WHY IS EVERYONE CHINESE? 🇨🇳🥡🥢🥮

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You have met me at a very Chinese time in my life.

Yeah, that's right.

(birds chirping) (cat meows) (birds chirping) My fixation at the moment specifically is wushu, which is a form of kung fu.

Let me paint the picture, okay?

The fixation, of course, started over at TikTok, tale as old as time.

One evening in January, I started getting spoon-fed kung fu content on my explore page.

Specifically, it was just this little girl in China doing, like, a ton of cartwheels, and I'm nothing but a go-getter, so I immediately signed up for classes the next day, and now I do it four times a week.

Most of the students in my class are Chinese, so yes, that also means I've been socializing over hot pot and Teresa Teng karaoke.

I'd like to say that this is an esoteric niche interest of mine, but as it turns out, many other people are finding themselves in very Chinese times in their lives, including John Legend and Timothee Chalamet.

- Oh, I made this at home.

- [Mina Le] Over the last few months, people on TikTok have expressed a vested interest in all things China, calling the practice Chinamaxxing.

People are posting videos of themselves performing Qigong exercises, eating dumplings, showing off their Chinese language skills- (TikToker speaking in foreign language) - [Mina Le] And booking trips to China.

Interestingly enough, Chinamaxxing is a trend among non-Chinese and Chinese people alike, with creators like Sherry amassing large followings by posting tutorials on how to become Chinese baddies.

- Tomorrow you are turning Chinese.

- It's interesting because in the offline world, which still exists, of course, China is obviously a major global superpower, but it's usually positioned against the U.S.

as an economic and strategic adversary.

A heated rival, if you will, especially during the Trump administration.

- Let's say China.

- Donald Trump is seemingly incapable of not talking about China, whether it's deliberately labeling COVID-19 "the China virus-" - Comes from China.

I wanna be accurate. - Don't you have concerns about Chinese Americans in this country? - Yeah, please. John, please.

- [Mina Le] Or inciting fears of China harvesting data from American TikTok users during both of his terms. - I like China.

- But I would say that it's China's omnipresence in news and culture, plus the perceived decline of the American empire under Trump, that has definitely contributed to Gen Z American kids' current fascination with China today.

At the same time, you know, things are cyclical.

History often repeats itself, and as it turns out, Westerners have had a long history of being enthralled by the fashion, food, medicinal practices, and general aesthetics of China since the first Europeans opened ports there hundreds of years ago.

The longstanding rhetoric was that by adopting Chinese cultural facets, white Europeans could appear hip and worldly.

As a result, many people today are split on whether China coming into the limelight via Chinamaxxing is a good or bad thing.

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(static crackling) (keyboard keys clacking) (light groovy music) Have you ever stepped into a white person's house, and their decor is just fully Chinese?

- We're going to take the influence from next door, which is an Asian motif.

- [Decorator 1] Okay, they've got the bedroom in there that's already a little Asian.

- [Decorator 2] Exactly.

- Well, let's take a look back at everything we've done in this wonderful bathroom.

- Turns out this isn't just the quirky taste of your great-aunt.

The Chinese room goes back centuries.

So Europeans have long characterized China as a mystical land operating entirely outside of Eurocentric social conventions.

According to writer Millie Hughes, the Portuguese established their presence in Macau in 1557, acting as a gateway for Europeans to trade with China and Japan.

The Spanish, Dutch, and British followed suit, eager to get their hands on Chinese silk, silver, porcelain, and tea.

The European upper crust, including King George III, desired Chinese artifacts in their homes to appear worldly and cultivated, even dedicating entire rooms in their mansions to this decor called Chinese rooms. Hughes writes, "By the 18th century, owning something Chinese or Chinese-inspired had become a status symbol for Europe's upper classes.

You are cultured, forward-thinking, well-connected, and most importantly, wealthy if you had a Chinese room in your house.

This would be decorated with Chinese block-printed wallpaper, lined with hand-painted lacquered porcelain cabinets, and laden with tea sets and highly expensive tea leaves.

Its main purpose to entertain guests."

The term chinoiserie was coined to describe a European interpretation of Chinese and East Asian traditions often found within architecture, literature, theater, and music.

The appeal of chinoiserie lay in imitation, as the aesthetic wasn't actually based on authentic Chinese designs, but a European construction of Chinese culture.

