It took some convincing to get me to watch Y Tu Mamá También.

With the increasing popularity of threesome movies like Challengers and Materialists, I originally thought that Y Tu Mamá También would be more of that. Mediocre heteronormative smut disguised as some kind of ground-breaking sexual revelation.

To be fair, Y Tu Mamá También does open with all the desperate hormone-fueled coupling you’d expect from a coming-of-age story. But as the story unfolds, it slowly becomes clear that there is so much more.

Teenage friends Tenoch and Julio are as oblivious to the sociopolitical climate around them as they are to the homoerotic tension between them. Through their messy, jealous entanglements, we are invited into an intimate look at civil unrest and struggles with poverty in Mexico shortly before the fall of the PRI (Institutional Revolutionary Party).

In my never-ending search for knowledge through storytelling, I assembled a list of every sociopolitical reference in the Y Tu Mamá También I could find. Please note, I’m not Mexican, so there may be things I missed or misinterpreted. I’m open to corrections. And I hope you find this every bit as fascinating as I do.

Warning for spoilers ahead.

A deep dive into the 25 references I found

1. Bracelets on the Riviera. While Tenoch and his girlfriend Ana are having sex, they tell each other which people they’re not allowed to have sex with (specifically, which racial identities are off limits). Tenoch includes “those dirty Mexicans selling bracelets on the Riviera.”

The Mexican Riviera encompasses several major tourist destinations off the west coast of Mexico. Tenoch is likely referring to beaded bracelets originally developed by Indigenous artists in pre-Columbian, Mesoamerican tradition. Despite being Mexican himself, Tenoch sets himself apart from “dirty Mexicans” whom he sees as lower class than him.

2. Ana’s family. Ana, Tenoch’s girlfriend, is a white, middle class girl from an intellectual family. Her mother is a French divorcée and teacher at the Institute for Foreigners. Her father is a journalist turned politician who now works at the Municipal Government of Mexico City as Director of Logistics in the Department of Culture.

While it’s unclear if the school at which Ana’s mother works is part of the Agency for French Education Abroad (AEFE), French elites are notorious for sending their children to private school abroad. These schools are subsidized by taxes, though people in France don’t benefit from them at all.

3. Death of a migrant bricklayer. Tenoch and Julio were stuck in traffic after dropping off their girlfriends at the airport. While there were three demonstrations in the city that day, the traffic jam was caused by Mercelino Escutia, a migrant bricklayer from Michoacán who was hit by a speeding bus. He never used the pedestrian bridge, which would be safer, because it made his commute too long. His body went unclaimed in the city morgue for four days.

Michoacán is a federal entity of Mexico with a large Indigenous population, specifically Purépecha, Otomi, and Nahua. Many Michoacanos experience violence and displacement due to the economy being controlled by drug cartels, forming self-defense militias in response or fleeing to larger cities in search of opportunity.

Mexicans are notably quite prejudiced against migrants, specifically Central American migrants (as noted in this paper, blog post, and opinion piece). The racist, classist views and criminalization of migrants is eerily similar to how the US views Mexican migrants.

4. Tenoch’s family. Tenoch belongs to a very politically powerful family, as his father is a Harvard-trained economist who would become Mexico’s Undersecretary of State. While his parents were originally going to name him Hernán, they chose the Aztec name “Tenoch” after becoming seized by nationalist pride.

There is a call-out within the Mexican community against those who are obsessed with Aztec culture, sometimes to the point of trading their Hispanic name for a Náhuatl one in their quest for a more decolonized ethnic identity. Ironically, the term Aztec purportedly has no precise meaning. The Aztec Empire also expanded by conquering and subjugating various Indigenous peoples and regions, and therefore are also considered by many to be colonizers in their own right.

The name Tenoch likely comes from Tenochtitlán, the capital of the Aztec Empire and largest city in the pre-Columbian Americas. It’s fitting because Mexico City, where he lives, is one of the largest cities in the world—18.6 million people in 2001, when the film was released.

5. Bodyguards of politicians. While at the President’s wedding, Tenoch and Julio count the bodyguards of the politicians, noting that more important officials have more bodyguards. Later, we see a waiter bringing food to the parking lot, where the bodyguards eat standing up or leaning against cars.

Though I was unable to find any significant information about bodyguards from the early 2000s, I found in the past ten years the number of bodyguards to Mexican officials have increased significantly and are abusing their power. This likely points to paranoia in the political climate and a culture of machismo.

At the same time, the bodyguards being relegated to the parking lot for their meals makes it clear that they are not “important enough” to merit a seat at the actual table, despite how dangerous the job of a bodyguard is.

6. Country club. Tenoch’s father is a majority shareholder of a country club with an extravagant pool that Tenoch has access to when the club is closed for maintenance. The boys go swimming, and later masturbate together on the diving boards (several feet apart because they’re not gay).

While this study focuses on the upper class WASPs of the US, private country clubs are universally considered a gathering place for men in control. The study specificies that rather than being purely for leisure, country clubs create and maintain social networks for the powerful elite with an emphasis on exclusivity. This is where decisions are made.

7. Franco supporter. Luisa, a beautiful Spanish woman married to Tenoch’s cousin Jano, was orphaned as a child and raised by her great-aunt, a Franco supporter.

Francisco Franco was the military dictator of Spain from 1939 to 1975. He was a prominent anti-communism leader, and his regime was supported by Fascist Italy, Nazi Germany, and the US. While Luisa doesn’t outwardly seem to have conservative or fascist views, this is perhaps meant to highlight her roots as a Spaniard.

8. Puerto Escondido. Luisa wants to go to the beach while in Mexico and originally hopes to catch a bus to Puerto Escondido. Tenoch and Julio tell her not to bother, as it’s overrun by “yuppie backpackers and wanna-be surfers.”

While it was a small, relaxing beach town a couple decades ago, Puerto Escondido exploded with international tourism since the Covid pandemic in 2020 (I’ve actually been, and can confirm it’s overrun with tourists primarily from Europe). However, its existing infrastructure is unable to support the tourist-dense population, leading to several economic and environmental issues as sewage increases, wildlife disappears, and the cost of living soars.

The “yuppie backpackers” likely refers to the increase in digital nomads, who work online while traveling abroad, often to regions with a very low cost of living. The digital nomad lifestyle has been criticized as a form of neocolonialism.

9. Cerro Verde massacre. The President left his own wedding early to attend an urgent meeting with party leaders to appoint candidates in upcoming elections. He would express outrage at the Cerro Verde massacre and deny that the state governor had been involved in any way. After briefly offering his condolences, he’d fly to Seattle for a world summit on globalization.

While the Cerro Verde massacre appears to be a fictional event, this is likely a reference to the several massacres in Mexico in the 20th century, representing the state of civil unrest and police brutality. Denying the state governor had been involved in any way, of course, implies that the governor was indeed involved. The police and army act based on the orders of the governing body, and on several occasions enacted violence on the people. For example, in 1997 the state police assaulted hundreds of supporters of the Zapatistas, a militant far-left group, in the San Pedro Nixtalucum Massacre. This was a way of controlling the people and stifling dissenters.

Globalization, especially when led by the United States, is typically a euphemism for imperialism. Seattle is also notoriously expensive, as Washington state’s top employers include corporations like Amazon, Microsoft, and Starbucks.

10. Brown women laborers. In Tenoch’s family mansion and in the first restaurant they go to on the road trip, we see the kitchens where women prepare their meals. The women visibly appear more brown than Tenoch and Julio.

Most domestic workers in Mexico are women, and many don’t have adequate labor protections. As also depicted in the film Roma, Indigenous women often bear the brunt of both physical and emotional labor for the white/mestizo upper class. Their experience exists at intersection of gender, race, and class.

11. Julio’s family. Julio lives in an apartment with his sister and mother (his father hasn’t been in the picture since he was five). The space is filled with a mix of eclectic furniture and memorabilia. His mother works as a secretary for a multi-national corporation.

Julio’s home is noticeably more cramped than Tenoch’s mansion, showing their class and wealth disparity. Multi-national corporations are becoming increasingly common within global capitalism, and represent a complex web of exploitation across borders.

12. Protests and Chiapas. Julio’s sister Manuela, a political science major at the National University of Mexico, agrees to let Julio and Tenoch use the car for a few days to go to the beach. She would need it back for three weeks to deliver food, clothing, and medicine to Chiapas. The boys find her, fitted in a green camo jacket and black cap, at a political protest “en defensa de la educación pública y gratuita” (in defense of free and public education).

The protest that Manuela is attending may be part of the 1999 UNAM strike, which rallied against the significant tuition increase at the National Autonomous University of Mexico from 0.02 dollars to about 150 dollars (a 7,500% increase). The strike was made on the basis that the Mexican constitution guaranteed that all state education should be free.

Chiapas, officially known as the Free and Sovereign State of Chiapas, is the southernmost state of Mexico. Bordering Guatemala and the state of Oaxaca, most of the territory is controlled by the Zapatistas, a de-centralized, far-left group of mostly Indigenous geurilla fighters and activists.

Manuela’s militant attire resembles how Zapatistas are often depicted, implying she is a strong supporter/accomplice. She is likely delivering supplies because Chiapas’s infrastructure is severely lacking, making a great deal of the rural land unlivable (a big motivation for the Zapatista movement in the 1990s).

13. Che Guevara. A poster of Che Guevara is visible in the background while Tenoch and Julio get directions from their friend Sabo.

Che Guevara is a prominent Marxist revolutionary from Argentina. He worked briefly as a doctor in Mexico City before joining the guerilla army in Cuba, where he was known for being a brave, intelligent, and often ruthless commander. After leading social reform in Cuba (with an emphasis on land reform, literacy, and militarism), he traveled to aid other anti-imperialist movements across Africa and South America before he was ultimately assassinated by CIA-assisted forces in Bolivia.

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14. Class tension between Tenoch and Julio. There are certain things that Tenoch and Julio don’t discuss, like how Tenoch lifts the toilet seat with his shoes at Julio’s house (he does this at the motel as well) and how Julio lights a match when he goes to the bathroom at Tenoch’s house. Later, when they’re fighting over infidelity with each other’s girlfriends, Tenoch calls Julio low-class trash. While Tenoch freely gives loose change to beggars, he rarely offers to lend a hand, happy to order Julio around to get him a beer or to let Chuy do the fishing.

Considering the political position of his father and size of his family mansion, Tenoch is likely amongst the wealthiest of Mexico. By comparison, Julio represents the middle class. His family is not nearly as wealthy, but they have enough money to live in the city and avoid hard manual labor.

At the time of this movie’s release in 2001, Mexico’s middle class was significantly smaller at about 35% of the population. In 2022, that rose to over 55%.

15. Tepelmeme. While driving through Tepelmeme, Tenoch reminisces how his nanny Leodegaria Victoria, aka Leo, was born in Tepelmeme and migrated to Mexico City when she was thirteen. He called her “mama” until he was four.

Tepelmeme is a small village in the state of Oaxaca. Tenoch’s nanny Leo likely would’ve migrated from Tepelmeme to Mexico City in search of economic opportunity.

Being a nanny to a wealthy family is a notoriously taxing job, both physically and emotionally. Nannies often become maids, educators, and motherly figures, and sometimes understanding the children they care for more than their birth mothers.

16. Chicken truck crash. If they had driven past a certain stretch of the road ten years earlier, they would’ve come across an overturned truck that burst into flames, with broken cages and bleeding chickens scattered on the road. A woman would’ve been crying inconsolably next to two lifeless bodies on the road.

Truck accidents are extremely dangerous and unfortunately more common than they should be because the economy relies on them to transport material goods on land, putting pressure on the truck drivers to drive in a way that can meet unrealistic deadlines.

Data Mexico has compiled truck driver workforce data from 2012 to 2026. Of note, the southern regions of Mexico are amongst the lowest in salary but the highest in labor informality (especially Chiapas and Oaxaca). This implies that these regions, which have a high Indigenous population, are more likely to be exploited and put in dangerous situations.

17. Checkpoints. On the way to the beach, there are checkpoints presumably searching for drugs and weapons (“Shit, hide the stash.”) We see multiple soldiers in green uniform searching other cars as they drive past. Julio is notably more shaken while Tenoch is determined to act like nothing is wrong.

The green uniform implies that these soldiers are part of the Mexican Armed Forces. Something I found interesting is that the armed forces took a prominent role in Mexico’s War on Drugs starting 2006, but this movie was released in 2001. That makes me wonder if perhaps the armed forces was already informally increasing their surveillance prior to 2006.

It’s clear that if they were stopped and searched, Tenoch would receive more favorable treatment thanks to his connections while Julio would bear the brunt of whatever punishment the soldiers dish out.

18. Police arrest street peddlers. A truck with blue-uniformed police carrying machine guns pass by them to arrest what looks like a group of street vendors on the side of the road.

Mexican law enforcement is very militarized, and in that way not too different from US law enforcement. Because street vendors are often extorted by local crime bosses, required to pay a fee to be “allowed” to sell products on their territory, it’s possible the police officers were arresting them in an attempt to get closer to the crime syndicates. Or perhaps it was simply for some other criminalized behavior, like trespassing or vending without a permit.

19. Heat stroke crossing border. When their car breaks down, they make a pit stop and get some help from kind strangers (the man doesn’t accept money, and even gives Julio his hat when he compliments it). Luisa orders fresh coconut water and observes a table of offerings to the dead. She tells the 98-year-old woman, Doña Martina, that the teddy bear shares her name, “Luisa.” Doña informs her that it belonged to her granddaughter Luisa Obregón, who died of a heat stroke crossing the Arizona border with her parents in search for a better life.

