Follow real-time updates on Supreme Court ruling against TikTok.
As the TikTok ban approaches, hundreds of thousands of Americans looking for a new video-sharing app have migrated to Xiaohongshu, a social media platform that translates as “Little Red Book,” the American nickname for a classic compendium of quotes from Chairman Mao. It all played out as a global prank on the American government: Threatened with exile from TikTok over concerns of Chinese interference, its users simply switched to another Chinese app, whose name evokes the Chinese Communist Party.
When I downloaded Xiaohongshu, commonly called RedNote, it ranked first among free apps in Apple’s US App Store. (The second was Lemon8, another Chinese alternative to TikTok owned by TikTok’s parent company, ByteDance.) I gave away my phone number, reported my gender, and outlined some of my interests: childcare, calligraphy , snacks. Then I absorbed a selection of videos selected algorithmically by the app: a girl in a lace veil eating a popsicle the size of her head; a woman preparing dinner in the backseat of a minicar lined with stuffed animals; a heartwarming fan montage of Luigi Mangione’s court appearances.
I soon started seeing videos aimed directly at me: welcome notes created for the American TikTok user who recently arrived on RedNote’s shores.
In the world of Xiaohongshu, Americans who download the app en masse have been labeled “TikTok refugees.” Its current Chinese users have jokingly marketed themselves as Americans’ “new Chinese spies,” have started giving Mandarin lessons and have formed in-app group chats for “refugees” to get a feel for the territory. They warned that they intend to collect a fee from foreign users (the price is: you have to share a photo of a cat).
It’s all a tongue-in-cheek commentary on the American government’s crackdown on TikTok and the relative ease with which users can simply regenerate a similar experience on some other Chinese platform. Together, the powerful Chinese and the American newcomers are spontaneously staging a mocking parody of national security policy.
For TikTok users, the decision to ban TikTok specifically from American phones may seem silly. In recent years, lawmakers have blamed the app for everything from failing to uphold “American values” to promoting pro-Palestinian content among young Americans. As if American-owned social media companies like Meta have never tried to extract and exploit sensitive data. As if American-owned platforms like X would never upgrade their algorithms to reward certain political ideas.
But, of course, it is the nature of social media to make an impersonal technological product intimate, while its hidden costs (and threats) remain remote and unimaginable. It makes it difficult to be sure what is really happening on the backend.
If the TikTok ban succeeds and Americans want to stay in Xiaohongshu, they could come to dominate its culture, dilute its charm and ruin its atmosphere. But for now they are visitors in a foreign land, struggling to read instructions in Mandarin and navigate the app’s unfamiliar routes.
The platform, owned by a Shanghai-based company called Xingyin Information Technology, is filled with a dizzying exchange program sensation. On Wednesday I met a little boy in a fuzzy pink sweater explaining (and modeling) an assortment of traditional Chinese clothing, and a brother in a hoodie warning us not to show our butts or say anything racist, and an adorable influencer who posted a video in response to “TikTok refugee comments,” most of which attempt to flirt with him. (One asked him how to say “dad” in Mandarin.) The tax on cat memes is a nice touch, a sign that RedNote users are eager to communicate with Americans through our ancient language shared on the Internet.
One of my favorite videos came from a Chinese user, an English language teacher, who also does a passable imitation of Donald J. Trump – and who is now teaching English speakers how to say “America” in Mandarin in a Trumpian voice. The video pokes fun at Trump’s consistently bizarre pronunciation of “China” and suggests that perhaps it’s time to give America the same treatment.
Xiaohongshu provided a rare glimpse of Chinese perspective on America, generously translated and packaged for American consumption. The splendor of our digital vacation may be over soon, but the cat photo was worth it.