China is trending. Understanding it isn’t. Do Wasians hold the key?

As the gravitational pull of Western culture weakens amid geopolitical turbulence, something is shifting. Spend five minutes on TikTok and you’ll be inundated by Western youth’s newfound fascination with China. Manhattan it girls are adding Traditional Chinese Medicine tonics to their wellness stacks. Male models are aura-farming Chinese uncles, with cigarette in hand. Tech bros aren’t immune either. Where Lisbon once symbolized remote freedom, Chongqing has entered the fantasy. What was once deep-seated skepticism toward China and Chinese culture is slowly morphing into enthusiasm. God forbid a white boy get a little Chinese tonight. Dangerous terrain Yet, amid all the hoopla, there’s a problem. While there is genuine and sincere appreciation at play, it’s difficult to ignore the bluntness with which “being Chinese” is often depicted online. Some of this is innocent. Memes are designed to be immediately legible, and subtlety is usually sacrificed in the name of virality. But the failure to hold nuance is dangerous. An entire civilization cannot be reduced down to tai chi and Maotai. Entry into Chinese culture has always been a risky, if tempting, terrain for Western brands. Approach without enough thinking and the consequences can be severe. Dolce & Gabbana’s infamous 2018 campaign featuring a Chinese model awkwardly eating Italian food with chopsticks needs no introduction. Two ways The difficulty cuts the other way, too. Chinese brands have yet to permeate Western markets. While attitudes are slowly evolving, many still face resistance shifting perceptions of Chinese-made goods from something crude or derivative into objects of desire. Making this jump is difficult whichever direction you’re headed. There is a group, however, not yet centered in this conversation that might hold the key: Wasians. I use the term Wasian loosely. Here, it refers to the Chinese diaspora and those who exist at the intersection of Western and Chinese culture. The international school kids in Hong Kong with vague, indeterminable accents. The second-generation children of immigrants who grew up in California. The globally mobile professional class. What they possess is an ability to parse the current surge of interest in Chinese culture without losing nuance. They exist comfortably between East and West and cannot be fooled by surface-level narratives. They are not seduced by hollow “China” pandering from global corporations, nor are they naïve about Western attempts at exoticization. Double consciousness “You didn’t meet me in a very Chinese time in my life. You met me Chinese,” says Singaporean-Chinese couturier Joash Teo. It’s a line that captures the diasporic condition. For many, Chinese identity was once something to downplay or smooth over. Now those same markers are suddenly celebrated. It’s whiplash-inducing. But it’s also what gives this group its interpretive skill. Consider designers like Teo or Feng Chen Wang. Both are culturally and ethnically Chinese, now working in Western contexts. Wang trained at the Royal College of Art in London. Teo was born in Singapore and is now based in Brisbane, Australia. Neither relies on overt symbolism or obvious cultural motifs. The influence is more subtle. It seeps into the work as a product of worldview. Design language Speaking to Jing Daily about her FW26 collection, Wang said that it was rooted in the Chinese philosophical concept of Liang Yi, or Two Forces. She described a denim look that embodied the theme: “The denim was hand-dyed and treated repeatedly, and switched between dyeing processes. Despite the opposing dyeing methods, they end up co-existing in the final fabric, like two forces in motion. The entire look feels polished, yet grips you like a non-conformist rebel.” The clothes aren’t riddled with cliché. The designer does not outwardly intend to make something expressly Chinese. It simply is. Teo expresses a similar impulse. He has described his work as a continuation of ancient Chinese metalcraft traditions. “As the metal craftsmen of ancient China worked metal into wondrous shapes and styles, I almost muse that I add another footnote in their long tradition in my own way, with our use of metal wiring to achieve graphic necklines being an integral part of our design language,” he said. Teo is also clear that his work draws as much from Western influence as it does from the East. Both designers actively court a global customer base. ‘Orientalism chic’ As interest in China accelerates, we’re entering a familiar danger zone. Surface fascination without deeper understanding. An entire civilization risks being condensed into a microtrend. Wasians don’t own Chinese culture. Nor is this an argument against creatives based in China engaging globally. This is not to suggest that creatives working within China are naive, or blind to Western projection. Many are acutely aware of how their work circulates internationally and often engage those dynamics deliberately. What differs is not awareness, but position. The Wasian sphere occupies a specific cultural middle ground shaped by lived exposure to both Western flattening and Chinese internal complexity. That double consciousness produces a sensitivity that is particularly useful for navigating this moment. Writer Patrick Kho describes this shift as “Orientalism chic,” where Chinese creatives increasingly turn inward and reclaim elements once shaped by exoticization as aspirational. It’s a sentiment that holds weight. One effect of this turn, however, is that cultural signals from within China can become more opaque and more difficult to translate externally. For those caught between cultures, perhaps instead of lamenting the division of two selves, it’s time to recognize it as their greatest power.

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China is trending. Understanding it isn’t. Do Wasians hold the key?