Are you 'in a Chinese time of your life' — like many people on TikTok?

There’s an odd phenomenon happening on the internet right now, particularly among Gen Z: People keep saying: “You met me at a very Chinese time of my life.”

Chinese TikTok creator sherryxiiruii has been leaning into the trend.

“I’m going to let you in on a little secret, OK?" she said in a recent video. "Tomorrow you are turning Chinese ,and I know that sounds intimidating, but there’s no point in fighting it now because you are the chosen one. I know what you’re thinking, like you don’t know how to act, you don't know what to do. How can you be Black and Chinese? How can you be white and Chinese? ‘Oh wait, Sherry, I thought I was Mexican, you’re telling me I’m Chinese.’ Yes, two things can be true at the same time but the truth is there’s nothing scary about being Chinese, baby girl. As a Chinese baddie myself, I’m here to tell you the minute you turn Chinese, you’re coming with us to hot pot!" 

People are drinking hot tea, eating dim sum and boiled apples and apparently celebrating the Chinese-ness of it all along.

Zeyi Yang, a senior writer at Wired, says the whole trend says a lot more about the state of America today than China.

Full conversation

ZEYI YANG: I feel like my first reaction is that it kind of makes sense because the truth is, is that we are consuming all kinds of Chinese-made products in our lives, right. Whether you know it or not. Like the tech gadgets, the tech websites or software, and also a lot of like the, just like the clothing or toys, they are ultimately made in China.

So I feel like part of it's just that, oh, people are just realizing that they are surrounded by things made in China. But I do think a very crucial difference there is they're not just realizing it, they're also celebrating it. They're now saying that, yes, I know I'm using all of the Chinese products and I'm proud of it and I'm enjoying this moment.

LAUREN GILGER: That's interesting because it's so different than what you might have seen in America just, you know, not that long ago where people would be like, trying to buy things not made in China or trying to buy things made locally. That kind of thing.

YANG: Exactly. I feel like there's probably two factors that contributed to this. First of all is that I think Chinese companies, Chinese business are trying to make more premium products, right. You wouldn't really look at TikTok today and think, oh, this is an app that's poorly made. That also happens on the manufacturing side, they are making some of the better, even luxury grade kind of products you can buy.

Now at the second time, I think just the idea that buying China equals buying something that's cheap, that is counterfeit, I think for the younger generation, that equation doesn't really make sense anymore because they feel like, you know what, there are a lot of things coming out of China that is not fake and that is cool and that that's sometimes even hard to get.

So that's what contributed to kind of this like mindset change just that now if something has a made in China label on it, it doesn't necessarily mean this is something I should avoid.

GILGER: That's so interesting. So tariffs come to mind for me too here. And you talk about this in your piece as well, about the realization via tariffs and this whole conversation from the Trump administration about imposing tariffs that most of what we get is from China.

YANG: Right. Like, one thing even I just learned when I was reporting on a tariff and its impact is that there are a lot of American brands who manufacture their products in China. So they were the ones being hit very significantly during the tariffs last year, too. And I think a lot of consumers also realize that when they learn that, oh, the American, the Western brands that I love are also implicated in this tariff fiasco.

So I think one kind of like realization for them last year is that actually no matter how well it's branded, it's marketed, it could come from China.

GILGER: I have to ask about TikTok because a lot of this is being shared on TikTok, which the U.S. government at one point had voted to ban in America. Do you think that whole debate and you know, now Trump coming in and saying we're not going to get rid of TikTok and trying to strike a deal on that front.

Has that impacted this, you think?

YANG: I think so. I think this does follow what happened exactly one year ago, right, in January, when TikTok was very briefly banned from American app stores and app websites. So what happened was that I think there's a very loyal user base on TikTok who loves the app, who wants to stay on the app no matter which country or which company controls this platform.

So for them, the fact that this app was developed by a Chinese company and maintained by a Chinese company is not a problem. It's actually a benefit. They think this provides them with a less Western platform of choice if they want to go online. And I do think that user base overlaps a lot with the user base we're seeing who's saying that they are at a very Chinese time, because these are the users who doesn't find any problem with that, but also wants to celebrate there is this Chinese option in the software world..

GILGER: So you write about all of these kinds of things that led to this moment. But your take here I think is very interesting because it's a little counterintuitive because what you're saying essentially is that this is not even really about China, you don't think. This says more about the state of America right now?

YANG: Yeah, I think part of that comes from my own observation because I am Chinese. So when I'm seeing all of these users claiming that they are Chinese, I see a lot of difference between their identity mine. So in that sense, I don't really take their statements that seriously, I guess. But at the same time, I do think when they're saying they're Chinese, when they're saying that, they're describing the thing that they like about China or made in China products, they're always talking about the stark differences between us and China and always the parts that make China look good.

For example, they will be talking about how the public transportation is so much more developed in China, which is true. They also frequently bring up like the clean investment that Chinese government has made or Chinese business has made on in the past few years. And that is still true again because China is one of countries that's that has invested in electric vehicles the most and is now like one of the biggest markets for that.

GILGER: Yeah.

YANG: But at the same time, they're not noticing the areas where China has performed poorly, right. When you're talking about like the sluggish economic development or if you're talking about like labor rights, human rights, there are a lot of things that these users just tend to ignore, right. So that led me to the conclusion that, you know, they're not really interested in studying China as a whole, as real country that you can live in, where there are over 1 billion people living in.

But they're more looking at it as an aspiration. They're looking at China for things that the U.S. can learn from but is not currently learning.

GILGER: So it's interesting because it is sort of flipping on its head of the tradition in America of being very critical of China. I mean, on one level, right, like this is very lighthearted, it seems for the most part. Lots of the people I've seen online talking about this trend seem to think it's relatively innocuous.

But I wonder, like, as someone who's Chinese, do you feel like this, this is maybe kind of cultural appropriation?

YANG: I would say there's a little bit in there because I'm seeing a lot of things. There are things there assumed as Chinese, but not really. For example, I seem to see that people are connecting eating vegetarian food or salads as Chinese, which is totally not true. Like, I eat a lot of meat as a Chinese person, and it's actually hard to eat a completely vegetarian meal in China.

But at the same time, I do feel like they're not, they're not making this trend to try to take, you know, the identity of Chinese away from Chinese people. They're trying to say that there's so many things that can, we can celebrate about, you know, the Chinese lifestyle, the Chinese products. It is, like you said, a very big contrast to how Americans used to talk about China in the past.

So in that sense, I really welcome this trend. You know, it's like providing a different perspective looking at the geopolitics or how geopolitics actually impact every person's life. So I like that there's more diversity in the conversations now.

GILGER: Yeah, that does add a layer. And you mention also, like, the other kind of side of this, which isn't getting mentioned in these very lighthearted memes, which is, you know, very real concerns about human rights in China and censorship and things like that. I mean, do you think those need to be a part of the conversation, or is it OK for this to just be something that's, you know, pretty unserious and on the Internet?

YANG: Right. I feel like people are just, you know, spending five minutes on TikTok, making up this one video, talking about there at a Chinese time of my life. We don't have to force them to think about the darker aspects of China, right. That would be unreasonable. But I do think it's important for these people to know that, you know, when they're talking about China, they're talking about very specific slices of the country and the living experience there.

There's a lot of other people who are talking about, you know, the less fancy, less interesting or less reported about aspect of China. As long as there are still people having serious conversations about those, I think it's fine.