From their apartment in Connecticut, Beth Wang and her partner watched TikTok go down in mid-January with dread – but quickly found a new source of entertainment and human connection on the Chinese app RedNote. Ms. Wang, a native Kansan who has never set foot in China, flocked to the social media platform along with an estimated 700,000 American “TikTok refugees” after the U.
S. government moved to ban TikTok over national security concerns. RedNote, or Xiaohongshu (literally, “little red book” in Chinese), is one of China’s biggest social media platforms, with an estimated 300 million users in China – many of whom welcomed the Americans with warmth and curiosity.
Interactions began much as one would expect from an abrupt meeting of strangers who mostly don’t speak the same language. Basic questions were posed; photos of cats were shared. But conversations between the Chinese hosts and their American guests have quickly deepened, challenging biases on both sides.
“You have a very organic and very authentic exchange of people’s thoughts on a particular issue” on RedNote that creates a sense of community, says Ivy Yang, founder of Wavelet Strategy, a New York-based consulting firm. “That’s the magic of Xiaohongshu.” The “TikTok refugees” and Chinese RedNote users are self-selected groups not wholly representative of their respective countries – and posting on RedNote is both curated and monitored by Chinese authorities.
But the encounters consti.