Undocumented migration across the Mexico-US border has occurred since its creation 1848, and policed since the creation of the US Border Patrol in 1924. Like many modern borders, it’s little more than an arbitrary line determined by colonial powers.

For migrants crossing the border, the journey is exceptionally dangerous and often fatal. While this article was written in 2025, the dangers are undoubtedly the same—extreme environmental conditions, risk of drowning, and risk of blunt-force trauma. The Sonoran Desert, located in southwest US and northwest Mexico, is one of the hottest places on earth, and its extreme temperature fluctuations leave migrants vulnerable to hypothermia or hyperthermia. In these remote areas, they also have limited access to shelter, food, and water.

20. 4th generation fishermen family. When they finally arrive at the beach, they meet Jesús Carranza (aka Chuy) and his wife Mabel, the fourth generation of a family of fishermen that lives nearby in the village of San Bernabé. Mabel cooks them food on the sand while holding her young child to her chest. Chuy offers to give them a tour of neighboring beaches the next day for 350 pesos, including food. For reference, this converts to 35.82 USD in 2001 (this would be worth 66.71 USD in 2026).

Fishing has a long history in Mexico that pre-dates Hispanic influence, especially the region of Oaxaca, which has only about 9% arable land and therefore historically relied more on hunting and fishing. Small-scale fisheries face numerous challenges against the dominance of industrialized, large-scale fisheries, including sustainability concerns on over-fishing. Like many other locals, it’s likely that Chuy and Mabel’s family found tourism a much more reliable source of income than fishing.

21. Beach football. Julio and Tenoch play football with Chuy on the beach. Chuy narrates their play by play like a sports commentator, shouting, “Ramón passes, Zepeda charges down the sideline. The Emperor steals. What a player!” (It appears that Zepeda refers to Julio and Ramón/Emperor refers to Tenoch.) When Tenoch shoots, Chuy catches it and yells, “What a save! Campos! That’s why he’s on the national team.” When Tenoch and Julio merely chuckle, Chuy asks, “What, you don’t like Campos?”

I believe these are all real football players, and that Zepeda refers to Miguel Zepeda, Ramón to Ramón Ramírez, and Campos to Jorge Campos. Campos is known for a more eccentric and flamboyant style, which might explain Tenoch and Julio’s laughing at his name. In 1999, Campos’s father was kidnapped by six to eight armed men (who remained anonymous), likely so that they could exchange him for ransom.

Especially considering how the sport is more affordable than others (no expensive equipment, if you have an open field and a ball you can play), professional football is the path to financial stability for many young people, some with a net worth of tens of millions of dollars. Compared to other celebrities and politicians, a football player’s family member would be an easier target for kidnapping given that they probably lack security personnel.

22. Hotel construction. At the end of year, Chuy and his family would have to leave their home to make way for the construction of an exclusive hotel on the communal land of San Bernabé. They would relocate to the outskirts of Santa María Colotepec. Chuy would attempt to continue giving boat tours, but a collective of Acapulco boatmen supported by the local tourism board will block his plans. Two years later, he would become a janitor at the hotel and never fish again.

As of 2021, Mexico is leading Latin America’s hotel development. This alludes to what I somewhat jokingly, somewhat seriously call the tourism industrial complex. Mexico’s resort tourism has led to serious environmental consequences, including water scarcity, pollution, and deforestation. The hotels themselves are owned by the wealthy few, such as the five millionaire families who own most of Cancún, creating an exploitative system of labor.

The tourism board blocking Chuy from continuing his boat tours is likely an initiative meant to reduce informal labor in the local economy. While regulation can help with accountability and workforce protections, it also clearly impacts the financial autonomy of individuals and families.

23. Pig disease outbreak. After a day of beach touring, they return to the campsite and discover it’s been raided by pigs. Since this rendered their campsite unlivable, Chuy offers them a room with electricity and water for 75 pesos (7.68 USD in 2001, 14.30 in 2026). The 23 pigs escaped from a nearby ranch. In the next two months, 14 would be slaughtered, and amongst those 3 would cause an outbreak of trichinosis among the attendees of a festival in the village of El Chavarín.

Trichinosis is a parasitic infection mainly spread by undercooked meat that contains Trichinella cysts. Because disease can spread so easily when handling livestock and food, biosecurity and disease control is an international concern, not just local to Oaxaca. Part of this effort is monitoring the movement and food consumption of the livestock, which was clearly compromised when these 23 pigs escaped and started eating whatever they could find on the beach. We can assume the ranch did not properly test/treat the pigs after re-obtaining them.

24. Bar music. At the bar for their last night together, Luisa puts on a song on the jukebox. At first she wants to play La Sandunga by Camilo Sesto, but then she asks the others for a random letter and number and gets B-13. The song that ends up playing is Si No Te Hubieras Ido by Marco Antonio Solis.

La Sandunga combines Spanish and Indigeous music elements into a Mexican waltz and is the unofficial anthem of the Isthmus of Tehuantepec, a region located in Oaxaca. Si No Te Hubieras Ido does not appear to have any particular significance, but it is a song of heartbreak and longing that suits Luisa’s emotional state at the time.

25. Ruling party lost. The following summer, Ana and Cecilia break up with Tenoch and Julio. The boys also stop talking to each other, their friendship over. The ruling party loses the presidential election for the first time in 71 years.

The Institutional Revolutionary Party (PRI) held uninterrupted power over Mexico from 1929 to 2000. The party used a number of strategies including electoral fraud and corruption to maintain power, while the common people experienced numerous hardships, including a series of economic crises beginning in the 1970’s.

The winning candidate for President was Vicente Fox Quesada. Despite his campaign promises to break away from the authoritarian policies of the PRI, his administration continued the same neoliberal policies and established friendly relations with the US and Bush administration. They also covered up the unsolved murder of human rights lawyer Digna Ochoa, who they claimed died of suicide.

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Visual symbolism and metaphors

Along with these explicit political references, there are also multiple scenes that I couldn’t help but notice elevated the story through visual symbolism.

Bridal car. While Luisa talks about how she feels she doesn’t belong with her husband’s intellectual friends, they pass by a car of newlyweds covered with flowers. The car alludes to the original happiness Luisa experienced when she first met her husband, and the distance she feels from him now.

Bulls. When Tenoch wakes up from his nap in the back seat with an erection, they drive through a small herd of bulls. The bulls represent Tenoch’s (and Julio’s) lust, especially in the conquest-obsessed way that teenage boys often experience.

Funeral procession. After hearing about the death of baby Luisa, whom the teddy bear is named after, they pass by a funeral procession holding the coffin up on their shoulders. Later, they also drive past a roadside grave in the form of a cross. These all foreshadow Luisa’s fate with terminal cancer.

Horseback cops. While we don’t see Tenoch and Julio return to the city, we see cops riding on horseback in the city while the narrator informs us that their girlfriends break up with them after returning from their trip. The boys move on to university and new girlfriends, their friendship ruined. The horses represent how their experiences in the countryside have undoubtedly followed them back into the city, even if they deny it.

Lastly, there were some scenes I didn’t quite understand. Specifically, when they drove past a bike carriage and a large truck decorated with flowers and banners. Or when they drove up to a string of balloons, where a group of people asked for a donation for their “queen.” Julio received a sticker in exchange for the donation. Later, they also passed by a family washing clothes in the river. If you have any theories or insights about these scenes, please let me know.

My mind is swimming in thoughts

With a legacy of over twenty years, Y Tu Mamá También has no shortage of well-written analyses. I don’t believe that I have anything particularly new or unique to contribute. But even so, I had so many thoughts watching this that I can’t help but try to put them down on paper.

Lust for Mother Spain. The boys both became obsessed with a woman from Spain, and that’s not insignificant. Though she as an individual was quite sweet and unprejudiced, their lust for her represented something bigger—namely Mexico’s desire to uphold colonial values and perpetuate Spain’s legacy. Even as the country was erupting into social unrest around them, Julio and Tenoch cared more about a sexy beach trip than mutual aid to Chiapas or fighting for affordable education.

Was sex a pavlovian response to grief? It did not escape me that every time Luisa was confronted with immense sorrow, whether it was learning of her husband’s infidelity or processing her cancer diagnosis, she would almost instantly become horny and reckless. She didn’t even enjoy having sex with the boys, calling them immature and pathetic, and chastised them for cheating on their girlfriends. But still, she would strip her clothes and jump them whenever something tragic happened.

This could only mean that she is likely trying to overcome some deep inner wounds, and is using her sexuality and desirability as a means to escape emotional pain. Perhaps as a response to past sexual abuse? Or perhaps a more general response to being objectified as a woman? Whatever the reason, I found it very tragic but beautiful to watch. Luisa is a flawed but very brave and sympathetic character.

Men construct intimate rituals just to touch each other. The only thing louder than the copious homophobia was the sheer amount of homoerotic tension between Julio and Tenoch. The pool scene, the shower scene, the intense jealousy and competitiveness—their friendship was very sexual even from the start. Luisa said it better than anyone, men go through all this ridiculous conflict but in the end, they just want to fuck each other.

I’ll be honest, I was quite shocked when they actually kissed each other. I didn’t think they’d actually cross that line. And I felt quite sad that after a (presumably long and intense) threesome, they were both too disgusted and filled with internalized homophobia to reconcile with each other. But given their upbringing and general atmosphere of toxic masculinity, that is the more realistic ending.

They are oblivious to the story and they are the story. At first, I assumed that this little sex-on-the-beach adventure was a distraction from the real story. I believed the story was happening all around them—the social upheaval and poverty and inequity that I described in the references—but they were too absorbed in their fantasy world to notice. However, once I realized they represented the upper and middle class of Mexico, I discovered they were the story. Luisa was dying, Spain’s power was fading, and yet they still betrayed each other in order to win her favor. In that sense, both are true. They are willfully ignorant of the political unrest around them, and they themselves are the unrest.

How do I even begin to explain Journey to the West?

Officially, I’d say: the tale of Sun Wukong (Monkey King) escorting the monk Tang Sanzang (Tripitaka) to India to retrieve Buddhist scriptures is one of the four great Chinese classics. With the help of Zhu Bajie (Pigsy) and Sha Wujing (Sandy), they bravely face demonic trials and tribulations, pushing them to work together and become better people.

But if you let me go uncensored, I’d say: this monk is the stupidest most naive virgin you can imagine. He’s constantly getting kidnapped because all the demons want to eat his flesh to become immortal. Except the lady demons, who want to have sex with him first (and then eat his flesh to become immortal).

He would be lost if not for the iconic Sun Wukong, who constantly has to remind him, “Master, this is obviously a demon. Are you dumb?” Zhu Bajie is a pervert who only wants to sleep, eat, and flirt (relatable) but he can come through in a fight if you need him to, and there’s a third guy. He’s there too.

I discovered Journey to the West 西游记 (xi you ji) as a kid through the 1986 CCTV DVD set. Sprawled on the living room floor, I remember watching the theatrical acting and terrible special effects with rapt fascination. Chinese grocery stores and family-friend living rooms also played animated versions, all of which I became equally hypnotized.

Though I could barely understand the old-timey, fantastical Chinese, there was something about Sun Wukong that drew me in on a deeply emotional level. Growing up in a culture that venerates restraint, social harmony, and filial piety almost to a fault, I yearned to rebel like Sun Wukong. I loved how powerful yet playful he was. Paired with his lack of empathy and maturity, this combination created great potential for adventure and character growth, making Sun Wukong perhaps the most beloved Chinese protagonist of all time.

Since its original publication during the Ming Dynasty, Journey to the West has appeared in hundreds of opera, book, film, TV, comic, and video game adaptations. The group adventure plot-line also created the groundwork for the five-man band trope and inspired shonen anime classics such as Dragon Ball, One Piece, Hunter x Hunter, and Naruto.

After recently rediscovering my love for the Chinese classic through some more modern adaptations (and being somewhat horrified by how they twisted Sun Wukong’s character) I decided to run a deeper comparison of the many adaptations made throughout history.

Note: Journey to the West is sometimes abbreviated here as XYJ after its Chinese name.

