If you drink hot water, wear slippers indoors or shop at Asian supermarkets, you may be Chinese, according to the internet.

如果你喝热水、进家门换拖鞋或者爱逛亚洲超市，那么按照网络上的说法，你可能是中国人。

You might be thinking, “I’m not Chinese,” but your race is beside the point. Think of “being Chinese” as more of an absurdist joke, a wellness goal or a subtle, ironic expression of protest. Or all of the above.

你或许会想：“我不是中国人。”但种族不是重点。不妨把“成为中国人”当作一种带有荒诞色彩的玩笑、一种养生方式，或是带点讽刺意味的含蓄抗议表达。甚至三者兼而有之。

On TikTok and Instagram, some users boast that their minds are so Chinese that they see Chinatowns as just “towns” and Chinese food as just “food.” Others say, “You met me at a very Chinese time in my life,” a parody of the line “You met me at a very strange time in my life” from the 1999 movie “Fight Club.”

在TikTok和Instagram上，有用户自豪地表示自己的精神状态太中国了，以至于唐人街在他们眼里就是普通的“街”，中餐就是普通的“饭”，并没有什么特殊的。还有人会说，“你遇见我时，正是我人生中一个非常‘中国’的阶段。”这是在戏仿1999年的电影《搏击俱乐部》里的台词：“你遇见我时，正是我人生中一个非常奇怪的阶段。”

Some have declared themselves Chinese “baddies” — confident, attractive women — while adopting mundane East Asian lifestyle habits, having been invited into the trend by Chinese American influencers.

一些年轻女孩自诩为中式“坏女孩”——自信又迷人的女生——同时采纳一些日常的东亚生活习惯，而这股风潮最初是由华裔美国网红带火的。

The meme is not bound by nationality or ethnicity; anyone can be Chinese if they wish. And right now, many do.

这种网络梗不受国籍或族裔的限制；只要你愿意，谁都可以是中国人。而现在，很多人正乐在其中。

As Labubus and other Chinese cultural exports win over global audiences, experts say that “being Chinese” memes may signal China’s growing soft power abroad. For some American creators, they are also a wry expression of disillusionment with politics at home.

随着Labubu玩偶及其他中国文化产品风靡全球，有专家指出，“成为中国人”系列梗或预示着中国在海外软实力的提升。而对一些美国的视频创作者而言，这也成为他们对本国政治失望后一种带有讽刺意味的表达。

去年纽约梅西感恩节大游行中的Labubu。

“It’s partly meme logic, but it’s also a sign of growing cultural cachet,” said Shaoyu Yuan, a professor at New York University’s Center for Global Affairs who studies China’s soft power.

“这在一定程度上是网络迷因的逻辑，但也反映出一种日益增长的文化吸引力，”纽约大学全球事务中心研究中国软实力的袁绍宇教授表示。

The memes, he said, reflect a broader shift in which online audiences are developing a new level of familiarity with China as they engage with it through lifestyle trends and aesthetics — not as the geopolitical rival and security threat it is often portrayed as in the United States.

他说，这些网络迷因体现出一种更广泛的转变：随着网民通过生活方式潮流和审美与中国产生互动，他们对中国形成了一种新的熟悉感，而不再仅仅将其视为美国经常描绘的那个地缘政治对手或安全威胁。

“The underlying familiarity is now widespread enough to become widely ‘meme-able’,” he added.

“这种基础的熟悉感，现在已经普及到了足以拿来玩梗的程度，”他补充道。

“Becoming Chinese,” according to Chinese American influencers, involves adopting habits like boiling apples and drinking hot water in the mornings. One popular TikTok personality, Sherry Zhu, 23, has amassed millions of views by explaining the appeal of these everyday practices.

按照一些华裔美国网红的说法，“成为中国人”意味着一些习惯的养成，比如煮苹果、早上喝热水等等。23岁的TikTok网红朱雪莉通过解析这些日常习惯的魅力，已累计获得数百万播放量。

“Now that you’re Chinese, you need to stop walking around your house barefoot,” she says in one video, adding that many Chinese families wear slippers indoors.

“既然你现在是中国人了，就别再光脚在家里走来走去了，”她在一段视频中说，并补充道，许多华人家庭都有室内穿拖鞋的习惯。

The trend has taken off partly because health and wellness is a popular topic at the start of a new year, said Crystal Abidin, the author of “TikTok and Youth Cultures” and a professor of internet cultures at Curtin University in Australia.

澳大利亚科廷大学互联网文化教授、《TikTok与青年文化》一书作者克里斯塔尔·阿比丁认为，这股风潮的兴起，部分原因也是在于每年年初，健康与养生话题本就备受关注。

The simplified version of Chinese culture appeals to a non-Chinese audience, she added. “It’s easy to digest. It’s palatable. It’s accessible.”

她还说，这种简化版的中国文化对非华裔受众颇具吸引力。“容易消化，容易接受，门槛也低。”

For some social media users, the meme feels implicitly political at a time of polarization and uncertainty in the United States.

