The cold war in Chinese fandom spaces

The "China bad" narrative is infecting even "fluffy" Chinese online fandom spaces, forcing fans to take sides in the US-China cold war.

To The Wonder gives viewers a glimpse into China’s cultural diversity.

ℹ️ I rewrote this newsletter several times. I want to be very careful not to make this an anti-West rant; the last thing I want is to make people feel bad about being born in a region; that’s not something we have any control over!

Also, the reason why I pivoted my newsletter to talk about cultural issues is because I want to promote the positive things about Chinese culture. There’s so much content that ends up making you angry at a country or a region – I don’t want to be a part of that. I want to be a bridge builder, not a bridge basher.

However, this is an issue that’s been nagging at me for years, and I want to get it off my chest. And I hope by doing so, you’d understand how careless, badly researched takes about a country can affect its citizens and her diaspora. There are forces in the world right now agitating for conflict rather than cooperation, and they are creeping into “light” spaces like fandoms too.

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So, recently, I wanted to share an article about To the Wonder, a Chinese drama selected for the 2024 Cannes, in a Chinese drama Reddit forum.

I almost completed the post when I realised where the drama was set:

The mini-series is an adaptation of the award-winning essay collection My Altay by Li Juan, a renowned Chinese essayist. Set in Northwest China’s Xinjiang’s pristine Altay region, the eight-episode series offers audiences a fresh narrative and sensory experience, blending light comedy with Li’s literary aesthetics to explore themes of nature reverence, self-discovery, and the simple yet resilient spirit of the northern Xinjiang herders. – To the Wonder selected CANNESERIES, marking the first Chinese language drama in longform competition

Oh.

On social media, especially on Reddit where anti-China forums like r/China flourish, Xinjiang is a trigger word. Mention it and reply guys and gals will swarm to your post.

Eager to express their hatred for a country they have never visited, let alone identify on a map, they would parrot badly researched takes and remind everyone that “China is bad”. A battle would then ensue in the comment thread between Chinese drama fans from the East and West.

But damn it, says my free-speech-loving, stubborn self. I don’t want to self-censor!

Then, I remember all the horrible comments I have to wade through each time Xinjiang is mentioned.

I sighed and deleted the post.

Listen. In case you’re itching to comment about the Xinjiang situation on my Substack, I’ll be blunt and say that I have no interest in knowing how virtuous or moral you are, politically or culturally.

I don’t want to be dragged into the “let’s see how she responds to my comment so that I can see if she’s pro-China or not” game that so many people seem intent on playing online.

I refuse to be engaged in an un-nuanced, culture/cold war “discussion” about China that is so dominant in Western media spaces these days.

Most of all, I’m extremely tired of watching people lecture other countries about their supposed “bad values” when their home countries are not exactly morally “pure” in their actions on the world stage.

“China bad” everywhere

I tell myself this often: Hey Liz, you’re Malaysian. Sure, genetically you’re probably 80% Chinese and 20% who knows what, but your ancestors left China like, over a century ago. You even think in English! Why do you care?

But as I became more involved in Chinese drama fandom, I realised that I’m not alone. I am comforted that I’m not the only one having a hard time with the constant anti-China bombardment, despite not being from China.

Even Chinese Americans feel uncomfortable about the online discourse about China, so at least I’m not crazy or, I don’t know, a secret Communist or something.

What puzzles me about the whole thing is you can ask anyone from the United States or other Western nations if they believe what their mainstream media says, and it’s always an empathic no. Even when it comes to science-y, life-saving stuff like vaccines. But somehow they 100% believe what these rags say about a country they’ve not even visited?

It also puzzles me that many Chinese drama fans (not all) who happen to hail from these countries always feel the need to declare that I don’t hate the Chinese people but I hate the Chinese government.

Why do they feel this strong urge to declare that they hate a government thousands of miles away that has done nothing to them and which has lifted 600 million people out of poverty? (Meanwhile, their governments are engaged in wars, sanctions and whatnot. Go figure.)

Personally, I believe their energy is misdirected. They need to worry more about what their government is doing to their country because at least they can do something about that. It’s almost as if someone is trying to distract them from more concrete issues. Hmm!

And if it’s not political virtue signalling, it’s weird, uneducated remarks about China or Chinese culture.

The weirdest hot take I’ve ever seen was a commentator saying that the reason why Chinese female characters have high-pitched baby voices is that women are being infantilised on TV to encourage women in China to breed.

Yes, I’m not even kidding!

I cringe each time someone asks about the Chinese Communist Party or China’s history on my CDrama subreddit because that usually means I’d have to wade through ignorant comments. Let’s just put it this way: Chinese drama fans, unless they have PhDs in the subject, are not exactly experts in Chinese history, culture and especially geopolitics, no matter how many CDramas they’ve watched. They have no business claiming to know how China operates.