My full watch list

Presenting my watch list of 32 XYJ film and TV adaptations, with free links included. Those I’d recommend to aspiring monkey-lovers and die-hard XYJ fans are bolded with a monkey 🐵

Languages: eng = English, cmn = Mandarin, yue = Cantonese, ja = Japanese

1. The Cave of the Silken Web (1927) | silent | eng sub

2. Princess Iron Fan (1941) | cmn | eng sub 🐵

3. The Mountain of Flames (1958) | cmn 🐵

4. Pigsy Eats Watermelon (1958) | cmn 🐵

5. Alakazam the Great (1960) | eng

6. Havoc in Heaven (1961) | cmn | eng sub 🐵

7. Cave of the Silken Web (1967) | cmn 🐵

8. Battles with the Red Boy (1972) | cmn | eng sub

9. Monkey (1978) | eng

10. The Monkey King and Fruit of Immortality (1981) | cmn

11. New Pilgrims to the West (1982) | cmn | cmn & eng sub

12. The Mountain of Fire (1983) | cmn 🐵

13. The Monkey King Conquers the Demon (1985) | cmn | eng sub 🐵

14. Journey to the West (1986) | cmn | cmn & eng sub 🐵

15. A Chinese Odyssey Part I and Part II (1995) | yue | eng sub 🐵

16. Journey to the West (1996) | yue | eng sub 🐵

17. Journey to the West: Adventures of the Monkey King (1999) | cmn | eng sub

18. My Son Goku (2003) | ja | eng sub 🐵

19. The Forbidden Kingdom (2008) | cmn & eng | eng sub

20. Journey to the West: Conquering the Demons (2013) | cmn | eng sub 🐵

21. The Monkey King (2014) | cmn | eng sub

22. Monkey King: Hero is Back (2015) | cmn | cmn & eng sub

23. The Monkey King 2 (2016) | cmn | eng sub

24. A Chinese Oddyssey Part III (2016) | cmn | cmn & eng sub

25. Journey to the West: The Demons Strike back (2017)

26. Immortal Demon Slayer (2017) | cmn | eng sub

27. Buddies in India (2017) | cmn | eng sub

28. The Monkey King 3 (2018) | cmn | eng sub

29. Lego Monkie Kid: A Hero Is Born (2020) | eng

30. The Monkey King: Reborn (2021) | cmn | eng sub

31. The Monkey King (2023)

32. Nobody (2025) | cmn | cmn & eng sub 🐵

Of the serialized media, I watched 20 episodes of Monkey (1978), 40 of XYJ (1986), 20 of XYJ (1996), and 40 of XYJ (1999). Sincere thank you to Miss Jade for leading the fansub project of the 1996 TVB version, translating from Cantonese to English.

Some historical fun facts

The Wan brothers (Gu Chan, Lai Ming, and Chao Chen) were pioneers of the Chinese animation industry and made multiple early adaptations, including Princess Iron Fan (1941), China’s first animated feature-length film. They originally started planning Havoc in Heaven (1961) shortly thereafter, but were delayed by Japanese invasion and the Chinese Civil War.

Japanese manga artist Osamu Tezuka, widely considered the Father of Manga, was inspired by Princess Iron Fan (1941). His manga Saiyuki was adapted into the film Alakazam the Great. Nintendo designer Shigeru Miyamoto was then inspired by the Bull Demon King’s design to create the character Bowser in Mario.

The Japanese TV series Monkey (1978) was dubbed into English and Spanish and became a cult classic amongst international audiences, including the UK, Australia, and Latin America. To my knowledge, no mainland Chinese, Hong Kong, or Taiwanese adaptations achieved this level of international popularity.

While most versions stray from the source material, Journey to the West (1986) is widely recognized as the most faithful adaptation and an absolute TV classic. Sun Wukong actor Liu Xiao Ling Tong comes from a long line of Beijing opera performers. His great grandfather, grandfather, and father all played the role of Sun Wukong on stage. His father’s performance was even praised by Mao Zedong and Zhou Enlai, earning the title of Monkey King of the South.

Hong Kong comedian, actor, and filmmaker Stephen Chow also made multiple films on the list, including the cult classic A Chinese Odyssey Part I and II (1995). Though it initially underperformed in box offices and bankrupted production, it would later become an emblem of early Chinese internet culture.

Journey to the West by the numbers

I watched 32 out of the 600+ total XYJ film and TV adaptations (less than 4%). This list was curated with the help of Accented Cinema on youtube and this Letterboxd list. Details on all adaptations were kindly provided by the amazing online database Journey to the West Media.

Journey to the West by region produced

Of the adaptations I watched, the top regions were China (44%) and China/Hong Kong (12%) and Japan (12%).

The full list had the same top three but in a different order: China (64%), Japan (11%), and Hong Kong (8%). I also missed some regions entirely, namely South Korea, France, and Singapore.

Journey to the West by decade produced

Of the adaptations I watched, the most popular decade was the 2010s (28%). Tied for second were 1980s, 1990s, and 2020s (13%). Third was the 1960s (9%).

In the full list, number one was also 2010s (36%), then 2020s (23%), and 2000s (9%). While it’s clear that adaptations have only increased after the year 2000, you can see I prioritized those made in the 1900s.

There’s a noticeable gap in the 1930s, likely due to the Japanese invasion and Chinese Civil War. I found it interesting that Japan continued to produce adaptations of this Chinese classic even shortly after the war.

Journey to the West by media type

Most of the adaptations I watched were live action (56%) and movies (88%). The full list comparatively included more live action (65%) and fewer movies (67%).

While the TV series tended to tell the entire story, the movies either focused on a classic episode of the journey (some popular reoccurring ones being Princess Iron Fan, Lady White Bone, Cave of Silken Web, Havoc in Heaven, and Fruit of Immortality) or a completely new spin-off.

Intersection of media type, decade, and region

We see an interesting trend of both live action and animation up until the 2010s, which saw an explosion of live action. This is likely due to the proliferation of special effects, which made depicting the fantastical super powers and battles more feasible in live action. The 2020s saw a return to animation, perhaps because the live action market was over-saturated, or perhaps they saw the increased freedom, flexibility, and charm in animation.

The dominance of live action is owed in part to the burst of economic growth in China (which became the world’s second largest economy in 2012 and surpassed the US film market in 2020). China also began collaborating heavily with Hong Kong, whose entertainment industry thrived in the 80s and early 90s thanks to a lack of censorship and international influence.

Common themes across adaptations

Demon women can only be sexy, never ugly

While demon men often sported gruesome snouts or horns and were covered in scales or fur, demon women almost always remained beautiful by human standards. If they did have an uglier demonic form, it was only temporary.

Notable sexy demon women include the many proliferations of Lady White Bone and Princess Iron Fan, the nine-tailed fox demon in Monkey King: Reborn, and the spider demons in A Chinese Odyssey, Cave of Silken Web, and Journey to the West: The Demons Strike Back.

What really amuses me is that even if the demon man has animalistic characteristics, his wife, sisters, and daughters appear human. For example, the Demon Bull King and his sister in A Chinese Odyssey, the Dragon King and his wife and daughters in Journey to the West (1999), and all depictions of the Demon Bull King’s wife Princess Iron Fan.

Admittedly, the trope of sexy-only monster women extends far beyond XYJ to a near universal unwillingness to portray female characters as anything other than conventionally attractive. Just look at the diversity of face shapes in men and stark lack thereof with Disney Pixar women.

Why are we so unwilling to introduce “ugly” women as interesting, relatable characters? Why are demon men afforded the full breadth of form and expression and still considered compelling and desirable while women must always look presentable? Can a demon woman be gruesome and still lovable?

Physical changes bring a new perspective

Quite a few adaptations included deliberate changes to the character’s gender, age, and demonic characteristics as a way to emphasize certain aspects of their personality.

For example, Journey to the West (1996) and My Son Goku depicted Sun Wukong as a child when he went to the monastery to cultivate his super powers. Whereas most adaptations gave him a more adult form from start of his magical birth from stone, this child-like form emphasized his youth and naivety.

In multiple adaptations, the disciples displayed various levels of demonic features. For example, in Journey to the West: The Demons Strike Back and Monkey, Zhu Bajie sported a normal human face, but he would revert to pig snout and sometimes even a full pig form if he was feeling particularly greedy or lustful. Similarly, Sun Wukong would also revert from a more human form to a demonic monkey form in Demons Strike Back if he couldn’t control his anger or violent impulses. Here, the demonic forms represented the flaws and vices which they were challenged to overcome.

Perhaps the most fascinating changes emerged with gender. In Hong Kong’s Journey to the West (1996) the rambunctious Nezha and Red Boy were played by women (perhaps because you can more easily explore complex themes and plot lines with adult actors). In Japan’s Monkey, multiple characters changed their gender appearance.

While at first glance it might appear that Monkey was engaging in deep gender fluidity, I would argue Monkey represents Japanese society’s very limited view of gender. For example, Buddha manifested as female to reprimand Sun Wukong in a gentle, motherly way, while Guanyin manifested as male to embark on a dangerous mission. Tang Sanzang is famous for chastising his disciples on morality (to the point of being annoying) while simultaneously being the most helpless of the group. Interesting that such a “nagging” character would be played by a young woman. They even turned Lady White Bone, a famous female villain in the original tale, into three demon brothers instead.

In a story that traditionally includes powerful female protagonists and antagonists alike, what does it say about Japanese media when they overwhelmingly portray gentle, vulnerable characters as feminine, and powerful, conniving characters as masculine?

Newer adaptations are obsessed with becoming a hero

While the original tale depicted smaller, more episodic conflict, newer adaptations focused on world-ending calamities and the obsessive drive to become a hero.

For example, the protagonists saved the world from the evil Demon Bull King in LEGO Monkie Kid and from the awakened demons in Monkey King: Reborn. They fought against the corrupted officials in the heavenly court in Forbidden Kingdom and Immortal Demon Slayer. Sun Wukong desired to become a hero to ascend to the heavens in Monkey King (2023), and the gang of impersonators in Nobody desired nothing more than to become heroes, as that’s how they perceived the original gang.

Ironically, the original gang had no desire to become heroes, at least in the beginning. The entire journey was little more than glorified community service for the crimes they committed in the heavens. The conflicts they encountered were not super-sized, world-ending villains, but rather a local demon who wanted an immortal-shortcut snack. Or, the gang was simply cleaning up their own mess (like the ginseng fruit or mountain of flames).

Perhaps because the story of XYJ is such a beloved classic, our perception of the characters as heroes has become part of the collective cultural zeitgeist. Or perhaps because the original tale was written before apocalyptic catastrophes like world wars, the atomic bomb, and the threat of climate change, we need greater heroes because our fears have become greater in modern times.

Adaptations focused on heroism also shared other common themes:

Character subversion and Sun Wukong as a pop culture icon. For example, the pig in LEGO Monkie Kid was a no-nonsense restaurant-owner instead of a lazy glutton. Tang Sanzang in Buddies in India was a spoiled, womanizing rich boy instead of a devout Buddhist. And all the characters imitating the original gang in Nobody started out the exact opposite of the character and gradually grew to become more like the originals (e.g. the gorilla became brave, the weasel became stoic).

Centering romantic love. For example, Journey to the West: Conquering the Demons, A Chinese Odyssey, and Monkey King 3 all focused on the internal struggle Tang Sanzang and Sun Wukong experienced between duty and love for a woman. The love interest was more often than not an original character, though sometimes there was romantic tension within the group, such as Tang Sanzang dating the female version of Sha Wujing in Buddies in India, or Sun Wukong falling in love with a woman who looked remarkably like his master in Monkey.

In the original tale, any romantic interest in women was portrayed as temptation that lured the protagonists away from their venerable lives as Buddhist monks. While the queen of the Kingdom of Women canonically fell in love with Tang Sanzang, he never outwardly returned her feelings. However, in Monkey King 3 the two had an epic love story that focused on their instantaneous chemistry and undeniable compatibility.

As noted in Betraying Big Brother, China is in the midst of a regression in women’s rights and a push for women to marry, bear children, and assume an obedient role in the household (very much like the rise of conservatism and tradwives in the west). Given the powerful role of media in shaping public opinion, it makes sense that modern adaptations would feature hetero romance so prominently.

Original characters added for relatability

Quite a few of the newer adaptations depicted original characters as a way to appeal to modern audiences and introduce interesting new elements to the story.

Male original characters tended to be the new generation of heroes. For example, the white boy who needed to return the weapon staff to Sun Wukong in order to fulfill the prophecy in Forbidden Kingdom. Or Monkie Kid, who saved the world from the Demon Bull King in LEGO Monkie Kid. In Nobody, a whole gang of new characters started out as impersonators, eventually grew into brave, compassionate heroes in their own right.

Female original characters tended to be love interests. For example, the women that Sun Wukong fell in love with in A Chinese Odyssey and Immortal Demon Slayer, the forever faithful lady monkey in Alakazam the Great, and the rival demon hunter that Tang Sanzang tried to resist in Journey to the West: Conquering the Demons. In Monkey, Zhu Bajie ended up falling for the vampire queen while Sun Wukong fell for a human woman the vampires are terrorizing.

When they weren’t love interests, female OCs were sidekicks and emotional support, like the girl who insisted on tagging along with Sun Wukong in Monkey King (2023) or Monkie Kid’s chronically online friend in LEGO Monkie Kid. My Son Goku also featured a lady monkey who became a caring mother figure for Sun Wukong.

Because Sun Wukong was magically borne of stone, he never had any parents, much less a mother. It’s interesting that both Japanese animated movies thought it necessary to add a lady monkey to nurture and guide him. Are those your mommy issues showing, Japan?

Japan brought western motifs

Before the year 2000, adaptations made in China, Taiwan, and Hong Kong remained solidly within the East Asian canon (with a few exceptions in the costumes and dance of Taiwanese and Hong Kong adaptations). Japanese adaptations, on the other hand, freely introduced distinctly western motifs.

For example, the Dracula-style vampires in Monkey who wore all black and ventured out at night to drink blood. Though Chinese folklore includes flesh-eating undead creatures, as far as I know, western vampires were never part of the original tale.

Both animated movies used western aesthetics for Sun Wukong’s royal attire in the form of European crowns and capes. In My Son Goku, immortals rode around on magic motor bikes instead of flying on clouds. In Alakazam the Great, the heavens enforced surveillance on Sun Wukong and the monkeys that evoked modern warfare. There was also a strange montage where Zhu Bajie dressed in increasingly racist costumes to impress his new bride.

Given Japan became westernized and modernized far earlier than its East Asian counterparts, and given China’s closing off to foreign business during the socialist revolution, it makes sense that Japan would be the one to blend western motifs with this classic Chinese tale. Some of them undoubtedly worked better than others.