对一些社交媒体用户而言，在美国政治两极分化、充满不确定性的当下，玩“成为中国人”的梗暗含政治意味。

Renn Lazzerin, 33, who lives in Los Angeles, said there was a political undertone in her effort to incorporate daily habits like drinking hot water and eating rice porridge.

33岁的洛杉矶居民雷恩·拉泽林表示，她尝试培养喝热水、吃粥等日常习惯，也是有政治寓意的。

“For me it feels like a way to resist — in a subtle way, it’s more of an undercurrent — and to protest a government that doesn’t care about keeping people healthy,” she said in an interview.

“对我来说，这像是一种抵抗——很微妙，更像一股潜流——是在抗议一个不关心民众健康的政府，”她在采访中说。

China has long sought to build soft power alongside its economic and military might, but it has struggled to cultivate cultural cachet overseas through state-driven propaganda, partly because of concerns about its authoritarian politics.

长期以来，中国一直在经济和军事力量之外着力打造软实力，但通过国家主导的宣传在海外塑造文化影响力方面进展有限，部分原因在于外界对其威权政治的顾虑。

That has begun to change as Chinese products shaped more by market forces than by the state — including Labubus, the grinning fuzzy toys, and the video game “Black Myth: Wukong” — attract global followings. And as China has expanded visa-free travel programs, its image has been softened by foreign travel bloggers posting videos that gush over Shanghai’s skyline or the futuristic aesthetics of Chongqing, a megacity in the country’s west.

这一局面正在改变。越来越多由市场而非国家主导的中国产品走向全球，例如咧嘴笑的毛绒玩偶Labubu、电子游戏《黑神话：悟空》。与此同时，中国扩大免签旅行项目后，外国旅游博主发布的视频大赞上海天际线或西部特大城市重庆的未来主义美学，也在一定程度上改善了中国的形象。

中国社交应用小红书在纽约时报广场投放的广告，摄于去年。

Chinese officials have incorporated the trend into their efforts to attract visitors. On Friday, China’s Foreign Ministry spokesman, Lin Jian, said he was “very glad to see that more and more foreign friends show interest in experiencing today’s China.” And the Chinese ambassador to the United States, Xie Feng, referenced the meme last month when he encouraged Americans to discover for themselves a country that is both “cool and welcoming.”

中国官方也将这股风潮纳入吸引游客的努力之中。上周五，中国外交部发言人林剑表示，“很高兴看到越来越多的外国朋友有意愿、有机会感受中国的发展变化”。中国驻美大使谢锋上个月也借用了这个梗，鼓励美国人亲自去发现一个“既酷又热情好客”的中国。

In some ways, social media users, particularly on TikTok, were primed for the trend, said Qian Huang, an expert on digital youth cultures at the University of Groningen in the Netherlands. Last year, when the Trump administration briefly banned TikTok in the United States over concerns about interference by the Chinese government, some users pushed back by migrating their accounts to Rednote, a popular Chinese app.

荷兰格罗宁根大学研究数字青年文化的专家黄倩指出，从某种程度上说，社交媒体用户，尤其是TikTok上的用户，早已为这一趋势做好了准备。去年，当特朗普政府因担忧中国政府干预而一度在美国禁用TikTok时，一些用户为表达抗议，纷纷转战中国热门社交平台小红书。

TikTok was owned by a Chinese company until last month, when the owner agreed to spin out a U.S. entity. A study last year found that its algorithm often seemed favorable to positive content related to China.

TikTok原本由中国公司所有，直到上月，其所有者同意分拆出一家美国实体。去年一项研究发现，TikTok的算法往往倾向于推送与中国相关的正面内容。

That could contribute in part to the trend’s popularity, Professor Yuan said.

袁绍宇表示，这可能在一定程度上助推了这一趋势的流行。

“Even if the trend is not coming from official Chinese channels, the distribution environment can still tilt what gets amplified,” he said.

“即便这股潮流并非来自官方渠道，平台的推荐机制仍然会倾斜，影响哪些内容被放大传播，”他说。

Some Americans have their own reasons for wanting to be Chinese.

一些美国人之所以想“成为中国人”，也有各自的理由。

Take Daniel Kairoff, a singer from California who created a parody song in which he headbangs while screaming, “I’m tired of not being Chinese.” The video has more than 700,000 views on Instagram.

来自加州的歌手丹尼尔·凯罗夫创作了一首反讽歌曲，视频中他一边甩头一边高喊：“我厌倦了不是中国人。”该视频在Instagram上的播放量已超过70万。

Mr. Kairoff, who is in his 30s, said in an interview that he saw the trend partly as a “yearning for some kind of alternative” among young Americans encountering idealized portrayals of China as they witness social upheaval in the United States, including the killing of two American citizens by federal agents in Minneapolis.

30多岁的凯洛夫在接受采访时表示，他认为这股风潮在某种程度上反映出美国年轻人“对另一种可能的向往”，他们目睹了美国的社会动荡——包括联邦特工在明尼阿波利斯枪杀两名美国公民——之后，接触到被理想化呈现的中国形象。

“It kind of naturally begets the question of ‘Dang, what else is out there?’” he said.

“这自然会让人问一句：‘哇，外面的世界还有什么别的可能？’”他说。