Ironically, many of these Chinese artifacts were actually from Japan, and many of them wouldn't be found inside an actual Chinese household.

These objects were designed in Chinese workshops exclusively for Western consumption, often featuring exotic birds, plants, insects, and even small Chinese people.

Fast forward a few hundred years to the 1990s and early 2000s, and we can see that Western interest in Chinese-inspired designs endured.

Many luxury and fast fashion brands in the 21st century have cited Chinese culture as a source of inspiration for their designs.

For example, John Galliano designed Chinese-inspired looks for Dior throughout the '90s and 2000s, telling Elle magazine that he had many photos of Anna May Wong, the first Chinese American movie star, in his scrapbooks.

I'll get back to her in a second.

While I personally do like his designs, I'm not gonna lie, I can't say the same about some other Chinese-inspired garments.

Forever 21 produced so-called "Mandarin-collared shirts" with Chinese characters that didn't form actual phrases.

It's giving that joke where someone gets a Chinese tattoo thinking it's something, like, meaningful and profound, but meanwhile, all it says is "soup."

Abercrombie & Fitch also faced criticism for selling T-shirts with racist jokes and imagery, such as the phrase "Wong Brothers Laundry Service: Two Wongs Can Make It White."

Yikes.

All the same, the resurgence of Y2K fashion trends in the 2020s may be propelling this modern-day fervor for Chinese fashion.

Professor Thuy Linh Tu has written about the use of Chinese motifs in fashion.

"These designers fueled the collective appetite for Asian chic by giving consumers a vision of Asia, freed of political complexity, social unrest, and economic turmoil.

They offered a reassuring picture of difference, appealing because it gave audiences exactly what they thought they already knew.

Their creations referenced a beautiful place somewhere out there, enabling shoppers to shore up their sense of cosmopolitanism without ever having to leave home."

The 2015 Met exhibit "China: Through the Looking Glass" sought to address this decontextualization, though some critics thought that they were unsuccessful in doing so.

In the exhibit were displays of movie stills of Anna May Wong, Chinese-style dresses by the likes of Galliano and Cavalli, as well as traditional costumes.

As Sally Wen Mao writes for Nylon, "The subtext, of course, was that China's cultural and historic reality did not have inherent beauty, and it was not glamorous or stylish on its own.

Western interpretations of China were deemed chic or "high fashion."

The fact that many of these designer dresses were displayed alongside real Chinese costumes and art indicated that they were interchangeable, that their coded references didn't matter as long as it fulfilled some kind of Orientalist fantasy."

I would be remiss to discuss Chinese fashion without bringing up the qipao or cheongsam, arguably the most well-known Chinese dress in the Western world.

The modern qipao is a form-fitting sheath dress characterized by short sleeves, a high collar, and asymmetrical closures, often depicted in Western media in deep red with hand-embroidered designs.

If that's not painting the picture, you may remember Kirsten Dunst wearing one at the end of the first "Spider-Man," or Lindsay Lohan wearing one in the boat scene in "The Parent Trap," with chopsticks in her hair, no less.

I'd just like to have one word with the costume designer: why? (chuckles)

The modern qipao style actually emerged in the 1920s, and it's a pretty political garment because it reflected women's liberation from Confucian social norms. Similar to the Western flapper dress that emerged around the same period, the qipao symbolized women's changing roles and perception in society, especially given that it bears resemblance to the changshan, which was traditionally a masculine garment.

Of the qipao's feminist roots, Xintian Wang writes, "The transformation reflected the changing perception of women's bodies as they gained more freedom and were no longer confined to traditional roles.

They no longer had to hide themselves in the voluminous garments that their mothers and grandmothers wore."

So here's a fun history fact.

In 1875, Chinese women were actually banned from entering the U.S.

largely over fears that they would engage in sex work and erode Western traditional family values.

This laid fertile ground for a century of Chinese women being characterized as hypersexual on- and off-screen.

Throughout her career, famed actress Anna May Wong was often typecast to play this Oriental mythical seductress, leading to negative criticisms in China and even the banning of some of her movies there.

In the late 1930s, following a trip to China, Wong brought back multiple custom-made qipaos to the U.S.

and claimed that she went, quote, "completely Chinese" abroad.

This sartorial choice was inherently political in how it affirmed her complex identity.

As Sally Wen Mao explains, "Though she was essentially rejected from both parts of her identity, excluded by white America and resented by China, Anna May Wong invented a place for herself with having her qipao made.

