While the TikTok ban was looming last week, a half million “TikTok refugees” flooded to a lesser known Chinese app, 小红书,¹ RedNote. According to news reports, the app’s current users offered a humorous welcome, helping “refugees” navigate the mostly Chinese interface, jokingly requiring a “cat tax” (a picture of a cat) as payment, and lightheartedly referring to themselves as America’s new Chinese spies. They also offered lessons in Mandarin and explanations of local culture. At the same time, old and new users traded questions about amusing cross-cultural stereotypes. One reporter concluded, “This is what the internet is supposed to do: connect people.”

The internet is an amazing tool with the power to do a lot of things including connect people. However, true connections are made—or lost—by the human beings who wield the tool. RedNote’s Chinese users, with their humorous and endearing welcome to “TikTok refugees,” have demonstrated how to build—rather than bulldoze—human connections. Perhaps because of the importance of 关系² (relationship) in their society, many people I’ve met over 20+ years in China have been willing to work at building connections with me and, like the RedNote users, often in humorous and endearing ways.

In my early years in China, day after day and night after night, my apartment would fill with students and sometimes also colleagues or neighbors. They had various reasons for coming. Many were hoping to use and improve their English language skills. Moreover, in the pre-internet days of the 1990s when China, and particularly the area where I lived, was underdeveloped, the foreign teacher seemed to offer a form of entertainment (comic relief?).

On the other hand, students also had various reasons to stay away. The school occasionally warned them against spending too much time with the foreigner. Many lacked the language proficiency and communication skills to carry on a real conversation. Some came and sat in embarrassed silence in my living room until I broke the ice with a series of questions or a game. Yet, fear of difference or failure, of looking stupid or having nothing to say, didn’t deter them from reaching out to make a connection.

Ten years later, when cell phones and the internet had taken hold in China and English levels had improved, a group of students came to my home for a holiday celebration. Throughout the evening, one student walked all over my apartment snapping photos of everything. Every room, every piece of furniture, every aspect of my décor. Nothing was too mundane for her lens. As the students prepared to leave, she wrapped up some of the cookies I’d served and took them back to her dorm. A short while later, a thank you text made her intentions clear. She was helping her roommate connect with the foreigner vicariously. Then, she ended her already endearing message with a charming misspelling, “We are your biggest funs!”

Over the years if my “fan club” had stopped at the surface, true human connection wouldn’t have been possible, but many have been willing to go deeper. They’ve moved beyond admiration to building rapport, from curiosity to an exchange of ideas and worldviews leading to mutual understanding, from seeking help with questions about English grammar to entrusting me with pieces of their heart. Some have given me the honor of being the keeper of their secrets, shouldering their burdens, and sometimes—as much as an outsider can—entering into their unspeakable sadness. In the process, I’ve become their fans. I’ve also learned to see beyond the surface of the humorous and endearing, making my own attempts at connecting with the human souls that pulse beneath.

Photo by Pixabay.

1. xiao hong shu ↩︎
2. guanxi ↩︎