Over the past few months, social media algorithms have been flooded with a deluge of warm water. Infused with goji berries and chopped apples, these heated alternatives to the typical iced coffee have appeared alongside qigong, house slippers, and herbal skincare as the internet’s most recent Orientalist fascinations.

Many publications have credited creator Sherry Zhu for starting the trend of “becoming Chinese” after her viral TikTok video facetiously informed non-Chinese viewers, “Tomorrow you are turning Chinese [...] There is no point in fighting it now because you are the chosen one.” Spurred by this video and a frenzy of others tagged #becomingchinese and #chinesebaddie, TikTok users have been recording themselves adopting Chinese wellness habits, beauty routines, and recipes. The content is twofold, spanning everything from overtly absurdist takes to genuine curiosity about the benefits of previously underexplored practices rooted in Chinese culture. But regardless of tone, the trend has proven and amplified outsider interest in China. What does this seemingly newfound curiosity signify?

Orientalism, as theorized by Edward Said, is crucial to understanding how “becoming Chinese” content participates in a broader pattern of constructing the East as a site of mysticism and cultural wholeness in contrast to a supposedly fractured West. Said argues that Orientalism is not a form of genuine admiration but a framework through which Western audiences project their own desires and deficiencies onto Eastern cultures.

The current wave of fascination toward China echoes earlier treatments of Japan and South Korea. Reduced to fodder for trends as they entered the American mainstream, these East Asian contexts demonstrate a pattern of cultural commodification where only superficial elements are extracted. In this sense, the “becoming Chinese” trend reflects more than mere cross-cultural interest. It rearticulates a familiar dynamic in which Asian identity is divorced from reality and flattened into marketable aesthetics.

Dylan Suher, Contract Lecturer in McGill’s Department of East Asian Studies, explained the historical precedent of such cultural romanticization in an interview with The Tribune.

“This kind of idealization of China and what China represents […] is literally centuries old, right? Not to say that it's all continuous, […] but, I mean, in the 18th century you had people like Voltaire, who looked at the Qing Empire, and […] compared it […] to France, which they felt was falling apart,” Suher explained. “There is a very long tradition of […] assuming China to represent […] what we think is missing from Western culture. It's a type of Orientalism, […] and it's existed for a very long time.”

Today, amid the high cost of living, AI’s threat to entry-level jobs, and ramping political frustration, young people are growing increasingly disillusioned with the future that Western society presents them. The trend gains traction not because of China itself—a state many know relatively little about—but because it serves as a largely blank canvas onto which Western users can project fantasies of progress and opportunity. The sparse knowledge of the country that does colour the canvas is heavily idealized; the result is an inexact portrait of contemporary China.

“[Young people] see a China that seems to be evolving, and there's so much fetishization [of technologies like] high speed rail [and] drone swarms [....] These kinds of demonstrations of technical prowess seem to reflect a future that they can no longer see in the West and the United States. And […] that is mostly about the West, […] and not very much about China,” Suher said. “It is certainly not about the China where youth unemployment has been at 20 per cent […] since the COVID-19 pandemic.”

Shallow engagement with cultural fragments of China obscures not only the reality of the contemporary Chinese state but the identity that comes with Chinese descent.

Alicia Wu, U1 Science, is a Chinese-Canadian who has been exposed to many of these “Chinamaxxing” videos. In an interview with The Tribune, she expressed mixed feelings toward the trend. The majority of videos she’s seen have documented the incorporation of superficial Chinese culture into creators’ daily routines.

“I think for the most part, it's not malicious, honestly,” Wu said. “I think these are just people hopping on a trend, and I think that most of them don't even know what they're talking about.”

But Wu finds the more absurdist sect, in which non-Chinese creators document their new routines since “becoming” or “discovering” that they are Chinese, more troubling.

“I think the fact that they're actually explicitly saying, ‘I'm Chinese’ is what bothers me the most [.…] You will never be Chinese because you have no idea [about] the kind of internalized racism that […] arises from [...] external aggressions. You have no idea what it feels like to grow up as a kid and be like, ‘Why do I look different?’ [….] I think that's the worst part of it, honestly […] because [they] have no idea what the identity is,” Wu said.

Like many Chinese diasporic individuals, her frustration is not abstract—it is rooted in recent memory. The casual claims to “being Chinese” feel especially hollow when placed against the very real surge of sinophobic sentiment during the COVID-19 pandemic.

“I'd say Canada is quite a welcoming, diverse country, but during COVID, I had people say to me, ‘Hey, I don't want to sit next to you. Do you have the virus?’ [.…] And I feel like I'm getting whiplash from the fact that six years ago, […] people were like, ‘You need to leave. You caused all of this.’ [.…] And then now, it's not even been a decade, and people are like, ‘No, I love your culture,’’’ Wu explained.