They were Anna May's attempt to challenge white American racism, white American sexism, and Chinese patriarchy, all of which have impacted her.

It was her way to assert she had a right to belong."

- All the Chinese ladies looked so smart and vivid in the beautiful modern dress of China, and being feminine, it made a deep impression on me, not to mention my pocketbook.

- Despite the empowerment that qipao have offered Chinese women throughout history, in Western media, the qipao is often reduced to being a sexy garment, leaning on those 1800s stereotypes of Asian women being sexually available.

In her seminal text, "Eating the Other: Desire and Resistance," bell hooks argues that commodification neutralizes political symbols.

On commodified political symbols, hooks writes, "As signs, their power to ignite critical consciousness is diffused when they are commodified.

Communities of resistance are replaced by communities of consumption."

As such, removing the qipao from its feminist context and reproducing it in fast fashion formats strips it of its political integrity and symbolic meaning.

Many scholars argue that it was the 1960 Hollywood movie "The World of Suzie Wong" that encouraged this decontextualization, this sexualization of the garment.

"The World of Suzie Wong," by the way, is an Orientalist fantasy written by a white man about a Chinese sex worker.

Love to see it.

- For goodness' sake.

- As an example of some of the rhetoric around the qipao in America, in October 1982, Nancy Carson reported for the L.A. Times that the, quote, "suggestive Chinese dress made famous by Suzie Wong" was going out of style in Hong Kong, a place where, quote, "Western sailors once bought thousands of the high-necked sleeveless sheaths in hopes it would make their wives

and girlfriends as sexy as the supple Chinese."

(laughs) Gag.

Sean Metzger explains the implications of this phrasing in his book "Chinese Looks," a book I highly recommend, by the way.

"'Supple' denotes a physical condition, being compliant or flexible, but also connotes a compliant mindset.

The newspaper article suggests a relationship between the look of the dress and the physical and psychic attributes desired in a group of women labeled Chinese."

The short and higher-slit, cleavage-showing qipao, which has later been promoted by a fast fashion brands like PrettyLittleThing, Zara, and ASOS, further reinforces harmful stereotypes of Chinese women as hypersexual, promiscuous, or subservient, stereotypes that date back to the late 19th century and are steeped in racial violence.

On a similar note, decontextualization seems to be at the root of why many Chinese Americans have been feeling suspicious of the Tang jacket trend that we've been seeing.

I would say this larger trend is inspired by the market success of the Adidas-specific Tang jacket.

And if you don't know, Adidas designed a Tang jacket in collaboration with Chinese designer Samuel Gui Yang for a 2026 Lunar New Year collection.

Some of the jacket's defining features include a high-standing collar and frog closures over the zipper.

The jacket was intended to target Chinese consumers as part of Adidas's wider strategy to design in and for the Chinese domestic market, where the brand saw a 10% increase in revenue in 2024.

Initially, the Tang jacket was only sold in China, followed by a handful of Asian markets, and later became available in Europe in February.

Since then, it's become this, like, semi-viral Holy Grail streetwear item among Gen Z.

Other brands have jumped on the trend, selling Mandarin jackets, which have rightly rubbed people the wrong way.

As I said before, guys, terminology is important.

It's not Chinese biohacking; it's not a Mandarin jacket; it's Qigong, and it's a Tang jacket.

As with Chinamaxxing more generally, the Tang jacket has received mixed responses from critics.

Sarah Cheang, a design historian at the UK's Royal College of Art, says that the jacket design offers a refreshing alternative to stereotypical dragon motifs, with its resemblance to Tang suits helping to "move the associations away from aggression and Chinese mythology, and slightly more towards Chinese traditions of contemplation, scholarship,

and more internal balance practices such as tai chi."

TikTok creator Chris Zhou visited China and found that many non-Chinese people wearing the Tang jacket, and when he asked a group of locals if the Tang jacket therefore makes him look like a foreigner, their response was, "Um, you kind of just look like an overseas Chinese who was desperately trying to reconnect with his roots."

I think this example highlights the differences between Asians who live in Asia and members of the Asian diaspora.

Like Anna May Wong, many Chinese Americans have embraced Chinese-inspired clothing as a way to assert their cultural identity in Western spaces.

This is a way to deal with the very real feelings that they have about not being accepted by either cultures.

The difference in lived experience is also why these groups often view cultural appropriation pretty differently.

