as the U.S. with four times the population and 10 times the history — isn’t a homogenous blob.
On the other end, dissatisfaction with the state of American affairs fuels the trend too: Antisocial tariff policies, colonial aspirationsand otherwise embarrassing presidential antics have made the U.S. a global laughingstock. On the cusp of a potential American century of humiliation, of course everyone would rather pretend to be Chinese now, and there’s a reason Chinese ambassadors have embraced the trend.
This all leaves me with conflicting definitions of Chineseness and Americanness in my head, and I’m wondering what I can get out of either.
Occasionally, in my interactions with Asian Americans, I’ve been put off by how hard they try to hold on to the background they’re removed from, because I’ve spent my whole life trying to detach myself from any cultural origin. Weirdly, it was the “becoming Chinese” trend that made me proud of my ethnicity in a way I hadn’t felt in … ever?
Sometimes you need to approach things ironically before you can embrace them earnestly. Chinese culture is rarely celebrated in popular American culture, and representation — even in its silliest, most lowbrow form — has an effect. For a while, we had “Crazy Rich Asians” and “Shang-Chi,” and that was basically it. Now, we have white people drinking warm water, and I’m happy enough.