Central and South Asian orientalism

The tale of XYJ was based on the true story of a monk who journeyed on foot from China to the Indian subcontinent during the Tang Dynasty. Thus, many parts of the later story take place in Central and South Asia.

Unfortunately, some adaptations depicted Central and South Asian aesthetics in a way that felt inaccurate and appropriative. For example, in Journey to the West: The Demons Strike Back, the false king’s palace included a chaotic mix of both Muslim and Hindu motifs. While Buddies in India featured Bollywood songs and choreography composed by Indian artists, it also included crowds of Chinese extras dressed in Indian garb and scenes of street magicians and Holi color festivities that seemed thrown in for no reason other than establishing the movie was very Indian. Definitely took place in India.

In Monkey King 3, the women in the Kingdom of Women had an interesting mix of attire. The queen and her evil advisor wore European-style gowns when holding court, but she and the royal guards wore colorful robes inspired by the traditional clothing of ethnic minorities when out and about. Specifically, their costumes resembled the colors and patterns of Tibetan, Yao, and Miao clothing (on this exact inspiration I may be wrong, though I can confidently say their clothing did not look Han Chinese).

In A Chinese Odyssey, the demon women wore their hair in small, tight braids reminiscent of traditional Tibetan hairstyles, but only when they were being evil. Their hair was styled in more traditional Chinese ways when they were portrayed as younger and more innocent.

It’s unfortunate that China is forcibly assimilating all ethnic minorities into Han language and culture, but at the same time they’re happy to appropriate the cultures they’re erasing for blockbuster films.

Of course, this begs the question: what is the most respectful way to represent cultures in a fictional Chinese story that takes place in Central and South Asia?

The many dynasties that preceded modern-day China are renown for being reclusive and resistant to outside influence. It’s very likely that from its initial publication during the Ming Dynasty, XYJ always included some level of performative stereotypes because it was written by a Chinese author for Chinese audiences who are interested and a little bit scared of the outside world. But just because it’s been happening for hundreds of years doesn’t make it right or acceptable.

How can we go about creating genuine cross-cultural storytelling throughout the Asian continent?

Sun Wukong as a queer/trans allegory

I have long thought of Sun Wukong as a queer icon, even before I fully knew what that meant.

To my surprise, the idea that Sun Wukong is a transmasculine character is a more widespread concept than I thought. Of course, he was never explicitly described as trans in the original story. So why do so many people, including myself, see him as a queer icon?

Sun Wukong’s origin story emphasizes transformation and rebellion. Fear of death awoke his self-awareness, leading him to cultivate his powers and transform into a fearsome opponent (dysphoria, coming out, affirming care). Stealing his staff weapon from the dragon king (an undeniably phallic symbol) and eating the forbidden peaches (hello illegal hormone juice) granted him further powers that threatened the authority of heaven. Even his playful, mischievous nature feels inherently transmasc to me. People raised as girls are often not permitted to be as loud and messy as their boy counterparts and so often discover that part of themselves with joy.

Additionally, being able to transform into 72 different forms feels incredibly genderfluid. In the original story, Sun Wukong frequently transformed into demons and humans of all genders, including lovely human women to trick others (like Zhu Bajie). He also transformed into various bugs, animals, and even a house. He was not alone, as Guanyin, Zhu Bajie, Lady White Bone, the Demon Bull King, and other characters also took different forms to trick their adversaries. All this connects to the genderfluid notion that gender contains multitudes and your physical form is changeable.

Of course, like with most stories, this is open to interpretation. Similar to how Frankenstein is simultaneously a metaphor about being a woman, being trans, and being disabled depending on who you ask, Sun Wukong is first and foremost a symbol for rebellious spirit. How that rebellion manifests, of course, is up to the viewer.

My grand unofficial Journey to the West award ceremony

Best animated visuals - Havoc in Heaven (1961)

Nothing can compete with the visual masterpiece that is Havoc in Heaven. The colors, the textures, the character design - not only did it capture the essence of the story but it elevated Chinese animation as a whole. While the pacing suffers through some slow moments, I always return to this as my one true XYJ film.

Runners up include the beautiful paper-cut animation Pigsy Eats Watermelon (1958), the puppet stop motion animation The Mountain of Flames (1958), and the modern remix Nobody (2025). Go ahead, name me president of the Shanghai Film Animation Studio fan club.

Best live action visuals - A Chinese Odyssey (1995)

In a time when so much new stuff is cursed with Netflix lighting, it feels like a breath of fresh air to see the beautiful framing and clever use of lighting gels in A Chinese Odyssey.

Runners up include The Mountain of Fire (1983) for the traditional opera costumes and choreography and The Monkey King 2 (2016) for starring Gong Li (that’s it, that’s the only reason).

Best soundtrack - Journey to the West (1986)

My beloved childhood favorite, the show that got me obsessed with Sun Wukong in the first place, Journey to the West (1986) has perhaps the most iconic soundtrack in the history of XYJ adaptations.

Runners up include Monkey (1978) for its catchy opening song Monkey Magic and A Chinese Odyssey (1995) for Love of a Lifetime.

Best comedy - Journey to the West: Conquering the Demons (2013)

While I was utterly disgusted with the character design of Sun Wukong’s (why did he look so ugly?) I found the comedic writing in the first half very enjoyable. They somehow managed to combine horror, romance, tragedy, and comedy all into one cohesive story. Perhaps my favorite scene is the dancing mischief caused by the obedience charm. (FYI this clip is dubbed in Hindi, probably because this movie became popular in India.)

And the nursery rhyme singing scene. Peak Stephen Chow humor.

Best fight choreography - The Forbidden Kingdom (2008)

With stunts led by Yuen Woo-ping (fight choreographer for Crouching Tiger, Hidden Dragon), of course this one goes to The Forbidden Kingdom.

To be frank, the fight scenes were the only good part of the movie. Otherwise, the writing felt mechanical, the group had no chemistry together, and the story as a whole was little more than a white man’s weeb fantasy. But the privilege of watching this amazing fight scene between Jackie Chan and Jet Li alone made up for it (especially with Jackie Chan reprising his renown drunken master form).

Runners up include The Monkey King (2014), which stars the iconic Donnie Yen (from Ip Man) as Sun Wukong, and The Mountain of Flames (1983) for its traditional Chinese opera fight choregraphy.

Most disappointing - Immortal Demon Slayer (2017)

I am genuinely amazed at how bad Immortal Demon Slayer is. At any given point, I was unsure why things were happening, and after looking up reviews it turns out this sentiment is widely shared. Their attempt to subvert characters fell flat. The comedy was poorly timed. The character motivations were unclear. The special effects were not good enough to enjoy looking at, but not bad enough to be ironically charming. Overall, do not waste your time with this one.

Runners up include Journey to the West: The Demons Strike Back for killing any semblance of love and camaraderie in the group, Chinese Odyssey Part III for being a cheap rehash of Part II, and Alakazam the Great for adding several unnecessary sidetracks and overall being an incoherent mess to anyone unfamiliar with XYJ. When I heard Alakazam was named one of The Fifty Worst Films of All Time, I thought no way it could be that bad, they’re just being racist. But it really was that bad.

Wow, I didn’t think I’d be into this but I am - Journey to the West (1996)

I wasn’t sure I’d ever love a TV adaptation as much as the classic 1986 CCTV version, but the 1996 TVB version truly sets a high bar. It successfully combined the original story with clever modern twists. Rich backstories added context and nuance to characters like Zhu Bajie and Tang Sanzang, and the Demon Bull King, Princess Iron Fan, and Red Boy were far more integrated from the very beginning. In this way, characters other than Sun Wukong were given more screen time and agency, something I have to admit the original story lacks.

Sun Wukong is a pivotal role that has led to the downfall of many an adaptation. While Dicky Cheung’s performance is completely different from Liu Xiao Ling Tong’s in the 1986 CCTV version, he successfully captures Sun Wukong’s bratty and playful spirit in a way that’s uniquely his own. Truly impressive.

Runner up goes to My Son Goku, which succeeded where Alakazam the Great failed in introducing new elements in a way that actually creates a cohesive story with charming, engaging visuals.

Thank you for joining me on this journey

I have to be honest, most of these adaptations were pretty miserable to watch. Some of the worst movies I’ve ever seen. I wanted to quit several times. Sometimes I asked myself, “This is ridiculous, why do I feel the need to do this?”

There is something about returning to my childhood favorite, a classic Chinese tale, that feels very healing. Like many people borne in diaspora, I had no idea who or what I was growing up. Only in the last 5 years or so have I felt confidence and joy in being “Chinese.” What a pleasant surprise, to discover that during my childhood when my identity was at its most confused state, I was enchanted by a quintessential Chinese favorite all along. Sun Wukong, your spirit lives within me, as it does in anyone with a rebellious soul.

Next up, I have some exciting watch challenges planned that include animator Satoshi Kon, fight choreographer Yuen Woo-ping, and films about the Black Panther Party. A packed agenda. If you have any suggestions for future watch challenges, please share!

Welcome to a special edition collaboration with Dress Rehearsals and Who is Ying Ying. As diehard fans of AMC’s Interview with the Vampire, we’ve combined Ying’s media literacy and eye for narrative with Prince/ss’s aesthetic sensibility into costume design insights for a greater purpose: to explore how the costumes on the show elevate the storytelling and character development. Warning for spoilers ahead for seasons 1 and 2.

Prince/ss = Dress Rehearsals

Ying = Who is Ying Ying

Okay, just start the tape. Don’t be afraid, just start the tape.

Frame story

Prince/ss: One of the most interesting things about Interview with a Vampire for me is that it’s a frame story. (A frame story is when the action, the meat of the story, is not told to us directly but rather, through a narrator.) In IWTV, the frame story is presented through the interviews with Daniel Molloy.

Most of the story takes place within a storytelling device. We are seeing the events and characters in distortion, like looking at something through its reflection.

We don’t even know what Lestat and Claudia actually look like for basically the entire show, as we only see their image as described by other people. And so when we see what the characters wear, it’s through the perspective of the interviewer and interviewee.

This framing is so critical I feel to any analysis of the show. The only events that we are watching directly are in the present day, everything is narrated to us colored by the bias of the narrator(s) and as we come to realize, Louis’ memory isn’t entirely reliable...

Claudia: clothing and autonomy

Ying: Claudia is intelligent, driven, curious, and determined. Whereas Louis was manipulated into becoming a vampire, Claudia had no choice. Her actions are motivated by wanting a sense of self, a sense of agency, identity and community.

In season 1 we see Claudia going on her murder spree and collecting souvenirs. She’s writing in her diary, she’s collecting mementos, all things that every teenage girl does. Why do any of us collect things? To remind ourselves of who we are. We find out before Claudia kills each of these people, she is trying to make them into companions and recording their last words in her diary. It’s an attempt to understand herself through other people. But she also can’t age, so she’s grasping at different human experiences that she cannot have.

Claudia wears a lot of red. Red is a very passionate, very bold color. It suits Claudia, since she’s a very assertive character. She’s decisive. She’s bold. And she’s brave. She took care of Louis after Lestat dropped him. She tried to convince Louis to run away together. Despite being the youngest and turned as a teenager, out of all of these toxic vampires she’s arguably the most mature (which is crazy considering she’s collecting kill souvenirs, yeah the bar is low).

Prince/ss: Claudia has less control over her clothing because she’s a woman and in a child’s body.

The most significant relationship she has in the show outside of Louis, Lestat, and the coven is with Madeleine, who as we know, is a dressmaker. Their relationship starts with Claudia buying a dress from her, an important exercise of agency and self-assertion for Claudia. She’s in a child body but she can now dress like an adult, which is not an option that is normally available to her.

Not long after this, Armand punishes Claudia by forcing her to wear the little girl’s dress all the time, even when she’s not performing.

She and Madeleine become closer to each other while she’s being fitted. And there’s that vision that Louis sees when he turns Madeline into a vampire -- he sees Claudia from Madeleine’s point of view, being fitted for a dress in a sunlight that she couldn’t possibly survive.

So clothes are a very important part of Claudia’s story.

White reveals the vampire’s true nature

Ying: I have a theory about the color white. When vampires wear white, they often just fed, so they have blood all over them, and you can see the red more clearly against the white. Like in season 1, Louis, Lestat, and Claudia wear white costumes when they’re dancing at the Mardi Gras party, and when they murder everyone afterward.

Prince/ss: Yes, and Louis was also wearing a beautiful white suit when he met with the politician making underhanded racist remarks. These were things that Louis simply had to bear as a human. But as a vampire, he decided, “I can’t deal with this shit anymore,” and attacked.

In season 2, when the theater cast members close in on the victim, they wear ugly potato sack-like clothes, and those are also white. This may have been a theatrical production design choice, as they want to show the audience, “Look at us, we are consuming the blood,” and play up the reality as fiction.

Ying: I would argue that white has become symbolic of them revealing themselves as vampires. Like when Louis first meets Daniel, he has a blue jacket over his white shirt. But then when they go back to Louis’s place, he takes it off. That’s when proves he’s a vampire.

Perhaps the only vampire we never see with blood on his face is Armand. But white carries the same symbolic meaning for him. The first time Armand joins the interview as himself instead of Rashid, he's wearing a crisp white shirt. This stood out because Armand usually wears very dark clothing.

But there is a scene where Armand wears all white, that first time he visits their apartment in Paris, but there’s no reveal that we’re aware of. I wasn’t sure what to make of that.