The more patient among us would correct their misconceptions or bad takes, but rarely are these met with, “Oh, I get it now.” Instead, they often double down and tell us that we don’t know the truth because we’ve been brainwashed by propaganda. Poor us! We’re so ignorant about our own culture…

This is sad because, Chinese drama forums were supposed to be my happy place, a place where I can forget the troubles of the world for a moment. Yet, I’m being forced to deal with this when I’m trying to relax.

Some people will say that this is just “Reddit being Reddit. But I see this happen each time a China-related topic comes up on English social media, whether it is Twitter, Tumblr, Facebook etc. Even on mainstream media, the most banal topic, such as garlic, can be spun into something anti-China.

In a way, I admire them for their creativity.

Dragged into America’s culture war

This article explains how I and many other minorities feel: The world is trapped in America’s culture war.

Even the subheading of this article sums it up best: America won the internet, and now makes us all speak its language.

“Sharing the internet with America is like sharing your living room with a rhinoceros. It’s huge, it’s right there, and whatever it’s doing now, you sure as hell know about it.”

The American/Western narrative reigns supreme in English social media, and minority voices like mine are being drowned out or chased out. Can our narratives be heard, or should we just give up the fight?

I often speak to Chinese drama fans of Chinese descent, and a lot of them are leaving English spaces for Chinese fandom spaces due to the relentless stream of bad takes, subtle Sinophobia and misinformation about Chinese culture and China. They’re just tired of being exposed to it.

I am tempted to do the same, but I stubbornly refuse to be chased out of spaces talking about my culture.

Most of us just want to talk about the Chinese dramas that we love, not engage in ill-informed takes about China or our culture. Yet, when such comments appear, we feel compelled to correct them because it feels so unfair that our culture is singled out for the same sin many other cultures commit.

But it feels hopeless and exhausting to keep doing this, so this “cold war” in fandom spaces is forcing out Chinese people – both diaspora and from China – to less ignorant spaces.

In Internet parlance, we call these “cosy spaces”. Private chats in Discord or Whatsapp or via direct messages.

There are forces trying to drive humanity apart. To wage war with each other instead of working with each other to solve the world’s urgent problems: poverty, climate change, environmental disasters, pandemics.

We may not be politicians or diplomats, but we can do our part by not engaging in the “hate games” and label groups as “The Other” but as human beings like you and me.

Idealistic? Well, we gotta start somewhere.

To the Wonder

Now, to the drama in question!

To the Wonder takes place in the Altay Prefecture in Northwest China’s Xinjiang Uygur Autonomous Region. The eight-episode TV series, ­is available on the iQiyi platform and has received critical acclaim.

I’ve seen the first episode, and I enjoyed the peek into everyday life in Xinjiang, a region so grossly misrepresented by Western media that even I was surprised by how ordinary life in Xinjiang is.

There are fast food restaurants in Xinjiang! Big buildings! Trains! People going about their lives!

Our heroine is not a typical Chinese drama heroine. She’s not brave or courageous; she’s certainly not especially gifted. She wants to be a writer and has failed miserably at it. She has even failed miserably at her part-time job as a waitress in a kitschy restaurant serving Uyghur food.

So, she goes home to the rural area where her mother lives. After the pressure cooker introduction of life in the big city, your soul immediately feels relief at the sight of the grasslands.

Perhaps our heroine’s future lies here, where everything feels natural and where people work under the sun working with the earth and her living creatures.

Robert Wu of China Translated recently wrote a great essay about “To the Wonder”:

It’s a deep, wonderful analysis of a drama that is “boring” but has deep messages about the fundamental shift in Chinese culture and mindsets:

It’s freedom, freedom not in the political sense but at a much deeper level. A cultural, psychological, and personal revolution deeper in our hearts and minds that has only recently taken place. It’s the freedom from outside expectations. It’s the freedom from what other people want for you. It’s the freedom to love and to choose for yourselves. It’s the freedom to live, to think and to exist in the way your heart dictates, in a truly modern way. – How a “boring” TV drama becomes so successful and what it shows about today’s China

Do have a read.

The delightful thing about To The Wonder, at least to me, is its representation of the diverse cultures in China. (Heck, even the Han Chinese have such diversity it’s mind blogging.) Seeing this diversity on screen is such a joy.

Yet, there’s almost an immediate reaction from English-speaking Chinese drama fandom when dramas like these appear. To quote someone on the Internet when I recommended With You, a drama about the experience of ordinary people in China during the COVID-19 lockdowns: “What was the amount of propaganda in this one?”

I had this great urge to reply: “Oh man, the amount of propaganda in this one! One minute of this will turn you into a Mao-lovin’ commie! Capitalism will bleed out of your ears and your brain will implode from all that socialism, mein comrade!”

But I have a feeling she will not appreciate my sense of humour.

It’s sad when people dismiss dramas like To The Wonder as mere propaganda. Like Robert said, it’s much deeper than that, and you’re missing out.

It is, admittedly, challenging to access the drama. It’s available on iQIYI right now with English subtitles, but you may need a VPN and point it to Singapore/Malaysia to access it.

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