Like in China, many tourist attractions like the hanfu photoshoots in Shanghai invite non-Chinese visitors to partake in local culture by dressing up in traditional garb.

This is widely accepted in part because Chinese people are the majority in China, surprise, surprise, and in these cases, non-Chinese people are invited to participate in Chinese culture in the context that Chinese people deem suitable.

On the other hand, when a white person wears a Forever 21 qipao in America, they're doing so on their own volition, not because a Chinese person invited them to do so.

America's racist colonial past also casts a negative connotation on the idea of white people co-opting and decontextualizing aspects of culture they don't belong to, especially when the result is that many Asians have had to leave behind these aspects of their culture to assimilate.

So it was kind of like a slap in the face to be like, "Don't wear your qipao," and now everyone's wearing a qipao, you know?

We can understand.

In my opinion, in my opinion, emphasis of "my," whether or not a white person wears a Tang jacket, ultimately comes down to intention.

I think Asian fashion should exist within its appropriate context.

Whenever possible, people should buy Chinese products from Chinese-owned brands and ask themselves whether they'll like the jacket next season or if it's just a trend.

At the same time, at the same time, I think specifically with qipao, given its history as this sexualized, misunderstood garment, it does give me pause when I see a white girl wearing one.

Is it inherently wrong?

I can't say.

But, you know, I will raise an eyebrow.

(keyboard keys clacking) (light groovy music) So we gotta talk about brothy rice.

- So for dinner, we're making creamy red curry, coconut, brothy rice.

- [TikToker] Brothy rice.

- Brothy rice.

- Brothy rice.

- I know I'm on the wrong side of TikTok because I am annoyed by this brothy rice shit.

- In addition to clothing, food is an important cultural artifact, especially given that many Asian immigrants rely on it for economic independence.

According to Yong Chen's book "Chop Suey, USA," restaurants are the largest employers of Chinese immigrants across the United States.

Why is that the case?

Well, around the mid-19th century, after Chinese immigrants were pushed out of the mining industry due to racial discrimination and violence, many turned to the service sector, taking up jobs as cooks, domestic laborers, and later launderers.

The creation of Chinese restaurants in America was a bottom-up process.

Chinese restaurants also helped democratize dining out in the 20th century at large, acting as affordable food establishments for Black Americans, the working class, and other marginalized folks in the United States.

Chen even calls Chinese cuisine the "McDonald's Big Mac of the pre-McDonald's era" to emphasize its accessibility and ubiquity.

But white Americans, in particular, didn't immediately take to Chinese cuisine.

Chinese food was originally a site of extreme racism, with white people accusing immigrants of eating rats and complaining about the food's odor.

White Americans' disgust with Chinese food was often used to justify othering Chinese immigrants and to emphasize the dangers of Chinatowns in America, but Chinese Americans took on the challenge of using food as a way to demand respect and bridge a gap in understanding anyway.

Chinese restaurant owners educated non-Chinese patrons about unfamiliar dishes and utensils, while also adapting the flavor profiles of many dishes to be sweeter or more sour.

Basically, to be more familiar with the Western palate as to prevent and combat racism, hence the birth of Chinese American cuisine.

While many traditional recipes were altered to accommodate Western tastes, like I said, Chinese immigrants also maintained their own food habits and defended their cuisine publicly through it all.

For example, in a public address to President Ulysses S. Grant,

a group of organized Chinese immigrants emphasized food when demanding dignity.

They said, "It is charged against us that we eat rice, fish, and vegetables.

It is true that our diet is different from the people of this honorable country.

Our tastes in these matters are not exactly alike and cannot be forced, but is that a sin on our part of sufficient gravity to be brought before the president and Congress of the United States?"

Also needs to be said, practicality-wise, in the early years of Chinese immigration to the U.S.,

many common Chinese ingredients like rice, orange skins, tea, mushrooms, and bamboo shoots weren't as readily available, requiring Chinese dishes to be adapted out of necessity.

And all to say, this is why I kind of cringe a bit when people make fun of Chinese American food or even Chinese British food, for that matter, because it would be one thing if these food items were created by white people, but it's the fact that Chinese immigrants have always been at the forefront of these food movements.

Recently, Chinese takeout in Great Britain has gone viral on TikTok for not resembling authentic Chinese food or even Chinese American food, but similar to the story of Chinese food in the U.S.,

Chinese immigrants in Britain often adapted their dishes to the local tastes and available ingredients, which involved integrating thick-cut fries or chips onto their menu.