Prince/ss: I wonder if there is there a metaphorical feeding that’s happening when they’re wearing white, even if they’re not actually sucking blood? Is Armand taking something from someone in the scenes when he’s in all white?

Armand as a character

Ying: Armand attempts to present a facade of being a suave, sophisticated leader, but he’s actually deeply weird, obsessive, and insecure. He was sex trafficked as a child and then continues to play different servile roles throughout his life. He’s manipulating people because he doesn’t really know any other way to act, but also he doesn’t truly know what will make him happy. Armand trying to figure out, what is it that I want? He’s hoping that someone else will tell him, because he’s so used to being controlled by people. Like damn, after all this time you still haven’t fully matured and carrying around 500 years of baggage with you?

I also think Armand is very woman-coded. He’s always cleaning up after men. “Ah, Louis, you made a mess again, and I’m going to clean it up, and I was waiting for you at home, blah, blah, blah.” Even the way that he exercises his authority over the coven—it seems he feels like he’s not respected, he’s not appreciated. Very similar to a lot of manipulative women. When they finally snap, they go full crazy. “You have not been listening to me for so long. You’re going to listen to me now, finally.”

Prince/ss: Armand’s costuming choices reflect the fact that he doesn’t really have a core sense of self. He just wears what is appropriate for the settings that he’s in. When he’s a cult leader, he looks like a cult leader. When he’s at the Paris Cafe, he’s dressed like he’s at a Paris Cafe. In general, his clothing choices are very classic cuts, neutral colors. He’s just dressing the part as a theater director. He’s just a foil aesthetically for all of the other characters in the troupe. They have more interesting outfits, and he disappears into the background often because he’s dressed to do so.

You can’t read anything about him through what he wears. There’s nothing about him that screams, “I’m fucking crazy.” When you look at Lestat in his clown costume, you think, “Dang, that guy has a lot going on.” When you see what Armand wears, what can you read about who he is? What do you know about him? What parts of himself does he celebrate? You don’t really read anything from his clothes. Louis’s clothes have a very strong sense of personality, it’s just shifting.

What do you think he’s looking for? Lestat is looking for someone to be his companion. He wants someone to be with him forever. Louis is looking for himself. Claudia’s looking for autonomy. What do you think Armand is looking for?

Ying: I don’t think he actually knows. I think he’s looking for someone to save him and give him a sense of self.

Prince/ss: I think Armand is looking for someone who will fully accept him for who he is.

Sunglasses

Prince/ss: I love all the sunglasses in this show.

Louis wears really nice sunglasses, his sunglasses in season 1 are the best of anyone’s by far. He’s hiding his eyes from his family, who are getting increasingly fed up with him. They’re thinking, this boy never comes around, and when he does, he’s wearing these fucking sunglasses. He really looks like a pimp—he’s wearing pinstripes, he’s wearing his circular sunglasses, he’s swaggering in.

We see Louis and Armand wear sunglasses, but not so much the other characters.

Ying: Lestat has never worn a pair of sunglasses in his life. He doesn’t care. Lestat is like, “You can see my eyes, so what?” He’s not hiding that he’s a vampire, he wears it proudly.

Prince/ss: Louis is the only one wearing sunglasses functionally. Because he has one foot in each of his lives: human and vampire. He’s trying to maintain his relationship with his family and interacting with the public in a way that Armand is not. Armand wears sunglasses because he’s a character who’s concealing himself.

Ying: He’s a character who pretends that he’s cooler than he is.

Prince/ss: Well, also that. And he’s always lying.

Ying: Here’s something else I’ve noticed. Do you remember the outfit that Armand wears to the motorcycle ride to the mansion back in Paris? He wears a very similar outfit when he chases down that guy for lunch in Dubai. That long trench coat, his hunting clothes. After a successful hunt, he came prancing back in with the sunglasses he stole from that guy. I think Armand really likes a long coat and sunglasses when he’s hunting because it makes him feel powerful.

Louis as a character

Ying: Louis is a very smart, charismatic, talented guy. He is very concerned about his reputation and how other people perceive him. His sensitivity to others looking down on him is likely due to growing up gay and Black in the South. And perhaps because he’s not naturally a manipulative person himself, Louis is fairly easy to manipulate. He really wants to be honest. He wants to be himself, but he feels like can’t—with his family, with society, with men in power, with women when he was pretending to be into women.

As the eldest son, he also feels the need to perform. Years and years of performing have (at least partially) led him to be the dramatic angsty little brat that he is. He needs to talk about his feelings because for so long, no one cared about his feelings. And now he can’t stop talking about his feelings.

When Louis is human, he wears a lot of brown and it washes him out. He just looks exhausted. But then as a vampire he’s wearing bold, flattering colors, like gray, blue, white.

Prince/ss: His clothes reflect who Louis is at different moments in the show. There’s the clothes he wears as a human before he turns. There’s the clothes he wears as a high-functioning member of society in New Orleans as a vampire. There’s the clothes he wears when they’re in Europe, casual button-ups and jackets that he can throw on while being a hobbyist photographer in Paris. Over time, Louis’s clothes represent he is, how he’s feeling, and what he’s trying to do in the moment.

Ying: Think back to when Lestat came to New Orleans. Man didn’t know how to dress, looked crazy. By contrast, Louis is always able to adjust his style to the era, seemingly without having anyone tell him. Paris 1940s, he fits in. He’s wearing what other men “his age” wear in Paris at that time and blends in like a normal human. San Francisco 1970s, his hair and his clothes, everything fits. In Dubai, does he look like a stuck-up, new-age techie billionaire with his black silk outfits? Yeah, but also, that’s what people in Dubai wear. So, he also adjusted there, too. Louis is a natural at sensing what the fashion is at the time.

Outfit compatibility

Ying: I think it was intentional that Louis and Lestat were very well-dressed throughout the entire first season.

When you see Louis and Lestat, they just look good together. Their clothes are very flattering to their different skin tones, so they look good and they look good together. In my opinion, Louis and Armand’s outfits always kind of clashed, because they were always a bit too similar to each other. But Louis and Lestat had a harmony with each other.

Prince/ss: I love this outfit especially of Louis, he looks really good here. The full pinstripe vest and trousers with the solid-color white suit jacket, it’s so good.

Also, how do the outfits fit together when it’s the three of them? The three of them being Louis, Lestat, and Claudia. I was just looking at this one image where Lestat is reading out of her diary (which is so messed up) and Louis is wearing a dad cardigan in this scene. I thought that was funny because it really matches the vibe of his role in the household with Claudia.

Ying: And Lestat looks like a male wife.

Prince/ss: This is the first time I’ve seen Lestat wear stripes. Louis wears pinstripes a lot, but with Lestat he’s usually wearing solid colors. Lestat does a lot of vests over button-ups with the suit jacket off, whereas Louis is usually in a full suit.

Ying: I think that’s probably indicative of how Lestat can relax more easily, going back to Louis being very concerned about other people’s perception of him.

Prince/ss: Well, and it makes sense that Lestat can relax because he’s a white man.

Ying: I also really like this one where Lestat’s wearing a cardigan. I don’t remember what scene this is…they might be looking at Claudia. There’s a softening of their outfits after Claudia arrives. Which makes sense, they’re wearing more comfortable, cozy clothes with softer textures because they’re parents. They’re domestic now.

Prince/ss: They’re like the by-the-book gay couple in the neighborhood.

Lestat’s good-bye suit

Prince/ss: A call-out costume moment for me is the red suit Lestat wears when Louis gives up his hallucination of him. When Lestat asks, “Why this suit?” Louis says that it was his favorite suit of his, even though we rarely saw Lestat in this color. In season 1, Claudia frequently wore red while Lestat wore a lot of dark blue.

There’s the detail, “I had my tailor sew your initials into the back of my breast pocket, so it would be close to my heart—” which Louis doesn’t let him finish saying. That scene is so interesting because that’s a hallucination. So we don’t know whether it’s true or not [that Lestat actually sewed his initials there].

Ying: I think it speaks more to what Louis wants—that Lestat is still in love with him. But I also think that was very in character for Lestat, at least for what we know of him.

Prince/ss: I would totally believe it’s true that he sewed them on.

Before that moment, Louis explicitly says, “you say what I want you to say,” but he doesn’t let him finish saying it. The most critical part of the sentence, “because it’s covering my heart,” is the part that’s cut off.

Ying: It’s like he still desperately needs to know that Lestat loves him, even as he thinks, “I need to let you go.”

Prince/ss: Yes. He wants to know that Lestat loves him, but he also doesn’t at the same time.

Lestat as a character

Ying: Fundamentally, Lestat is not afraid of destroying ways of living if he doesn’t see the point in them. While Armand manipulates others to get him out of situations, if Lestat wants to do something, he just fucking does it. He’s not thinking too hard, just prances in there and goes, “you’re afraid of a piece of wood, this is from a tree.”

Prince/ss: He’s very peacocking, he likes to show off. He likes attention. He wants to be seen. And also, desperately wants to be loved.

Lestat is also a very controlling character. In season 1, Louis chooses Lestat’s clothes. So what he’s wearing is now through multiple lenses. One, it’s not clothes he chose for himself, it’s clothes that Louis chose for him that he’s allowed himself to wear, but also as described by Louis to Daniel, which is fascinating. Actually, my recent substack is related to this. Your clothes are how you represent yourself to society and to the world and allowing someone else to choose your clothes is letting them have control over your identity, in a sense. It does tie in with Lestat’s character—someone who is controlling, but desperate for connection and fears abandonment—that the person that he loves, he allows to control his image.

Ying: I think we also need to keep in mind that Lestat is in a new city. He’s in New Orleans. This is a tale as old as time. A queer leaves their old town because they cannot deal with the mess there anymore. They’ve dated everyone there and they have too many exes. So they move to another place, get a new name, a new look, a new boo. Lestat is going through what many queers go through, a complete rebirth of his identity. On top of him craving love, I think that he’s very eager to become a new person.

Prince/ss: When we see him in New Orleans for the first time, when Louis first meets him, Louis thinks that Lestat looks ridiculous, so maybe that’s why we also think he looks ridiculous. His outfit is stylistically very different from the outfits we see him wearing in Paris. He’s wearing this weird scarf and this really long brown jacket that doesn’t look very good on him. It looks very old world, like a vintage vampire. Perhaps what Lestat is wearing when Louis initially meets him is the closest to a real representation of him, because Louis doesn’t know him yet.

When we see him in Paris, he’s dressed very differently. He’s wearing this magnificent dark red cloak as a statement of, “I’m a new vampire. Paris, are you ready for me?” This is my favorite Lestat outfit. The patchwork, the big, ruffly cravat, the cummerbund, the really large, white criss-cross. Blue is Lestat’s color, he wears a lot of dark blue. It’s all kind of garish, very “look at me!” and just so attention-seeking. It’s a clown outfit.

Ying: But also, keep in mind that we’re seeing him from Armand’s perspective in these scenes.

It makes sense that from Armand’s point of view, Lestat looks very handsome and extravagant, specifically because Armand has been living his life in squalor for the past 500 years. But also, Armand is very attracted to Lestat, even though he thinks Lestat is such a vain little bitch. “Using vampirism to serve your vanity? This is heresy,” Armand scoffs, as he stares at Lestat with longing.

I’m very excited to see Lestat from his own perspective. In The Vampire Lestat, we’re going to see more of his own actual fashion sense. I fully expect him to be wearing much crazier shit since he’s dressing himself now.

Clothes are how we represent ourselves to others and on the flipside are a lens through which others perceive and understand us. In the fragile and fickle nature of memory, our perception of what people look can shift based on how we felt about them. This is the story of the clothing on Interview with the Vampire and it is a powerful one.

In The Vampire Lestat, we are going to see our favorite characters from Lestat’s perspective, the one character whose eyes we haven’t seen this world through yet. Different time periods, different perspective, our same beloved toxic boys.

Season 3, The Vampire Lestat premieres this Sunday, June 7.

Screenshots sourced from Kinorium, Move Stills, and Lost in Time Graphics.

Hello language lovers,

I wanted to share a technique for language learning that I found especially helpful as a beginner, and as someone who has limited access to native speakers and immersive environments, and that’s journal writing.

If you’re accustomed to journaling in your native language, this might seem far too complex to pull off. Writing? In a language that I can barely speak? How am I supposed to express my innermost secrets, or my deepest, darkest childhood trauma, or my quest for self-absolution when I can barely form a coherent thought in this language?

I am here to tell you that journaling can be very simple, approachable, and helpful to language learning. Here are two methods that I’ve used:

5-sentence journal entry for beginners

If you’re at the stage where you’re still learning to string together words, this is a great exercise for you. Write a journal entry that contains the following information:

• Today’s date (month, date, year, and day of week)

• The current time

• The current weather

• How you’re currently feeling

• Something you’re currently doing

Here’s an example of a Portuguese entry (full disclosure, this might contain some errors, I’m still learning):

Hoje é quarta-feira, o dia dezenove de março, dois mil e vinte e seis. Agora são oito e meia da noite. Hoje está frio, não está chovendo. Estou feliz e um pouco cansado, como sempre. Estou com fome também. Agora estou voltando na casa em (?) ônibus.

Today is Thursday, March 19, 2026. Right now it’s 8:30 PM. Today is cold, it’s not raining. I’m happy and a bit tired, like always. I’m also hungry. Right now I’m taking the bus back home.

After writing down this basic entry, I recommend reading it out loud so you can get some speaking practice as well.

