One day, as I was procrastinating on studying, a TikTok of a young Chinese woman telling me that tomorrow you are turning Chinese popped up on my feed. I was shocked. Bamboozled.
This video had 500K likes and 3 million views! I looked into her page (@Sherry) and she had millions of views of her teaching people how to be “Chinese baddies.”
How do you become a “Chinese baddie”? Drink hot water infused with boiled apples, make congee when you’re sick, don’t go to sleep with wet hair, wear house slippers, and don’t eat raw vegetables during winter. I was surprised these videos had so many views because they were lifestyle practices rooted in Chinese culture. I opened the comment sections to find thousands of people eager to accept their newfound identities as Chinese.
What was going on? Nothing exists in a vacuum, so there had to be a reason why these videos were going viral. After some digging, I discovered there was a whole trend called “You met me at a very Chinese time in my life.” People were making videos immersing themselves in Chinese culture: eating and cooking Chinese food, following traditional Chinese medicine, and, to my shock, SPEAKING AND WRITING CHINESE. I can’t even speak Chinese fluently! People were willing to learn about and accept aspects of Chinese culture that I rejected.
When did my culture all of a sudden become popular—cool even? I experienced major whiplash from it all. Years of negative Chinese coverage by Western media, Sinophobia, and COVID-19, compounded with the popularity of Japanese and Korean culture in the West, had made me ashamed of my own culture and bred a deep rejection of it. I hate admitting that but it was true for a long time. I scoffed at traditional Chinese medicine because I thought it was a bunch of hocus pocus, claimed French pastries were superior to Chinese ones (obviously an incorrect opinion), and always rolled my eyes looking at my parents’ Chinese decorations in the house. I had internalized a deep loathing for my culture.
Seeing Sherry being unapologetically Chinese and sharing our culture and also seeing people of all different backgrounds willing to learn was eye-opening. It encouraged me to learn about ancient Chinese history, to cook various Chinese dishes, to share my food with my friends and to actually drink hot water. I guess Sherry was right. I was turning Chinese.
There is still much to learn about Chinese culture, and I have a lot of unpacking to do. In a weird way, I’m glad the trend “You met me at a very Chinese time in my life” happened, as it made me confront my own identity struggles and shone a positive light on Chinese culture.
Culture should be shared and appreciated, not something to be afraid of. I wish I had known this when I was younger and wanted to be blond-haired and blue-eyed.
Chinese New Year is coming up and I’m making it my goal to follow traditions like cleaning the house before, wearing new red clothing and decorating my apartment in red. For those who don’t know, happy year of the horse!