Many on TikTok claim that Chinese British food looks gross, but Angela Hui, a food writer whose parents ran a Chinese restaurant in Wales, says that people are missing the historical context.

She tells CNN, "It was a very different time when my parents settled in the UK in the '80s.

There was a lot of racism, there was vandalism, and attacks on the shop.

Food was the connector for people to understand more about different cultures.

Over time, my parents and other takeaway owners managed to carve out their own communities in these really rural posts.

And that's such a beautiful thing, to create, almost like a hub for everyone to come in and share food and learn about one another."

The history of Chinese food in the West illustrates that food is and always will be political.

It can be a site of racism, but also a tool for defending one's community and breaking down boundaries between cultures.

All the same, these food movements started when racism was much more normalized in the West, and I would like to think that we've progressed enough to the point where we no longer need to anglicize non-white cuisines to people interested in them.

For example, the brothy rice food trend on TikTok is an abbreviated whitewash take on many different Asian cultural dishes.

As cookbook author Kat Lieu writes, when an Asian dish is repackaged as an influencer innovation or trend, "the culture disappears, and the credit and clout go to whoever repackaged it."

Another recent example of this repackaging phenomenon is the company Fly By Jing's controversial collaboration with influencer Logan Moffitt.

Fly By Jing is a food brand that specializes in chili crisp noodles and Sichuan pepper products.

Inspired by creator Jing Gao's hometown of Chengdu, this year, the company released a Hot Pot Bomb product for making hot pot at home and partnered with influencer Logan Moffitt to promote it.

Logan Moffitt is a white TikTok food creator, best known for making cucumber salads and Korean-inspired dishes.

Moffitt was criticized by followers after promoting the Fly By Jing product as the first-ever Hot Pot Bomb because Asian grocery stores have long sold hot pot soup bases.

Moffitt then apologized, and he insinuated that the language he used was provided by the brand.

- It's my responsibility to be accurate, respectful, and thoughtful, and I didn't meet that standard here.

- The situation highlights the phenomenon of companies using TikTok marketing to repackage pre-existing food as new and exciting for non-Asian audiences.

Moffitt was sort of made into a kind of spokesperson or liaison between the Chinese American company and non-Asian followers.

This connects in many ways to the legacy of Chinese Americans adjusting Chinese cuisines to cater to white palettes as a means of economic prosperity.

But as I said, times have changed, and young Asian Americans are no longer willing, nor should they have to make their food more marketable to white people.

And I think there's a generational gap there where, like, I resent a lot of the things that my parents think are normal because they grew up in America in the '80s, and as long as you weren't called a slur, like, that was progress.

And similarly, I think a lot of young Asians are aligned with me in that they're fighting against the model minority blueprint their elders were forced to adopt to survive, and so hiring a white spokesperson for this Asian product and kind of introducing it to a white market inauthentically, we need to raise that bar a little bit.

The other thing is that the difference between the Fly By Jing controversy and what Chinese immigrants has to do to assimilate is that restaurants were physical spaces that people had to come to, and sure, perhaps the food is a little sweeter than it would be in Sichuan, but through the process of dining, these patrons are learning cultural customs, and some of the patrons probably got to talk to the Chinese owners

and learn about them and where they came from.

And so, therefore, these were sites of cultural exchange.

The problem with TikTok is it's bite-sized entertainment, and so we often lose that kind of exchange, and people are also encouraged to prize virality over doing what's right.

Something similar happened with Courtney Cook and her soy-marinated eggs.

She made a recipe based off of the Korean mayak eggs, and she actually, to her credit, does say that they are Korean and that they're mayak eggs.

But because the video went viral, a bunch of people ended up, like, copying her recipe, and for SEO purposes, virality tagging purposes, they were all, like, "Courtney Cook soy-marinated eggs," which obviously angered a lot of Korean people because it's like, "Why is this traditional dish now being associated with this white woman?"

These platforms, like, they encourage you to do that because if you're tagging Courtney Cook, who is a huge creator, you're probably gonna get more views than if you tag Korean mayak eggs.

You know what I mean?

With that said, that doesn't mean it's impossible to make compelling short-form food content.

I really like SamsPOV.

I discovered him recently.

He's a content creator who has a series where he goes to mostly immigrant-owned restaurants with zero customers, and he talks to the owners and tries out the recommendations.