As you can see, this is super simple. Nothing elaborate here, just a short and sweet journal entry about the small, functional details of my day. But it helps me practice several conversation basics. It helps me count, tell the date and time, describe myself and the world around me, and pushes me to use basic verbs and nouns that apply to real life.

When I was first starting out in Portuguese, I wrote an entry like this almost everyday for a month, and then every week for a few months. During a time I was still picking up my first 200 words, this was immensely helpful. If you have capacity to make this a daily or weekly habit, I definitely recommend it.

What if I don’t know enough of the basics?

Make a cheat sheet.

I strongly believe in cheat sheets, not only for language learning but in life in general. Git commands for engineers, conversion tables for chefs, field guides for foragers and herbalists—these are all immensely practical. From my perspective, education that values memorization and perfection is not only unrealistic, but quite ableist as well. I’m not learning a language to get a grade, I’m learning to communicate.

Therefore, if you don’t feel ready to write the basic journal entry, you can make a cheat sheet for yourself with the following vocab from your target language:

• Days of week

• Months

• Numbers 1-30

• How to tell time

• Weather

• Emotions

• Basic nouns

• Basic verbs & conjugations

This way, you can reference the cheat sheet as you write, and slowly over time you will be able to recall from memory.

What if I’m writing and there’s a word I don’t know, should I look it up?

The amount of effort you put into journaling is entirely up to you. I used to look up every word I didn’t know when I was journaling in Spanish. When I was journaling in Portuguese, I had less capacity so I was often guessing or writing it down in [English] with brackets.

My recommendation is, if you’re a complete beginner, go ahead and look it up. Save yourself the trouble.

If you have more experience, challenge yourself to try and guess it first. Even if you spell it wrong or get it completely wrong, it’s better that you are thinking in your target language.

10-minute audio journal for intermediate learners

If you’re at the stage where you you can have basic conversations, describe concrete events and perhaps abstract concepts to some level of detail, express your opinions on a given topic, and you want to practice your speaking, this is a great exercise for you.

Simply open the recording app of your choice and speak into the mic about the following:

• Today’s date and time

• What you’re doing today, what you did yesterday, and what you will do tomorrow

• What do you like or not like about these things, and why?

• What are you looking forward to or dreading, and why?

• Is there anything you found interesting, funny, confusing, or surprising, and why?

In many ways, this is simply a journal entry. There’s nothing particularly striking that sets it apart from regular writing. But the main thing I want to emphasize is the inclusion of basic actions and mundane details that will help with real conversation (e.g. journaling, “today I got up late and couldn’t take a shower,” can translate to saying, “ugh I got up too late to take a shower today,” to a real person).

Here’s an example of a Mandarin entry passage (again, this might contain errors, I’m still learning):

我最近在看每一部巩俐演的电影。这是我给自己的挑战。巩俐是一个非常有名的中国演员。她真的太漂亮了。昨天我看了《活着》。很有意思，而且非常悲哀。我真的很喜欢这部电影。这个星期我也许会看其他的张艺谋做的电影。张艺谋是一个很有名的中国导演。我也发现了巩俐和张艺谋以前谈恋爱了。可是他比巩俐大很多。这我觉得有点儿矛盾，也许不是特别平衡。

I’ve recently been watching all the movies that Gong Li acted in. This is a challenge that I made for myself. Gong Li is a very famous Chinese actor. She’s truly so beautiful. Yesterday I watched To Live. It was very interesting, and also extremely tragic. I really liked this movie. This week, I might watch another film made by Zhang Yimou. Zhang Yimou is a very famous Chinese director. I also found out Gong Li and Zhang Yimou used to date. But he’s a lot older than her. This I think is a bit of a conflict, perhaps it’s not very balanced.

What I like about audio journals is how affordable and accessible they are. If you’re not able to converse with native speakers or language buddies, or perhaps you can but not very often, you can simply start talking to yourself. And if you’re feeling shy about speaking, this is an opportunity to do so with no one around to judge you.

I make it a habit to record a Mandarin audio journal twice a week.

Does it have to be an audio journal?

No, it doesn’t have to be audio, it can be written as well. I chose audio for Mandarin because I cannot for the life of me memorize Hanzi characters with enough reliability to write by hand. Basic Chinese literacy requires memorizing at least 1,000 characters, which feels homophobic.

So for that reason, I chose to prioritize speaking over writing in Mandarin. Focus on your priorities. If writing is an area you want to grow, then write you journal entries instead.

Do you ever listen back to your recordings?

Personally, I don’t listen to my previously recorded entries very often. Partially because I cringe at the sound of my own voice in general, and partially because my main priority is vocabulary retention instead of pronunciation. But I really enjoy looking back at my list of recordings to keep track of how often I audio journal.

(I did recently listen to an audio recording from three years ago, and was genuinely surprised by how much I improved. This was a homework assignment that I submitted on Coursera. Pity the poor souls who had to listen to this, because my cadence was incredibly inconsistent.)

I would say if you’re prioritizing pronunciation and fine-tuning your accent, then definitely try to listen to your recordings.

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Journal prompts and ideas

In case you get bored of the “today I did this” journal entry, here are some more ideas to get you going.

Some of these can be leveled up or down depending on how much detail you go into. For example, describing your family and friends as a beginner could look like, “I have a mom and two siblings, they are nice and I like them,” and steadily level up to, “my younger sibling is kind but sometimes impatient and temperamental, which they get from our mom.” Have fun, go wild!

Beginner

• Introduce yourself - name, age, where you’re from, where you live, and your current occupation/mode of life.

• Describe your family and friends - who they are, their age, their personality, and what they look like.

• Describe your meals - what you typically eat for breakfast, lunch, and dinner. What you like and don’t like to eat.

• Describe your hobbies - what you like to do, what kind of activity it entails, where and with whom you do your hobbies with.

• Why are you learning this language - what are your goals and motivations, how are you learning, and what you hope to be able to do.

Intermediate

• Describe a memory - what happened, how does it make you feel, when and where were you, how does it affect you today.

• Describe your childhood - where did you live, what did you do, describe any memories that stand out, talk about how you felt about certain events.

• Describe where you live - what’s in your house, what’s in your neighborhood, where do you frequent and how do you go there, and what are other people doing.

• Describe the plot of your favorite movie - (or book, or TV show) who are the main characters, what happens in the story, and what are the major themes.

• Describe your favorite trip - (or if you don’t have one, your ideal trip) where did you go, what did you do, what did you like or dislike and why.

Advanced

• Describe your political beliefs - what are your party affiliations (if any) and core beliefs, what governing systems do you believe in, what informs your beliefs, what historical events or movements do you draw from.

• Describe your job - what do you do, what industry do you work in, did you receive an education for it, what are your main tasks and responsibilities.

• Explain a special interest you’re passionate about - why are you interested in this, explain this as if you’re talking it to a beginner. (The idea here is to introduce some technical or industry-specific terminology, e.g. wine tasting, guitar playing, furniture making, the history of trains, etc.)

• Defend a controversial opinion - what’s your opinion, why do you believe this, what do other people believe, and explain why they are wrong.

Just start journaling

Try using these prompts! Maybe these will really work for you. Maybe they won’t at all, and you come up with an entirely new journaling system that’s perfectly suited to you (you’re a genius). Or you figure out that journaling simply isn’t your jam, but this inspires you to try something else. Who knows?

Language learning is very personal, as is journaling. I hope whatever journey you take, it’s the right one for you. 🌸

This is bound to get me canceled by the gothic horror community, but I have to confess I used to find vampires unbearably cheesy. For years, they have floated at the edge of my periphery, not much more than a Halloween costume or sexy cosplay theme.

But after watching AMC’s adaptation of Interview with the Vampire, I promptly lost my mind and fell in love with vampires.

Somehow, these blood-sucking immortals who lived through the Italian Renaissance, the French Revolution, and WWII became the most relatable characters I’d ever encountered for chronically online queers with piles upon piles of unhealed trauma. Through these deeply flawed characters, I felt pain, sorrow, joy, jealousy, rage, and longing so strongly that I questioned if I too was meant to be a vampire.

And though I’ve never read a single Anne Rice book, I found myself deep into youtube interviews and reddit threads. My obsession with IWTV became historical—I researched Storyville in New Orleans and the Le Grand Guignol in Paris, both of which feature prominently in the show. I found references to The Chewing Dead, a book that Claudia read on her college road trip. I’m even reading actor Eric Bogosian’s book Operation Nemesis to learn more about the assassin plot that avenged the Armenian genocide, an atrocity that his grandparents survived.

As an homage to Anne Rice’s vampire universe, I assembled a list of 25 pop culture references, easter eggs, and points of inspiration from a combination of the AMC show, the original books, and various interviews with Anne Rice and the AMC show cast. I watched every single item on this list and identified common themes that thread them together. Please enjoy. ❤️‍🩹

My full Anne Rice vampire watch list

To make this list, I referenced @vampirechronicles_ on instagram. Free public watch links are included. Vampire media is marked with a drop of blood🩸

Gothic inspiration and favorites

• Dracula🩸(1931)

• Dracula’s Daughter🩸(1936) - The sequel to Dracula, this made Anne Rice fall in love with the vampire as a “tragic, tormented outsider.”

• Frankenstein: The True Story (1973) - This served as ambient inspiration for Armand and motivated Anne Rice to write Interview with the Vampire.

• The Tales of Hoffmann (1951) - The “angelic and transcendent” character Stella (played by Moira Shearer) was visual inspiration for Armand.

• Bram Stoker’s Dracula🩸(1992) - After seeing Dracula on Broadway, Eric Bogosian became enamored by vampires and tried to join this 1992 version (he ultimately wasn’t in the movie but was invited to tour the set). This is also Sam Reid’s (who plays Lestat) favorite vampire movie.

• Sinners🩸(2025) - This is Jacob Anderson’s (who plays Louis) favorite vampire movie. Fans love the idea of a crossover with Louis and the Smokestack twins.

References and easter eggs from the AMC show

• Don Pasquale (1843) - In S1, Lestat took Louis on a date to watch this opera.

• Nosferatu🩸(1992) - In S1, Lestat, Louis, and Claudia saw this in theaters and found it hilarious. Count Orlok also appeared in the S3 opening titles.

• The Son of the Sheik (1926) - In S1, Claudia took one of her victims to see this movie and later wrote down his last words in her diary.

• Gaslight (1944) - S2 promotional posters were based on the poster of Gaslight as a way to showcase Armand’s manipulation of Louis.

• Now, Voyager (1942) - In S2, Armand watched this film while having an “aerobic” threesome in the back row with Tuan and Quang Pham.

• The Lost Boys🩸(1987) - In S2, the coven motorcycle ride to their murder mansion dinner party was inspired by the motorcycle scene in this film.

• Vampire’s Kiss🩸(1988) - In S2, Estelle saying a vampire ran down the Latin quarter screaming, “I am a vampire! I am a vampire!” was a reference to this film.

• Waiting for Godot (1953) - In S2, the Vampire Sam’s character was based on Irish playwright Samuel Beckett. Santiago and Quang rehearsed a version of this play while scheming against Armand.

• Groovie Goolies🩸(1970-1972) - Fans believe the Dracula character from this cartoon appeared in the S3 opening titles.

• The Twilight Saga🩸(2009-2013) - Fans believe the wall poster in the S3 opening titles was an homage to Edward Cullen.

• Buffy the Vampire Slayer🩸(1997-2003) - Fans believe the character Spike appeared in the S3 opening titles.

Note: I didn’t fully complete the serialized media, but watched enough to get the main idea—6 episodes of Groovie Goolies, 2 seasons of Buffy, and 1 Twilight movie.

Select references from the books

Note: the books contain an endless amount of film references, so in the interest of time I narrowed it down (to my blatant gremlin-favoritism).

• Blade Runner (1982) - Armand watched this repeatedly with Daniel in Queen of the Damned. The character Roy Batty served as Anne Rice’s inspiration for Lestat.

• Time Bandits (1981) - Another Armand favorite, this British comedy had a music scene that often drove him to tears of laughter.

• In the book Pandora, Armand became obsessed with Shakespeare at Lestat’s recommendation to better understand humans:

  • Much Ado About Nothing (1993)

  • Othello (1995) - Ben Daniels (who plays Santiago) referenced Iago’s psychological reaction formation toward Othello in how he played Santiago’s aggressive behavior toward Armand and Louis.

  • Romeo + Juliet (1996) - In S2, Armand attempted to woo Louis by quoting Shakespeare, and Dream!Stat laughed, “Romeo! He’s barely Balthazar!”

  • Hamlet (1996) - In S2, Armand threatened Santiago with, “Too old to play Hamlet, too young to play Polonius. Know your role, thesp, or join your maker in oblivion!”

Other adaptations of Anne Rice’s vampire universe

• Interview with the Vampire🩸(1994) - The film adaptation of the first book, starring Tom Cruise as Lestat, Brad Pitt as Louis, and Kirsten Dunst as Claudia.

• Queen of the Damned🩸(2002) - The film adaptation of the third book, starring Aaliyah as Akasha. A cult classic amongst the girls and the gays.

Vampire media by the numbers

Decade produced

The featured vampire media is mostly from the early and late 20th century, with a noticeable gap in the 40s-60s. Anne Rice was inspired mostly by vampire media from the 30s, and the AMC show referenced those made mostly in the 70s-90s.

Of course, there was vampire media produced in the 40s-60s, but for whatever reason these didn’t make the cut. Perhaps the early Nosferatu and Dracula films were so iconic that vampire media in the decades that followed were merely rehashes. Perhaps AMC show-runner Rolin Jones, who was born in the 70s, was left with a deeper impression of vampire media from the 70s-90s.

