Young Americans, fed up with U.S. social media and its fake compliments and flagrant insults, are looking for something revolutionary: honest but civil feedback. And they’re turning to a Chinese app for it.
No, not TikTok. Xiaohongshu is a mix of Instagram and Reddit, a lifestyle bible for over 300 million monthly users seeking beauty, shopping, travel and life advice. In China, anyone looking for a restaurant review, a how-to guide or a trip itinerary is likely to fire up the app. But U.S. teens and 20-somethings are downloading it to get in on a new beauty trend.
Users clutching a sign with the Chinese characters “tingquan,” meaning “listening to advice,” invite others to weigh in on how to improve their appearance. Commenters can write in tips, but they also post images of hairdos or fashions. Sometimes they even edit advice seekers’ photos to show how they will look with the improved styles.
Unlike most alternatives, especially in the West, feedback can be unsettlingly direct but tends to be more constructive than hurtful.
The hashtag #tingquan has attracted more than 500 million views, in China and beyond.
“People are so politically correct these days that they are afraid to speak what’s on their mind in fear of being socially canceled,” said Candise Lin, who makes explainer videos about the newest Chinese social-media trends for her nearly two million followers on TikTok, Instagram and YouTube.
In China, people are more straightforward, sometimes even brutally honest, but they mean well, said Lin, who emigrated from China to California two decades ago. She thinks people on U.S. social media can be excessively complimentary. That’s why young users who want real talk about their appearance and personal style are now looking elsewhere.
That candid feedback highlights “a gap in the Western social-media ecosystem,” said Hanyu Liu, a Shanghai-based market analyst at Daxue Consulting.
dominates social media in the U.S. and around the world, with
more than 3.19 billion daily active users across its apps. But access to them—and many other Western apps—
has been blocked in China. Companies there have developed their own social-media sites, which have attracted 1.2 billion users, and rarely expand beyond China’s virtual walls. TikTok is the notable exception.
Meta is known for copying the formats and features of other social networks. But copying culture is more difficult, said Liu.
Brutal honesty, please
Xiaohongshu (pronounced shau-hong-shoo) began in Shanghai in 2013 as an app for Chinese travelers seeking shopping tips. It evolved into a user-generated encyclopedia covering all aspects of life, even how to get through pregnancy or recover from divorce.
Its literal name—“Little Red Book”—is the nickname for Mao Zedong’s selected speeches, but users don’t associate the app with Maoism, Liu said. “It used to be the name of China’s ideological bible. Now it’s China’s lifestyle bible.”
The Xiaohongshu community’s bluntness doesn’t bother the new non-Chinese users, who say they don’t even get that kind of feedback from close friends.
“In the West, the polite way to respond to such questions is ‘You look great no matter what,’ ” said Miko Hayashi, 37, a Japanese-American who lives in Tokyo.
She downloaded Xiaohongshu in early February. Soon after she posted her first photos asking for glow-up advice, comments came flooding in, including one that suggested making her eyebrows and hair the same color. Some even photoshopped images of her to show how bold red lips or another hair color would look.
In Poland, Arna Guðlaugardóttir, a 25-year-old veterinary-medicine student, said she had tried Reddit for hair and styling advice before but found most comments toxic.
On Reddit, people advised her to get plastic surgery. On Xiaohongshu, community members said she should ditch her black wardrobe and wear more pink neutrals to brighten her complexion. They recommended bangs to downplay her relatively large forehead.
Guðlaugardóttir now has an appointment with her hairdresser.
Global appeal?
Z.J. Rubin, a 16-year-old high-school student from Pittsburgh, said his interest in Chinese culture has spurred him to try different Chinese social-media apps. While many have ID requirements that make it difficult for users outside China to register, all he needed for Xiaohongshu was a non-Chinese phone number.
Rubin joined the #tingquan campaign in February after seeing other users do it. He said he was touched by the kindness of the strangers who encouraged him to be more confident and told him to sleep more, as they thought he looked tired.
Users outside of China can’t take full advantage of the platform, however. There isn’t a built-in translation tool and the in-app wallet can only be linked to Chinese payment systems. Like the other users The Wall Street Journal spoke to, Rubin doesn’t read or speak Chinese, and uses translation software to post and read feedback.
Xiaohongshu didn’t respond to requests for comment.
Growing the U.S. user base seems riskier than it might have been in the past. TikTok, owned by the Chinese company ByteDance, is facing a possible ban in the U.S., following a vote in the House of Representatives. Given that bill and a move by the Biden administration to investigate foreign-made software, other apps that originate in China could also face restrictions.
Zaria MaBon, a 22-year-old public-health student in Atlanta, moderates a style advice forum on Discord, a free messaging platform. She discovered Xiaohongshu three years ago, when a friend told her that it was “like Instagram, only better.”
MaBon is Black, so when she asked for styling tips, she braced herself for “racist abuse and body shaming.” She said on other platforms, people have told her to bleach her skin. On Xiaohongshu, however, she received “blunt but helpful” feedback.
Many users complimented MaBon on her figure, telling her she didn’t need to lose weight but could enhance her look simply through makeup, styling and exercise. “I feel you should consider a heavier eyeliner and more mascara because your eyelashes are barely noticeable at the moment,” wrote one user, who shared a retouched image to illustrate the advice.
“It was the first place where I didn’t get nasty comments,” MaBon said.
—Clarence Leong contributed to this article.
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