And he has a lot of followers, so the spot usually blows up after he posts the video, and then he films a follow-up video where he talks to them, and it's just, like, extreme hopecore.

I love his stuff.

To conclude, I don't have a problem with the idea of white creators making and promoting different cuisines, like, in general.

I mean, Anthony Bourdain is beloved for a reason, but food is political, it's educational, it's collective, and I think is worth thinking about how one can bring that to their content.

At the very least, if you're making an Asian dish, you should always try your best to say the actual names of the dishes you're cooking, to spotlight Asian-owned brands and products, and highlight what specific culture the cuisine is coming from.

Because I wanna know if your broth over rice was inspired by Filipino arroz caldo or by Japanese ochazuke.

Americans have also had a long history of mislabeling Asian cuisines and specifically misattributing Chinese dishes to other countries that they have friendlier relations with, like South Korea or Japan.

For example, a tanghulu, which is skewered fruits coated in a hard sugar-candy shell, is often characterized as a Korean dish online, but it was actually created in China.

Flattening and misattributing cultural dishes in this way erases their historical complexity, which is Orientalizing.

As Edward Said argues in "Orientalism," the construction of East and West makes the world into two monolithic cultures starkly opposed to one another.

Said writes that the Orientalist speaks in vast generalities, which homogenizes vast and varied Eastern cultures into one unchanging, essential, and mystical category: the Orient.

Clearly naming the origin of food helps push back on this conception of the monolithic Orient and allows food to exist in its appropriate context.

I've been cooking a lot of Vietnamese food and posting it on my Instagram stories, follow if you're interested, (laughs) and I've honestly been really annoying about making sure that the food is named correctly in Vietnamese because even though, yes, it's harder to pronounce for English speakers, it's just respectful, and after all, Americans learn how to say "spaghetti."

They can learn how to say "pho," okay?

Plus, when you call a dish pho, you identify it as Vietnamese, but if you call it, like, beefy rice noodles, it just becomes this generalized amalgamation of ingredients not belonging to any particular culture.

Soft power is really important for representation.

I mean, I have a complex, like, nuanced opinion on soft power as a concept because it's rooted in capitalism.

I'm not gonna go into it for now, but I think just as an example of Korea's investment in their soft power, which has led to visibility, and that visibility has been important for artists, for restaurateurs, for young Asian kids to grow up with confidence in this country.

(keyboard keys clacking) (light groovy music) So is everyone brewing tea lately, or is it just me?

I actually did get this new tea tray with these little cups.

This one is a cup, and then this one is a mug, and it is so beautiful, I'm obsessed with it.

So okay, I just wanted to give a shout-out to my tea set.

But anyway, we gotta talk about TCM.

That's traditional Chinese medicine, by the way, not Turner Classic Movies or "Texas Chainsaw Massacre."

I learned that the hard way when I was, like, searching on Tumblr for TCM, (laughs) and I did not get what I was looking for.

So gua sha might be the most co-opted TCM technique in the West.

It involves a smooth-edged tool being gently scraped on one's skin, commonly used on the face, neck, and body.

There isn't a precise definition for gua sha in ancient medicine books, but many agree that gua sha therapy can be traced back to the pre-Qin era over 2,000 years ago.

Importantly, gua sha is considered effective for acute or chronic pain and mild to severe conditions such as colds, flu, fever, and heat stroke, as well as various respiratory and functional internal organ problems. However, many Western beauty influencers characterize gua sha as a technique for lymphatic drainage or a wrinkle-ridding alternative to Botox.

Despite these claims, no TCM text cites gua sha as a tool for lymphatic drainage or as a beauty technique.

But regardless, gua sha's buzziness on the internet and mischaracterization have decontextualized it from its true medical use in TCM.

One TCM practitioner told NPR that while gua sha can produce cosmetic results, it's important for people to understand that this result comes from its ability to boost internal health as a valid Chinese medical technique.

The result is, of course, frustrating.

White-owned beauty brands get to profit from associations with Asian medicine and beauty practices without properly crediting where they come from.

Ada Lip Beauty founder, Ada Hsieh, also notes that in China, gua sha tools are commonly made from premium wood or stone, whereas Western manufacturers often make them from rose quartz and jade.

These expensive materials only drive up the cost of the tools, applying not only a whitewashed framework, but a capitalist one to the regimen.