Region and format

The majority of the featured vampire media was produced in the US (92%) and in live action format (92%). The only outliers are Nosferatu, made in Germany, and Groovie Goolies, an animated TV series. This makes the vampire references overwhelmingly American and live action.

Of course, this isn’t due to a lack of international and animated vampire media, nor a lack of non-western vampire folklore. Could the AMC show branch out a bit? Sure. But should they? I don’t believe in diversity for the sake of diversity, because then it turns into empty pandering. Anne Rice and the AMC show have crafted a specific point of view, centering this story in North America and Europe, which makes sense given their lived experiences.

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Common themes

The horror of immortality in the Christian canon

Though I’m relatively new to the gothic horror genre, I haven’t failed to notice how central the Christian belief in an all-powerful God is in the western canon. Only this one deity can give and take life away. To reach for immortality as a mortal is horrific because it is an attempt to defy God and wield his power.

(I specify the western canon here because globally speaking, not every culture has the same outlook on immortality. Therefore, not every culture would have the same approach to gothic horror. For example in the Chinese classic Journey to the West, immortality is a stage that any human could reach through spiritual devotion and cultivation. In his thirst for immortality, the monkey king Sun Wukong is seen as immature and impatient instead of evil.)

We see this idea of defying God especially in Frankenstein: The True Story and Bram Stoker’s Dracula. Dr. Frankenstein, unable to accept the death of his brother, becomes obsessed with the idea of bringing a corpse back to life. Count Dracula, unable to accept the death of his wife, denounces God and curses himself to an eternity as a monster.

Their inability to move on from their grief is a nearly universal feeling—how many of us have felt powerless when a loved one passes away? How many of us wish we could bring someone back from the dead? This is the appeal of gothic horror, because it invites us to consider the possibility that any of us could go on this dark path if we allow our grief to guide our actions.

(Of course, Sinners turns that Christianity trope on its head. I’ll get to that one later.)

The vampire as mystic evil

Content warning for disturbing imagery in this section related to mental illness and sexuality

Continuing the theme of defying God, the vampire trope is one where we project all our fears. Specifically, fear of the forces that threaten a good, healthy, Christian society.

Fear of crime. In Buffy, Dracula’s Daughter, and The Lost Boys, vampires represent criminal gangs that must be hunted and killed. When people disappear or get injured or killed, trust there’s a vampire behind it.

Fear of disease and foreigners. In all film adaptations of the original Dracula book, Nosferatu, Dracula, and Bram Stoker’s Dracula depict the vampire as a barbaric foreigner who brings the plague into town. Being able to turn into bats and wolves furthers the (fairly racist) interpretation of the Eastern European foreigner as more beast than man. The vampire as a metaphor for disease is especially poignant in Nosferatu, which depicts Count Orlok as a hideous creature bringing disease-ridden rats with him wherever he goes.

Root of madness. All film adaptations of Dracula as well as Dracula’s Daughter and Vampire’s Kiss depict vampires as the root cause of mental illness. In Dracula, Renfield gets locked up in an asylum for claiming he’s the vampire’s loyal servant and obsessively eating vermin in an attempt to drain their life force. In Dracula’s Daughter, Countess Zaleska consults with a psychiatrist to attempt to cure herself of her vampiric impulses. In Vampire’s Kiss, Peter is convinced that he has turned into a vampire and begins behaving erratically, destroying his apartment and devolving into hallucinations.

Madness is a popular theme for other non-vampire media on the list as well. In Hamlet, the cruel deaths of their fathers drive both Hamlet and Ophelia to madness (though Hamlet did his part in fucking with Ophelia too). In Gaslight, Gregory drives Paula mad to better control her so that he can steal her aunt’s jewels. Waiting for Godot has the most ambiguous source of madness. I would argue that every character in that play is losing their mind because they are asking the existential question: Is there a God? Can we count on a God to give us hope? And the unfortunate answer is no. But they’re still hanging around and waiting, and that’s what drives them crazy.

Sexual deviancy. Best portrayed in Bram Stoker’s Dracula and Queen of the Damned, and perhaps also in the seduction of Peter in Vampire’s Kiss, vampires represent an oh-so-sinful temptation that we must resist. This isn’t only about depicting vampires as sex symbols, but a morally depraved type of sexuality—the type that leads you to underground sex dungeons and vampire wife harems, giggling over Kama Sutra sex positions and psychosexual sleep-walking to an intimate night with the wolf-man. This is the type of depravity that Christians would call the downfall of society.

But what actually threatens a healthy society? Let’s deconstruct gothic horror from an abolitionist lens. The real root of crime is a lack of resources, not people who are innately evil. The real root of disease is viruses and bacteria, not foreigners. The real root of madness is…well that one’s quite complex, but a great deal of it is rooted in trauma. And sexual deviancy is actually pretty great if you center autonomy and consent. A leather bondage werewolf cosplay orgy practiced with consent of all parties is actually a much safer sexual environment than an abusive husband-and-wife relationship.

People who see themselves as social misfits have long aligned themselves as vampires, probably because they also feel like scapegoats to a patriarchal society that refuses to address social issues at the root and instead point fingers at “mystic evil.” It is easier to think of crime, disease, and madness as supernatural problems rather than issues that you can solve through transformative justice.

Also, if vampires evil, then why so cool and sexy? (I’m convinced this is what Eric Bogosian wrote in his diary every night after watching Dracula on Broadway).

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Forbidden romance

Related to sexual deviancy, forbidden romance features strongly in vampire lore—specifically in Buffy, Twilight, Bram Stoker’s Dracula, and Dracula’s Daughter.

Buffy and Twilight are quite similar. Both feature a teenage girl in high school with divorced parents who falls in love with a male vampire significantly older than her. For Buffy, the love represents the tension between her duty as a slayer and her desire to be a normal girl. For Bella, the love represents her need for unconditional love and acceptance, someone who can drive a wedge in her depression and make her feel special.

Buffy also has parallels to Bram Stoker’s Dracula, where the human girl ends up being the one to kill her beloved vampire. While the vampires are incredibly sweet on their human lovers in private, Angel and Dracula commit horrible deeds, including murdering people very dear to Buffy and Mina. In the end, Buffy and Mina kill their vampire lovers to rid the world of their evil, but they commit the act out of love and heartbreak rather than hatred. This is a tremendous display of courage and mental fortitude.

In Dracula’s Daughter, Zaleska lures the psychiatrist Dr. Garth to her castle in Transylvania. After accepting that they could never be together in the human world since she failed to subdue her vampiric ways, she forces him into agreeing to be her immortal companion. This desire for eternal companionship is the hallmark of IWTV romances and oftentimes the downfall of the relationship, as it is an inherently coercive and selfish foundation.

Other examples of forbidden romance in the non-vampire media include the dancer and sheik’s son in Son of the Sheik, Charlotte and the married man in Now, Voyager, the replicant hunter and the replicant in Blade Runner, and of course our famous teenage shotgun marriage in Romeo + Juliet.

Perhaps forbidden romance features so strongly in this collection because they are all part of or adjacent to gothic horror. This idea that loving someone is so corrosive, so wretched, that you end up destroying yourself or the other or both in the process. And yet you can’t stop loving them. The forbidden nature of it all just makes you want it more.

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The vampire as a pop culture icon

Some media also features the concept of vampires as pop culture icons. This isn’t about reading ancient vampire folklore, but rather featuring the vampire in the story as a trope. For example, a party of people cosplaying as vampires in Buffy, or Peter going to the store to buy vampire teeth for himself in Vampire’s Kiss. The show Groovie Goolies is solely about the pop culture image of the vampire, stripping away all the gothic horror elements and focusing entirely on the Dracula’s campiness.

Funny enough, some vampire references in the ongoing AMC adaptation were originally influenced by Anne Rice herself. For example, the dynamic between Louis and Lestat, the self-hating existentialist and the unapologetic rockstar killer, has been replicated in multiple bromantic/homoerotic vampire relationships over time. A notable example is Angel and Spike in Buffy. Spike even said in S2, “People still fall for that Anne Rice routine?” in response to Angel’s self-pity act.

And now we’ve come full circle, since Spike (the arrogant blond who emulates Lestat) was one of the vampires that appeared in the opening titles of The Vampire Lestat. Assad Zaman (who plays Armand) also said Buffy is the show his character would most likely binge-watch. Really playing up that Lestat obsession for Armand, well done Assad.

How the show references enrich the plot

There are two main types of cultural references in the AMC show.

One is a plot device added to convince audiences that these immortal characters actually lived through a certain time period (such as Lestat witnessing the original composition of Don Pasquale in the 1800s). The other is more of an easter egg, an implicit nod to another piece of media (such as the Parisian motorcycle scene inspired by The Lost Boys).

In both cases, these references serve to elevate the plot by adding further meaning to the events. Some standout references for me:

The Son of the Sheik draws parallels to Claudia’s heart-breaking first love in S1. Similar to how Claudia belongs to a family of vampires, the dancer Yasmin belongs to a family of thieves who prevent her from being with the man she loves. Yasmin’s lover is doomed to be kidnapped and tortured by the thieves, just as Claudia’s first boyfriend is doomed to be killed by her vampirism. Tragic. (That being said, this is a horribly orientalist film and I don’t recommend it.)

Now, Voyager was the perfect movie for Armand to watch during a public threesome. It depicts the ugly, depressed Charlotte Vale blossoming into her full potential and falling in love with a married man (so passionate, so taboo, so naughty). I would even dare say Armand projected himself onto Charlotte’s character—that he saw his time trapped with the Children of Darkness akin to Charlotte being trapped by her controlling mother, and his liberation into becoming a slutty theater kid coven leader akin to Charlotte becoming the life of the party.

It was a bit more difficult for me to identify the Lestat parallel in Don Pasquale, but I eventually found her. Lestat’s story has parallels to Norina, the defiant young widower who fools the wealthy Don Pasquale into marrying her. Don Pasquale was expecting a docile, obedient wife. But like how Lestat refused to hide in the shadows after being turned by Magnus, Norina promptly commandeered Don Pasquale’s wealth to live a life of extravagance. Both love to spend money on clothes, jewels, and parties and go after what they want without apology. (This character parallel is made even more hilarious when you realize the man Lestat drains is the opera actor for Norina’s true love interest, Ernesto).

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Artificial humans and the labyrinth of Armand’s damaged psyche

Armand is connected to multiple films that feature artificial humans—the creature in Frankenstein: The True Story, the replicants in Blade Runner, and the mechanical doll in The Tales of Hoffmann.

There are many theories about “the real meaning” of Frankenstein. People say it’s about being a woman, about being trans, about being disabled. I believe that all these are true and more. Because at its heart, Frankenstein is a tragedy about consent, agency, and dysphoria.

The impact of Frankenstein on IWTV can be seen in nearly all its central stories. Like Claudia, the creature did not consent to be given supernatural life. Like Louis, the creature is tormented by his own monstrosity. Like Lestat, the creature is deeply lonely and hopes to create a companion for himself. And like Armand, the creature is lovingly made by his creator and then abandoned, left with a provocative appearance out of his control (provoking disgust and violence in the creature’s case, and lust and violence in Armand’s).

In Frankenstein, Hoffmann, and IWTV there is a strong relationship between the creator and creature, maker and the fledgling. It’s both oddly parental and romantic, incredibly intimate, and filled with grief and resentment. The creature, the replicant, and the vampire fledgling are adult babies, borne to a parent without a womb, and forced into a strange new world against their will.

I take in these stories and wonder, does Armand also see himself as an artificial person? His short human life was fraught with trauma, having been sex trafficked as a child and then groomed by a pedophilic 2,000-year-old vampire. Like the creature, the replicants, and the mechanical doll, Armand was treated as a vessel for other people’s desires rather than a person in his own right. Therefore, he didn’t have a chance to fully actualize his sense of self before his vampire turning, after which he was thrust into centuries of satanic worship.

Perhaps this is also why Armand has a fascination with technology and modern inventions. Sure, we can chalk that up to him being an autistic babe with special interests, but maybe Armand relates to technology. Maybe he also feels like a mechanical doll that has been broken and re-programmed over and over again.

My bottom three

Othello (1995)

I went from being a Shakespeare-hater as a student to Shakespeare-ambivalent when it was no longer required reading. Unfortunately after this watch challenge, I hate Shakespeare even more fiercely than before. Shakespeare plays rely on misunderstandings to move the plot forward in a way I find tiresome and cheap. Am I going to writer-hell for saying this? Sure, but I don’t care. My heart is barely touched by the deeper humanist themes of the story because I’m too busy cringing at how stupid these people are.

Originally, I had high hopes for Othello because it was one of the few Shakespeare plays with a Black man as the main character. Perhaps this is why I was so disappointed—the story did not focus on his culture or heritage, nor his life in Venice, nor really any sort of coherent racial commentary. It was about his two-faced buddy convincing him that his wife is a slut. Maybe I have unreasonably woke expectations of Elizabethan era literature, whatever. It’s not for me.

Interview with the Vampire (1994)

I might be biased because I watched the amazing new AMC show first, but I am still shocked by how flat this movie feels (go ahead and cancel me). It’s as if the screenwriter got a spark-notes copy of the book, highlighted every plot point to hit, scribbled out the queer romantic elements as much as they could, and voila. That’s the script.

