From Congee to Chinesemaxxing: what we can learn from TikTok's 'becoming Chinese' trend'

Scroll through TikTok long enough and you will eventually be invited to "become Chinese". This invitation doesn’t arrive via a passport or ancestry, but through the rhythmic clinking of a rice cooker, the steam from a cup of hot water, and the quiet ritual of "walking after meals".

Tomorrow you are turning Chinese - Viral Video by Sherry Zhu

Soundtracked by Jin Sheng Yuan (Affinities of This Life) by Chuan Zi, the trend folds lifestyle optimisation into cultural longing, arriving—neatly, if coincidentally—around Lunar New Year.  What began as a viral comedic hook from creator Sherry Zhu—"Tomorrow, you are turning Chinese"—has matured into a significant lifestyle movement that suggests a deeper shift in Western cultural aspirations.

At its most benign, the content is about health. Influencers praise Chinese diet and exercise cultures: warm foods over cold, walking after meals, tai chi, balance rather than burnout. In an algorithmic wellness economy exhausted by protein powders and high-intensity punishment, Chinese medicine offers something slower, older, and—crucially—non-Western. The rice cooker becomes a symbol not just of convenience but continuity.

The Data of a Departure

Using Truth Intelligence to analyse the online behaviour reveals the tangible footprint of this shift. In the United States, the trend has already moved beyond the "one-hit-wonder" meme cycle. Data shows that search volume for "Being Chinese" is now consistently competing with evergreen staples like "Chinese recipes," signalling its transition into a legitimate lifestyle category.

Perhaps more tellingly, this surge is coming at the expense of established cultural exports. In the U.S., interest in "Being Chinese" is now significantly outperforming the "Japanese aesthetic"—the long-standing gold standard for East Asian minimalism in the West. While the United Kingdom shows more volatility, with sharp spikes around terms like "Newly Chinese," the underlying current in both regions points toward a search for something more functional and grounded.

Search Data Analysis 'Chinesecore' vs 'Japanese Aesthetic'

Tracking the trend from viral video to sustained cultural discourse

Soft Power in a Fragile Hegemony

Yet “becoming Chinese” is doing heavier cultural work than a congee tutorial suggests. China is the world’s second-largest economy; America’s long reign as the planet’s dominant cultural exporter feels increasingly fragile. Hollywood, the Grammys and Silicon Valley no longer feel synonymous with stability or aspiration.

Against a backdrop of American poverty, violence and political paralysis, perceived Chinese ideals—discipline, collective endurance, long-term thinking—are reframed as quietly enviable. If neoliberalism promised freedom and delivered precarity, this trend reads like an anxious flirtation with its antithesis. What makes this moment distinct is that China’s soft power appears to be hitting a new high—not through blockbuster cinema or pop exports in the mould of American cultural imperialism, but via domestic rituals, language, food and health philosophies.

This is not state-led propaganda so much as ambient influence: a drip-feed of everyday practices that feel intimate, practical and portable. In contrast to America’s increasingly brittle cultural dominance, Chinese culture here is framed as stabilising, functional, even soothing.

The Pendulum: From Fear to Fascination

We must, however, view this through a critical lens. This trend arrives only five years after a peak in anti-Asian hate and the tragedy of the Atlanta spa shootings. The sudden swing from Sinophobia to "Chinesemaxxing" invites a hard question: Is this exchange wholesome or Orientalism in a new, algorithm-friendly form? Edward Said’s critique looms large: is “being Chinese” here a flattened aesthetic, stripped of politics and history? The answer is complicated by the fact that much of the content is created by Chinese diaspora in the West, collapsing the neat boundary between exoticisation and self-representation.

This is not the first time Western fascination with communist or non-capitalist cultures has surfaced during periods of right-wing governance. In the 1930s, amid the rise of fascism in Europe, western support for the USSR surged—not out of affection for Stalinism, but because communism was seen as the only force capable of stopping Hitler.

"THE FRONT POPULAIRE AGAINST MISERY, WAR AND FASCISM, FOR BREAD, PEACE AND LIBERTY" Book promoting the Popular Front in France

This “Popular Front” era was driven less by ideological purity than by opposition to the far right. Post-war dynamics shifted. During McCarthyism and later the Reagan–Thatcher years, the Western left became less pro-communist than anti-anti-communist: rejecting Cold War hysteria while remaining sceptical of Soviet authoritarianism. Idealisation moved away from Moscow toward revolutionary movements in Cuba, Vietnam and Nicaragua. Today’s TikTok trend does not map neatly onto these moments, but it echoes a familiar impulse: when Western capitalism hardens and polarises, attention drifts elsewhere.

Politics, inevitably, seep in. Engagement with the trend coincides with increased ICE raids and anti-immigration rhetoric. This trend also marks a striking shift from 2020–21, when Covid-era racism fuelled a spike in anti-Asian hate, including the Atlanta spa shootings. Five years on, the pendulum appears to have swung—from fear to fascination.

Gold Spa in Atlanta, site of the racially motivated shooting in 2020 where 8 people were killed and 9 wounded.

This shift from fear to fascination invites a harder, more emotional question: where does this fascination really come from, and who does it serve? For many East Asians, this moment is uneasy rather than comforting. Sinophobia is historical, recent and lived; its violence not abstract. Cultural fascination has historically coexisted easily with political exclusion, dismissal and silence—model minority myths making that contradiction easier to sustain.

Visibility is not insulation. Trends do not equal solidarity.

The sense that “we’ve moved on” from racism sits uncomfortably with how quickly admiration has replaced suspicion, and how easily it could swing back again. Pride and recognition matter, and it is understandable that many Chinese creators feel newly seen. But when the algorithm moves on, or when political scapegoating sharpens—as it always does—the protections offered by fascination alone are thin. Cultural trends rarely hold when power turns hostile.

So What?

While many Chinese diaspora creators feel "newly seen," the protections offered by algorithmic fascination are thin. As we approach the Lunar New Year 2026 (Year of the Fire Horse... and Draco Malfoy...), the data confirms that Chinese cultural signifiers are hitting a new high in Western consciousness. Whether this "Becoming Chinese" movement is a meaningful bridge or just "internet cosplay" remains to be seen.

Draco Malfoy in China for Lunar New Year

In many ways, the rise of “becoming Chinese” isn’t really about being Chinese at all. It’s a window into a West reckoning with its own instability, grasping for rituals and worldviews that feel steadier than what it currently has. For brands, this genre of trend is an opportunity: cultural dominance is no longer American by default, and identity trends are emerging from places the West once dismissed as peripheral (yes, even China).

To navigate culture now is to recognise that soft power is shifting, taste is globalising, and cultural borrowing without cultural understanding is no longer viable.