Beyond beauty treatments, the Western wellness industry is also known to adopt TCM in the pursuit of holistic or supplemental medical care.

Michelle Hyun Kim notes that many Gen Z China-maxers have adopted TCM practices for wellness purposes, including keeping their feet warm, drinking hot water and goji berry tea, and moving their body every day to promote the flow of qi or internal energy.

Chinese biohacking. (laughs)

A lot of these have also been framed as Chinese baddie rituals, which goes to further link the cosmetic with the medical.

While there's been a Western cohort that has long been interested in TCM and other Eastern health practices, you'll find them at any crystal shop in California.

I feel like there are reasons why it's gone pretty mainstream today.

Distrust in American healthcare and governmental institutions may be part of the reason.

Researchers have coined the term "conspirituality" to describe the draw of conspiracy theorists to spiritual circles that are generally skeptical of Western medicine and established institutions.

Figures like RFK Jr. have helped spread fear and skepticism surrounding vaccines and conventional medicine while promoting alternative remedies.

RFK Jr. and the Trump administration have also promoted anti-science and anti-intellectualism rhetoric more broadly by attempting to shut down the Department of Education and denying climate change.

As such, TCM is reaching many Americans at an opportune time when there's a sense of openness towards unconventional medical and science practices.

I was talking to someone, oh, I did a few months ago at a party, (laughs) and he was, like, fully MAHA and studying TCM, and I asked him, you know, "What the hell is going on?"

And he explained to me he had this chronic health issue a couple years ago that he tried to get treated, and nothing worked, and then he looked into TCM, and that cured everything, and so now he's extremely skeptical of the health industry.

And I've heard similar stories like this from people dealing with long COVID, and that's real.

Like, many Americans have legitimate reasons to distrust medical systems. A 2023 poll found that 70% of U.S. adults

feel that their healthcare system is failing them, either due to high costs, difficulty navigating insurance, or unreasonably high wait times.

64% reported feeling that healthcare providers don't take time to understand them.

With another 40% sharing that they're afraid to speak up to their providers.

And as with all American institutions, institutional racism, sexism, and ableism are embedded in the fabric of our medical system.

For example, there is far less research and thus far fewer effective treatments for reproductive health problems and conditions mostly affecting women.

A 2018 survey of 77 medical articles show that medical professionals are more likely to dismiss women patients as "too sensitive," "hysterical," or as "time wasters."

Some studies also show that doctors are more likely to diagnose women with psychological causes for their pain rather than physical ones compared to men.

At the same time, TCM can't cure everything, such as cancer, (laughs) and I'm just stressed that this prioritization of TCM over hospitals and medicine will lead to more deaths and/or disinterest in science as a whole.

Like, there's this meme that satirizes anti-science people because one of their common talking points is if you can't pronounce the ingredient, you shouldn't consume it.

Meanwhile, the unpronounceable name is dihydrogen monoxide, which is in water.

Similarly, not everything organic is good for you.

Raw cassava, which is a tuberous root vegetable and can be baked into a delicious cake, is poisonous to humans.

Also, the fact that Chinamaxxing is uplifting, like, specifically ancient or traditional Eastern medicine as inherently superior, actually relies on a very primitivist view of China.

According to bell hooks, primitivism is a device of "imperialist nostalgia" or "a process of yearning for what one has destroyed."

hooks writes that primitivism characterizes the other as containing a secret to central and spiritual renewal, offering a feeling of truly being alive that Western civilization cannot offer.

She writes that this especially appeals to young white people who are dissatisfied with the American society as a whole, which kind of sounds like Chinamaxxing.

hooks writes, "Masses of young people dissatisfied by U.S. imperialism, unemployment,

lack of economic opportunity, afflicted by the postmodern malaise of alienation, no sense of grounding, no redemptive identity, can be manipulated by cultural strategies that offer Otherness as appeasement, particularly through commodification.

The contemporary crises of identity in the West, especially as experienced by white youth, are eased when the 'primitive' is recouped via a focus on diversity and pluralism, which suggests the Other can provide life-sustaining alternatives."

It's very clear to me that many of the people who are so caught up in this, like, TCM revival, are living in a fantastical version of ancient China because, in actuality, China is hyper-modern.

Go into any hot pot restaurant, and there will be a little WALL-E robot coming over to deliver your meat.

