One day in mid-January, Candise Lin, based in California, woke up and found that hundreds of thousands of so-called tapping flights suddenly flocked to Red Note, a Chinese app she used every day. Lin does not want to claim that the whole case happened as a result of her, but the tendency 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 do not otherwise know much about China, Lin has become the country’s de facto ambassador of the internet culture.
From December 2023, Lin, who has more than 2.3 million combined followers on Tiktok and Instagram, uploaded a series of viral videos that Save Note (known as Xiaohongshu in Chinese) to Western audiences as a destination for people looking for cruel honest over -proposals. The videos have resulted in beauty influencers start downloading the app, which led to the first traffic hill of non-Chinese speakers. When Tiktok was nearby in January to be banned in the US, it was beauty creators who suggested that people should move to Red Note.
But long before Red Note gave millions of Americans an opportunity to experience the Chinese Internet directly, Lin gave them a rare look in it. ‘Dr. Lin’s content is like a magical portal on 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 following 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 to controversies and hatred of both pro and anti-China votes online. “When I say something nice about China, I am called a CCP bot, but when I say something bad about China, I am called a CIA spy,” Lin tells Wired. As a result, she tries to stay away from politics and focus on more innocent and funny tendencies.
Lin sanding every day on the Chinese internet looking for a new fame, the hottest meme, or perhaps a viral dormitory challenge, which she then translates into English and explains in a minute-long video. Each cut contains her that gives the camera the same signature appearance. Lin is often asked why she doesn’t laugh in her videos, and she explains it is because she has to film four or five times to get the best. No matter how funny the jokes are, they grow old at the end of it. “That’s why I’m like a robot,” she says. Still, Lin sometimes can’t help but break into a smile that delights her fans.
Lin’s audience likes to learn about what hilarious things the so -called Chinese “netizens” have to do lately. Chinese social media is a world where Westerners do not have access because they do not 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 following Lin on Instagram. “I can’t deal with it or reach it, but there’s an ‘all men are brothers’ kind of love [in knowing] This ridiculous thing is going on online, ”he says. ‘China is offered than this completely different place where no one is joking, this censored, barren healing that is all hyper -propaganda … but no, people joke around. The daily life exists. Memes exist. “
Fun facts about Cantonese
Candise Lin was born in the Chinese city of Guangzhou and emigrated to the US with her family when she was in the middle school. She received a doctorate in educational psychology and later worked as a postgraduate lecturer, and at one point tried to open an online skincare store.
Then the pandemic closes hit, and while he was bored at home, Lin decided to start tapping. In April 2020, she made a video of 24 seconds with six English names that sound horrible in Cantonese: the name ‘Susan’, for example, sounds like ‘God or bad luck’. The video unexpectedly blew up and received 5 million views and more than 10,000 remarks. “I kept making it in a series, and I realized that there was an audience for this,” says Lin.