One day in mid-January, California-based social media influencer Candise Lin woke up and found that hundreds of thousands of so-called TikTok refugees were suddenly flocking to Red Note, a Chinese social media app she uses every day. Lin doesn’t want to claim the whole thing happened because of her, but the trend is a good example of how her videos have become an essential link connecting the parallel worlds of Western and Chinese social media. For many people who don’t otherwise know much about China, Lin has become the country’s de facto ambassador of internet culture.
Starting in December 2023, Lin, who has more than 2.3 million combined followers on TikTok and Instagram, uploaded a series of viral videos introducing Red Note (known as Xiaohongshu in Chinese) to Western audiences as a destination for people searching for brutally honest makeover suggestions. The videos prompted beauty influencers to begin downloading the app, resulting in its first traffic bump from non-Chinese speakers. When TikTok was close to being banned in the US in January, it was beauty creators who suggested people should move to Red Note instead.
But long before Red Note offered millions of Americans an opportunity to directly experience the Chinese internet, Lin had been providing them a rare glimpse into it. “Dr. Lin’s content is like a magical portal to the other side of the world, where everyone is just like you but a little different,” says Lucy White, a 22-year-old Scottish bartender who follows Lin on Instagram.
In return, Lin has become a minor celebrity and earns a stable income from TikTok that subsidizes her day job as a Cantonese tutor. But her online presence also opens her up to controversies and hatred from both pro- and anti-China voices online. “If I say something nice about China, I’m called a CCP bot, but if I say something bad about China, I’m called a CIA spy,” Lin tells WIRED. As a result, she tries to stay clear of politics and focus on more innocuous and funny trends.
Every day, Lin scours the Chinese internet looking for a new celebrity feud, the hottest meme, or perhaps a viral college dorm challenge, which she then translates into English and explains in a minute-long video. Each clip features her giving the camera the same signature deadpan look. Lin is often asked why she doesn’t laugh in her videos, and she explains it’s because she needs to film four or five times to get the best take. No matter how funny the jokes are, they are getting old by the end of that. “That’s why I’m like a robot,” she says. Still, sometimes Lin can’t help but break into a smile, which delights her fans.
Lin’s audience loves learning about what hilarious things so-called Chinese “netizens” have been up to lately. Chinese social media is a world that Westerners don’t have access to because they don’t speak the same language or use the same platforms as people in China, says Josef Burton, a 39-year-old writer and former US diplomat who follows Lin on Instagram. “I can’t interact with it or reach it, but there is an ‘all men are brothers’ kind of fondness [in knowing] this ridiculous thing is going on online,” he says. “China is presented as this completely othered place where no one jokes around, this censored, barren hell space that’s all hyper propaganda … But no, people joke around. Daily life exists. Memes exist.”
Fun Facts about Cantonese
Candise Lin was born in the Chinese city of Guangzhou and immigrated to the US with her family when she was in middle school. She received a doctorate degree in educational psychology and later worked as a postgraduate lecturer, and at one point tried opening an online skin care shop.
Then the pandemic lockdowns hit, and while bored at home scrolling on her phone, Lin decided to start posting on TikTok. In April 2020, she made a 24-second video listing six English names that sound horrible in Cantonese: The name “Susan,” for example, sounds like “god of bad luck.” The video unexpectedly blew up, garnering 5 million views and over 10,000 comments. “So I kept making it into a series, and I realized there’s an audience for this,” Lin says.
