This article may be meeting you at a very Chinese time in your life.
At least, if you’ve spent enough time recently on social media, where the phenomenon of “Chinamaxxing” has swept feeds with videos of people sipping hot water, shuffling around the house in slippers and donning a viral Adidas jacket resembling historic Chinese fashion.
These things, content creators joke, will help you “become Chinese” – reflecting a growing Western fascination with Chinese culture and aesthetics.
“Morning routine as a new Chinese baddie,” one TikTok creator captioned a video in which he does a series of traditional Chinese exercises. Another video, viewed more than 2.4 million times as of late February, shows the creator boiling apples to make fruit tea – a supposedly old-school Chinese elixir for gut health.
We’ve seen this play out before as Asia steadily accumulated global cultural capital. K-dramas, K-pop and K-beauty have become beloved worldwide, while record numbers of tourists are flocking to Japan and gushing over its pristine streets and high-speed rail.
Now, it seems it is China’s turn.
A guest wears brown fur Labubu bag with Labubu charm attached, outside Dior, during the Womenswear Spring Summer 2026 as part of Paris Fashion Week in Paris, France, on October 1, 2025.
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