Why is Chinese Content Suddenly Everywhere?
It’s 2020 – the first year of the COVID-19 pandemic, respective restrictions, and, for many, the inevitable monotony that came with shelter-in-place orders. For months, countless people passed the time after work or school scrolling through endless videos on platforms like TikTok and Twitter. That was when a bizarre video of a bald Chinese man belting the lyrics from singer Fei Yu Qing’s song “Xue hua piao piao, bei feng xiao xiao (The snowflakes are fluttering, and the north wind is blowing)” arrived on smartphone screens. Millions watched and commented. In the following days, TikTokers worldwide began lip-syncing passionately to this iconic Chinese song made decades before.
Three years later, the Chinese meme hashtag on TikTok has already accumulated 45.2 million views. But that’s not the only type of Chinese-born content gaining global traction. Creators who post videos or images about Chinese culture are increasingly finding international fan bases. Li Ziqi, a Chinese vlogger who started posting cooking videos in her rural hometown in 2015, has accumulated 18 million YouTube subscribers and 3.6 million TikTok followers. Others are teaching Mandarin, explaining niche topics in Chinese history and current trends to their audience in English. To list a few: Dr. Candise, Molly Chinese Teacher, and Chinese with Mia have gained 1.4 million, 3.4 million, and 457.8K followers on TikTok respectively.
What came suddenly now seems everywhere, offering audiences in other countries a growing glimpse into the superpower’s psyche. But what’s behind it?
“I attribute the growth of my platform to the uniqueness of my content,” says Mia Lee, the creator behind the TikTok and Instagram accounts named “Chinese with Mia”. She says that one example of this is her video about the Hezhe ethnic group in China, which has a population of around 5,000 and crafts clothing from fish skin. This type of explanatory video later became one of her most popular series on TikTok, where she used the platform to introduce different ethnic groups from China and their specific cultural practices to the world.
“I created ‘Chinese with Mia’ during the [COVID-19] pandemic with the intention of sharing captivating content about the Chinese language and culture with the wider world, especially during a challenging time,” added Lee.
Lee shares that some of her followers are academics studying China, some are avid travelers looking to visit China, and others are Chinese people who are living abroad and seeking to reconnect with their culture. “My followers come from diverse demographics and backgrounds but [all] share a common interest in China,” she said.
Bingxue Tong, a Beijing-based researcher and collector of Chinese vintage photographs from the 19th century, has been sharing images from his collection on Twitter since 2015 and on Instagram since the COVID-19 pandemic began.
Tong’s earlier content comprises his collection of candid photography capturing the lives of ordinary citizens in 19th-century China, as well as vintage photos of Chinese artists, celebrities, and politicians. More recently, he has been sharing photos and videos of China in the present. One of his most popular posts on Twitter is a video of a little girl covering her dog’s ears, protecting it from loud fireworks during Chinese New Year. Over the years, Tong has accumulated over 300,000 followers with both platforms combined.
Similar to Lee, Tong believes that his account attracted a wide group of audience because of his careful selection of content. He considers mainly four things before posting. Firstly, he says the content should align with his intention of building his platform – sharing facets of Chinese history and modern China to a wider audience. Secondly, the photos and videos should be interesting and captivating on their own. Thirdly, the caption should be objective and should offer useful context, as most of Tong’s followers are not Chinese.
“I’m aware that my work is received by a global audience, which means that everyone has different comfort levels of what they are seeing,” Tong explains, “For example, if the image itself is showing someone eating pork, I would not emphasize that in the caption, because my Muslim audience might not be comfortable acknowledging that.”
Last but not least, Tong says his final consideration is for the content to capture some sort of personal element and humanity. “A friend once told me that out of all of my content, he enjoys my casual snapshots of Chinese food the most – and that’s okay,” Tong says humorously.
Both Lee and Tong have seen their platforms grow exponentially over the past two to three years since they both began building their platforms during the COVID-19 pandemic.
“There is definitely more interest in China,” according to Gabriele de Seta, a postdoctoral sociologist who has been researching Chinese digital media practices and vernacular creativity since 2007. “When I started writing about China back then, there was not a lot of interest in the field. But today there are big magazines that only talk about Chinese internet culture.”
De Seta believes the globalization of Chinese content has been encouraged by advancements in social media platforms in recent years.
“The trend is shaped by what these digital platforms can do or what they can allow you to do,” said de Seta. He explains that ten years ago, major platforms such as Twitter and Facebook only allowed text and image-based content. Nowadays, platforms like TikTok, YouTube Shorts, and Instagram Reels allow and encourage their users to post and repost videos that they like, allowing humorous videos like “Xue hua piao piao” to easily go viral on a global scale.
Many who come across “Xue hua piao piao” might only recognize the song in the context of TikTok memes, and not be interested in the song’s cultural origin. Nonetheless, the attention garnered by Tong and Lee shows that there is genuine interest in Chinese culture – and it’s growing.
“China has become a big topic, especially in the U.S. because of the trade war, tech competition, and widespread anti-Asian racism,” de Seta elaborates. “People are interested in knowing more about China, as well as other East Asia countries like Japan and South Korea.”
In the comment section of Lee’s video about the Yiche women’s matriarchal traditions, one can find comments like “Girlbossing since the old ages”, “That’s what I call traditions!” and alike. Whether serious or silly, impressions and understandings are being formed across borders.
“I think there is always an interest in more diversity,” says de Seta, “and people are quite fascinated by the same things happening in a different space.”