While anti-Asian hostility surged visibly during the COVID-19 pandemic, it would be a mistake to frame sinophobia as a momentary spike rather than a persistent undercurrent. Sinophobia in Canada has formal roots in the Chinese Immigration Act of 1885—later escalated and followed by the Chinese Immigration Act of 1923—which institutionalized exclusion after a wave of Chinese labourers came to work on the construction of the Canadian Pacific Railway. The pandemic, therefore, did not create this prejudice so much as expose and intensify it, giving social license to sentiments that have long existed beneath the surface. For many Chinese and Asian diasporic individuals, these experiences are not confined to a single period in time but form part of an ongoing reality that shapes how their identity is felt and understood. It is precisely this continuity that makes the recent trend of non-Chinese creators claiming “Chineseness” feel so jarring: What is treated online as playful or absurd is, in practice, inseparable from a history of exclusion, suspicion, and racialization.

Juliette Chung, U1 Science, is a Chinese-American who grew up in the San Francisco Bay Area, where there is a particularly strong Asian community. It wasn’t until last year, when she arrived in Montreal, that she became newly aware of what it meant to be Chinese in North America.

“[When I came to McGill] […] There was this one experience where I was [at] at […] [New Residence Hall] and these guys […] pulled their eyes back at me,” Chung said. “I just had an entire crisis because I was like, ‘That's never happened to me before.’ And I was just so shocked.”

The incorporation of China into popular trends—whether framed as humorous experiments or earnest explorations—carries an ambivalence. On one hand, it signals curiosity; on the other, it raises difficult questions about cultural appropriation and the ease with which elements of a racialized identity can be cherry-picked for entertainment.

For individuals like Wu, this flippant treatment of Chinese culture through abstracted parts can feel reductive and disconnected from the realities of growing up with that identity.

“What a luxury it is to be able to pick and choose what parts of a culture you want to associate with, right? And [the selected parts are] such shallow, surface-level things too. Like, ‘I drink hot water. I drink green tea,’ Wu said. “Being Chinese is something that I struggled with accepting growing up because […] I was so conscious of it. And it took me 14, 15 years to accept that […] I’m Chinese. I'm going to embrace it because I don't have a choice. This is who I am. This is how I was born.”

Chung expressed a similar sentiment, emphasizing that being Chinese is a constant, inescapable reality shaped by years of personal and social experiences.

“I've experienced […] 19 years of being Chinese. You can't just borrow it for a few months.”

Questions of cultural appropriation have long existed, predating social media, but the current engagement with Chinese culture is uniquely shaped by its digital medium. Short-form platforms favour content that is highly shareable and designed to maximize engagement, often privileging spectacle over depth of the cultural context.

As Suher explains, “I really would encourage people, instead of thinking of this in sort of West-East cultural terms, just to think about what platforms incentivize [….] When it comes to sinophobia, these platforms incentivize engagement, which incentivizes these kinds of affects of rage [….] I complained about the […] shallow level of culture that [short-form video engages with], [but], what else are you going to get from short-form video?”

Indeed, the speed and format of these trends encourage uncritical engagement, often reducing complex cultural identities to a few selected habits or aesthetics. Yet, these formal limitations do not negate the effect of such trends on individuals. While hollow in its digital nature, the internet’s interest in China is not entirely devoid of potential. Rather than treating them as endpoints of engagement, they can be reframed as points of entry. Moments that spark curiosity, however superficial, can be deepened through more reciprocal forms of connection with another culture.

Of the approximately 25 Chinatowns across Canada in the 1930s, a mere 12 have survived. Montreal’s Chinatown, for example, is the last remaining Chinatown in the province, and its existence has long been threatened by real estate development and gentrification.

Choosing to dine at independently owned Chinese restaurants, seeking out Asian beauty stores, or visiting Chinese herbalists can help sustain Chinatowns. By transforming curiosity into economic support for those whose culture is being appreciated, individuals can help preserve the deep cultural heritage protected by local communities. This particular type of engagement could be especially impactful when situated within the recent history of anti-Asian racism during the COVID-19 pandemic, when many Chinese businesses experienced sharp declines in foot traffic due to stigma and misinformation. Supporting these establishments now not only benefits small business owners but also resists the marginalization that rendered these spaces vulnerable in the first place.

More broadly, channelling cultural interest into tangible, reciprocal practice requires a shift from consumption to participation. It asks individuals to move away from flattening culture into aesthetic fragments and toward intentionally considering how best to support marginalized communities. In doing so, we can shift interest from sampling an identity to supporting the people who maintain it.

The “becoming Chinese” trend itself does not necessarily signify greater support for Chinese diasporic individuals, nor does it guarantee lasting solidarity beyond the digital moment. Yet, acknowledging its potential to shift public opinion—however superficial or fleeting—can be a starting point for reconciliation. Funnelling this newfound curiosity into continued, material support for Chinese communities, whether through local businesses, cultural exchange, or advocacy, could transform an otherwise shallow trend into something more meaningful.