Selma von den Hoff 

Yonsei GSIS Newsletter, Junior Editor

Since the beginning of the year, we have seen a rise on TikTok and in Western media of videos of mostly white creators drinking hot water, smoking Chinese cigarettes, and keeping their feet warm, often captioned with “You have met me at a very Chinese time in my life” or “Chinamaxxing”. Around Chinese New Year, this trend expanded to include white creators telling audiences what to do before New Year’s Eve, which colors to wear to welcome the Fire Horse, and how to understand basic ideas from traditional Chinese medicine. In many cases, these videos overshadow Chinese creators discussing the same topics in terms of views and engagement. Alongside this, the growing popularity of Chinese Hanfu-inspired clothing, such as the Adidas Tang jacket, first released in 2025 for the Chinese market, as trendy streetwear items, raises the important question: Is this the commodification of East Asian culture really a new trend, and is it as positive as it seems?

“Chinamaxxing” is not new and can be traced back to the 15th-century Chinese room, a room decorated with block-printed wallpaper, filled with porcelain and expensive tea sets. This room was a status symbol for Europe’s upper classes. It showed that you were cultured and progressive, mirroring the same subtext of many videos within this trend, which imply that they are not like the others but rather well-rounded and able to look past Western propaganda. The term chinoiserie was coined to describe this interpretation of East Asian traditions and architecture. The items within a Chinese room, however, were not typically found in Chinese households but rather part of export chinoiserie, meaning they were made in Chinese workshops but sold exclusively for Western consumption. The rise in ‘Mandarin jackets’ and pretending to celebrate the Chinese New Year echo this pattern. Even wearing Hanfu-inspired clothing repeats history, as in the 1990s and early 2000s, many Western brands drew inspiration from Chinese culture or Chinese American stars. Mina Le notes that John Galliano, who designed Chinese-inspired looks for Dior, was inspired by Anna May Wong, the first Chinese-American movie star.

However, it is not just Chinese culture that is repackaged as a trend. Fascination with East Asia as a whole has always been a part of the internet. Different subgroups commodify cultures to different extents, from being a casual fan of K-pop or Anime to wanting to become East Asian, by using subliminals to change their eye shape to be more East Asian or the more extreme version of claiming to be transracial and getting plastic surgery to change their features. While the latter is rather rare to find online, social media has accelerated the consumption of culture outside its context, often leading to the exoticization of its people. Here, I want to clarify that it is not consumption alone, but rather the act of transforming an item that is normal in one culture into something exotic, and the romanticization of that culture, that creates the commodification of the practice. This mechanism is often seen in relation to the production of cultural clothing for mass consumption or the renaming of dishes for ‘easier’ pronunciation.  

Romanticizing culture and removing it from its context isn’t a new phenomenon either. In his book Orientalism, Edward Said explains that Orientalism leads to the perceived distortion of these cultures through the showcasing, emphasizing, and exaggeration of differences between people and their cultures. A modern case of Orientalism is Korea, especially since the 2018 Hallyu wave. Here, social media allows for a single idea to spread, often presenting culture and the people one-dimensionally, with damaging consequences. In Korea, while the export of its culture has contributed heavily to its economy, the exotification of Korea has persisted through non-Korean influencers. 

One of the consequences through which the commodification and exotification of Korean culture can be seen is through cultural tourism, which, at its core, is focused on the commodification of an exotic culture. Another one would be the rebranding of dishes, such as the trendy ‘Courtney Cook Eggs’. Content creator Courtney Cook shared her recipe for a version of Korean Mayak eggs, and while she herself credited the original Korean recipe, creators who recreated it due to its virality called them Courtney Cook eggs. 

While culture is an important part of a country’s soft power and people often want their culture to be viewed positively, the domination of the West, specifically white people, on social media creates a dilemma for the commodification of culture. As Edward Said argues, the vast generalization of the ‘East’ homogenized the diverse cultures into one unchanging, essential, and mystical category: the Orient, which we can observe in social media and in the rebranding of East Asian cultural items and dishes into shallow versions of themselves.

References: 

Chinese Room Syndrome: a cautionary tale on becoming chinese: https://substack.com/home/post/p-188590612 (pictures)

“being chinese” will not solve your identity crisis – oliSUNvia https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=GMLzvhF9bF8

Why is everyone Chinese? – Mina Le: https://youtu.be/qK5im4tRU8I?si=0tSpeGKSREjtPYiq

Commodification of Korean Culture in the West: Orientalism in the era of modern social media – Samantha Giudice: https://scholarworks.uark.edu/cgi/viewcontent.cgi?article=1010&context=ingsuht