And interestingly enough, like, China is leaning on new technology to aid their TCM practices, so I don't wanna, like, pitch TCM and, like, modern medicine as, like, against each other.

They're just, like, there to treat different things.

But as I said, China is bridging that gap between traditional and modern.

For example, over there, providers are actually using AI in clinical diagnostics and prescriptions.

They have robots delivering acupuncture, and there are labs building AI agents to cater to the growing number of users who go online with their queries.

This idea that China is a place to escape modern technology and the politics of the healthcare system is really misguided.

Once again, I don't care if someone wants to practice TCM at all.

Like, I drink my hot lemon water every morning, I keep my Tiger Balm on hand, but pretending that it can cure everything is just a disservice to the practice.

(keyboard keys clacking) (light groovy music) It would be the understatement of the century to say that Americans are disillusioned by America right now.

Every other day, we're logging online to see new atrocities that our military and government are committing domestically and abroad.

As such, I suppose it makes sense for people to look elsewhere for solutions.

While TikToks and Reels about Chinamaxxing are often coming from a place of reverence, writer Minh Tran writes that Gen Z's obsession with China remains surface-level.

Chinamaxxers are enthralled by the general aesthetics of Chinese culture and Chinese practices rather than its specific history, ideology, or values.

People aren't actually interested in how Chinese people think or relate to their cultural identity.

They're interested in ogling at Chinese practices from the outside, which reaffirms Chinese identity as "other."

Our interest in China being surface-level reinforces China's foreignness in the American imagination.

As Tran writes, "In the twilight of the American Empire, our Orientalism is not a patronizing one, but an aspirational one."

Asians have long been plagued by a stereotype of permanent foreignness in America, by the way.

Professor of Asian American studies and history, Mae Ngai writes that early exclusion laws codified the idea that Chinese people were unassimilable and thus would always be foreigners.

Even those born in the U.S.

Even though exclusion laws were rolled back in the 1940s, the idea of this permanent foreignness was reproduced through the numerous wars that the U.S. fought in Asia in the 20th century, including World War II, the Korean War, and the Vietnam War.

Even if it's unintentional, Chinamaxxing is another means of distancing Asian and American identity, heightening the differences between China and America, and making China appear highly foreign in the process.

Chinamaxxing may also be a modern interpretation of the European "Chinese room," a way to signal being cultured and progressive to one's followers.

Millie Hughes sums this comparison up well, writing, "Three centuries apart, there lies the same privilege in the white socialite/influencer class being socially rewarded for imitating superficial aspects of a foreign culture from a safe distance, the only difference being an evolution in social currency.

The reward of appearing upper class and enlightened, and wealthy is replaced with that of views, engagements, and monetization.

They have the privilege of accessing Chinese spaces by choice, speaking over if not plagiarizing Chinese voices, and superficially imitating aspects of Chinese culture while remaining blissfully ignorant of the acts of violence, racism, and discrimination faced by Chinese people, sometimes in their very neighborhoods."

Look, I don't believe that we should gatekeep every cultural artifact, and I think that cultural exchange should generally be tolerated.

I think that's a symptom of a healthy globalized world, you know?

Eat all the dumplings you want.

I understand when people get frustrated by cultural appropriation, though, like, of course I do.

But I think I've just gotten to a place, like, personally, where I can't be mad at every little thing anymore, especially if what's happening is happening because of just straight ignorance.

Like, if a white girl wants to drink hot lemon water, well, that has nothing to do with me.

(laughs) But if I hear people saying, you know, they wanna buy Mandarin jackets, of course I'm gonna be, like, "That's actually a Tang jacket, guys," and if they push back on me about it, then that's where I'm, like, "Okay, bye."

Also, to say if you are white, I think it's important to recognize and acknowledge the context of the culture you're participating in and investigate why you're interested in it in the first place.

And then of course, be openhearted to any criticism from someone who's actually Chinese, whether they be a Chinese citizen or part of the diaspora, and ask yourself, are you performing Chinese practices on social media to reify your identity as a Westerner, and does what you're posting rely on exoticization to be entertaining?

Or maybe it is, like, that you just genuinely tried tanghulu once and thought it was the coolest thing you've ever eaten and just wish to share it with the world.

I think we just need to, you know, be unpacking more, recognize the history, unpack our intentions, and live, laugh, love, or whatever.

Okay, that's the end of the video.

Let me know what you think about Chinamaxxing, and I'll see you next time.

Okay bye.