Tom Cruise as Lestat has as much screen presence as a wet towel. Antonio Banderas, you’re great but you’re just not a creepy little twink, sorry. And though Louis was originally a white plantation owner in the books, the portrayal of Louis and Lestat as white vampire slave masters to enslaved Africans created an uncomfortable tension that likened vampirism to white supremacy. This distracted from the main point of the story, which from my pov is about vampires navigating immortality with a deeply unhealed inner child. Honestly, the only good thing about this movie was Kirsten Dunst as Claudia. Incredible performance.

The Lost Boys (1987)

Whereas I was doomed to hate the aforementioned films due to my personal biases, I can actually see myself loving The Lost Boys if only it had better writing. Mainly if it fixed the following:

1. The vampire gang needed to be scarier to raise the stakes. What was the worst thing we saw them do, loiter on carousels? Let’s see more evidence of their child-killing sprees.

2. The younger brother needed more reason to believe Michael had been turned into a vampire. Wearing sunglasses and not having a reflection shouldn’t have been enough information to tip him off.

3. If vampirism is meant to be a metaphor for the sinful, Rock & Roll rebel culture that tempts Michael away from a respectable life, can we see him actually act like he wants it? He hung out with them once and drank some blood. I want at least a month of him sneaking out of the house to meet up with his amazing “new best friends” and telling his mom to shut up, this is his identity now.

4. The girl being held captive should’ve been a sexy vampire too.

My top three

Gaslight (1944)

What a beautiful movie. I am always a fan of a story that really convinces me to root for its characters. And damn I was rooting for Paula, because what a piece of shit that husband is. The writing and acting felt well-paced and not over-done, starting with a relatively optimistic marriage and slowly layering the suspicion and paranoia up to the big reveal. The framing, especially the closeups of the gaslights and Paula’s face, were visually gorgeous. As a casual fan of psychology (i.e. I am part of the elite mentally ill VIP club) I am so thrilled to have watched the origin of the term gaslight.

Bram Stoker’s Dracula (1992)

This wins the award for horniest film. I do wish it was gayer (they took out all semblance of male vulnerability and homoeroticism) and the turning backstory of Dracula was a bit cheesy, but despite its heteronormative flaws it still managed to be absolutely cunty.

I am especially a fan of the many different forms of Dracula—as a horny wolf-man, as a giant slimy bat, as Gary Oldman in a trench coat, as an ashen walking corpse with two giant butt cheeks for hair. The visual effect of his shadow often lagging behind or jumping ahead of his physical form was haunting, and convincingly portrayed Dracula as equal parts seductive and horrific. While I was unsure of Mina as a protagonist at first, I loved Winona Ryder’s performance as she struggled through her own vampire turning and the inner turmoil she later experienced.

Sinners (2025)

Best film on the list hands down. Having one character play a pair of twins sometimes feels like a gimmicky opportunity to brag about the team’s editing chops. But as we meet each character in the exposition, it’s easy to forget about Michael B. Jordan’s packed call sheet and become immersed in the world instead. The aspiring musician, the struggling sharecropper, the old alcoholic pianist, the girl mourning her mother passing, the Chinese family straddling both sides of segregation—all these characters, especially the Black characters, are searching for the American dream. They lead hard lives and want a taste of freedom. Vampires unleash the horrific truth that the American dream is a nightmare.

My favorite aspect of Sinners vampire lore was when hoodoo spiritual leader Annie lamented how vampire souls were stuck in the mortal plane, unable to return to their ancestors. In West African and Indigenous folklore, ancestors grant us spiritual wisdom, protection, and healing. While the original Dracula set the precedent for Christianity as a safeguard against vampires, Sinners emphasized that Christianity was the colonizers’ weapon, and it would not keep us safe. The Lord’s prayer was useless against the Irish vampire Remmick, who tauntingly recited it back to Sammie as he baptized him in the pond.

In the past few years as I’ve reconnected with my Chinese heritage, I’ve often thought about American assimilation as a giant wound into my soul. Chinese and Irish Americans are unique in that (back then) we were not considered white, but we were “white enough” to be afforded certain privileges above Africans, especially if we assimilated. Remmick was disconnected from his ancestors, as many of us are when we come to America. His villainy stemmed from his desire to reconnect, fueled by his willingness to use and abuse Black Americans in order to get there.

Honorable mention goes to Vampire’s Kiss (1988)

To be honest, I can’t tell if I love or hate Vampire’s Kiss. I also can’t tell if it’s absolute genius or a collection of ideas fished out from the writer’s room trash can and thrown in to a blender. In my notes, I constantly asked myself, “What is this movie about? Is it about exploitation? Is it about mental health? Is it about male loneliness? Is it about violence against women? I literally can’t tell.” This movie used every vampire trope out there and somehow still managed to defy all my expectations, leaving me bewildered and oddly enough, a new and unwilling member of the Nicolas Cage fan club.

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In conclusion, Anne Rice loved beauty

Anne Rice named Frankenstein: The True Story (1973) as the motivation to turn her short story into the fully fledged Interview with the Vampire novel. Watching that film, the influence is clear. Compared to the 1931 version, this 1973 TV movie had a visually gorgeous way of conveying horror, almost to the point of indulgence.

Rice’s stories exude a powerful contrast between horror and beauty, to which the AMC show said yes, we will fucking deliver. Nights out at up-scale brothels in New Orleans paired with explosively abusive fights. Experimental art house theater in Paris paired with a public murder trial. Even the vampire characters, monstrous as they are, all have an undeniable elegance to them. It’s almost as if horror cannot exist without beauty to soften it, and beauty cannot exist without horror to give it deeper meaning. Considering that both Anne Rice and Mary Shelley mourned the loss of their mothers and children they birthed, I dare say they view horror and beauty as one and the same.

I say all this, in this unnecessarily long and overly detailed Substack post, all to highlight that Anne Rice loved beauty. She loved art, she loved music, and she loved culture. To love Anne Rice’s immortal universe is to also be a lifelong lover of art and beauty.

Here’s what I picked up about Zhou: they have a vast knowledge of Chinese culture and history. They uphold historical accuracy and denounce the imposition of western tropes with scholarly dignity. And rather than giving pleasantly-obedient-immigrant-daughter vibes, they exude sarcastic-witch-possessed-by-fierce-opinions so strongly that I almost feel sorry for their father.

(I said almost. Let’s not get carried away here.)

All to say, I already admired Zhou as a cultural influencer, and I was excited to read their YA sci-fi fantasy novel Iron Widow. A futuristic reimagining of China’s only female emperor Wu Zetian, the Iron Widow is marketed as “Pacific Rim meets The Handmaid’s Tale” for its alien-fighting robots (called Chrysalises) that rely on sacrificing young women to sustain their exploitative co-pilot system.

Iron Widow has received wildly mixed reviews—some calling it an amazing, gripping story while others claim it’s just plain bad. The most scathing reviews are those that denounce it for failing to live up to its “feminist” reputation, calling out the lack of female relationships and solidarity.

In some ways, I agree with its critics. Iron Widow doesn’t pass the Bechdel test by a long shot. While the young female protagonist Zetian has all the marks of a good anti-hero (brave, stubborn, and somewhat problematic), the other female characters are little more than plot devices. For all her supposed compassion for fellow girls, Zetian rarely sees them as anything other than helpless victims or jealous competition.

However, I also think that critics are missing some layers to this story. Sure, on the surface we have the events of fictional Wu Zetian seeking revenge against the Chrysalis pilot who killed her sister. A layer below, we have the real Empress Wu Zetian, who had no interest in any sort of feminist agenda. Rather, she sought only to hoard power for herself. And yet another layer deeper, we have the author’s emotional processing of UNHINGED AND MURDEROUS FEMININE RAGE.

Yes, I have quite a few gripes with this story. The writing often lacked subtlety and the angst was sometimes cartoonishly angsty. That didn’t stop me from devouring it in two days. I haven’t marathoned a book like that in years. I thought I no longer had it in me, but I genuinely couldn’t put it down.

(Also, it’s a YA novel. It’s allowed to be angsty and hit you over the head with words sometimes.)

There’s something so cathartic, so satisfying about a female protagonist who has so much rage in her tiny body that she needs an outlet, and that is murdering the men who wrong her. If Zetian could kill a terrible man, trust she’d do it. If she couldn’t, then she’d add him to the hit list and find a way.

Some found it strange that Zetian, a teenage peasant girl, had such feminist beliefs despite her youth and lack of education. No, are you kidding me? She hardly possessed any advanced sociopolitical frameworks, IT’S CALLED REACTING TO HER LIVED EXPERIENCE. Her grandma broke all the bones in her feet as a child so that they could be bound into pretty little lotus-feet. Her sister died as a concubine-pilot, and the local news was inundated with other girls who met the same fate. You don’t need to study social injustice to realize you are living it. Zetian was experiencing immense grief and expressing it through ANGER AND VIOLENCE.

Why is it that we can cheer on a male protagonist for slaughtering his way to vengeance, no matter how stupid or short-sighted he is, but when a girl does it suddenly we question whether she’s the proper representation of feminist ideology? Do we not support women’s wrongs in this house?

Iron Widow uses feminine rage to process the trauma of growing up a girl in a society that views girls as expendable. If we look at the story from that lens, the simplistic side characters actually make a lot of sense. You have the complicit mother who bends to the family patriarch’s will, the arrogant male pilot determined to keep it a boys club, the mean girl only interested in tearing other girls down, and the business mogul who treats girls like objects.

These side characters represent archetypes, all of which exist in real life but in more subtle and nuanced ways. But when our anger is activated, we feel their threats much more strongly. Iron Widow is about a girl who is constantly activated.

Sadly, the only characters that were afforded more dimension were Zetian’s two male love interests, Gao Yizhi and Li Shimin. If we are pointing fingers over the lack of female solidarity, we can blame these two. Over the course of the story, Zetian slowly falls in love with both boys because they prove to be kind, empathetic, and most importantly not misogynist despite having all the reason to be (Yizhi because he’s a spoiled rich boy, and Shimin because a concubine-pilot has never survived going to battle with him).

In a world where every man is against her, Zetian desperately wants proof that not all men are evil. These boys are the epitome of “not all men.” And I have to be honest, I’m not buying it.

Zetian’s proximity to both of them is somewhat coerced at best. Yizhi was able to worm his way back into Zetian’s life by using his wealth and connections to buy them all a nice apartment. If she didn’t accept his help, the only other option was staying in a prison cell with Shimin. And Shimin was the co-pilot that Zetian was forcibly paired with after she successfully killed her first co-pilot Yang Guang. She could hardly leave without facing serious punishment.

For her own survival, Zetian needs both of these boys to be kind to her. But neither of them needs her in the same way. Maybe Shimin to some degree, because the military is holding him prisoner too, but Yizhi is afforded every privilege in a society built to benefit wealthy Han men like him. This book is about piloting giant robots to fight aliens, yet the part I find the most unrealistic is Yizhi being so magically unproblematic.

It’s for this reason that the book waned for me in the middle. I found the beginning enrapturing—every event was gripping, every chapter had a new twist. Zetian’s character shines when she’s thrown into terrible situations and figures out how to make the best of it. Her response to an emergency? Amazing. Her romantic chemistry with the boys? Pretty forced, at least from my pov, and it slowed down the story terribly. Even her intimate scenes with both boys felt like a tiresome stereotype—perpetuating the idea that boys always want it, but good boys will sleep on the couch and let the girl make the first move.

When the three eventually become a polyamorous squad, I won’t pretend I didn’t gasp out loud, “They’re really doing it!” Having the female lead pursue a MMF throuple in a YA novel is pretty gutsy, so I commend Zhou for that. The book also uses the pilot seats in the Chrysalis cockpit as a metaphor for the arbitrary social constructs of monogamy and heteronormativity, which is quite clever. The squad shatters this illusion of marriage-is-between-one-man-and-one-woman with the inclusion of Yizhi in the cockpit as their third, and later when Zetian is able to co-pilot from the man’s seat instead of the woman’s.

(This implies to me that other queer and polyamorous combinations in the cockpit should be possible, and I’m curious to see if that will happen in future books).

Out of all the characters, Shimin is by far the most interesting to me because his backstory is the richest. While Zetian believes Shimin’s life trauma to be practically inexplicable and far more complex than her own, I don’t believe that’s the case. Zetian’s pain is due to sexism. Shimin’s pain is due to classism and racism. He grew up in a poor family and had to pay for his own schooling by fighting in the pits, a school which he was only allowed to attend because he was half-Rongdi on his mom’s side instead of his dad’s. Keeping in mind that rich families don’t allow their sons to be enlisted, Shimin’s forced enlistment and the cruel mistreatment he suffered was clearly due to his race and class.

I’m actually surprised the social status of Rongdi, a race which I believe is meant to represent Mongolians in this fictional universe, was not developed more in the book. Despite mentions of interpersonal racism against Rongdi in a society dominated by Han people, there was very little examination of structural racism. Since we understand racism and patriarchy to be two sides of the same coin, I think it’s safe to say that any true path to liberation cannot exclude solidarity with Rongdi women.

Which leads me to my last point—Iron Widow is about oppression, but not about liberation. Ultimately, I don’t believe that took away from the book, because Iron Widow was incredibly enjoyable to read. I’d still give it high praise and recommend it to anyone who daydreams about murder. But in the interest of taking the social injustices mentioned in the story seriously, any story about liberation must be centered on a people’s revolution.

And for a revolution to happen in this world, Zetian needs to get a fucking girl friend. Or a girlfriend. She needs friends who are girls to form some semblance of female solidarity in her life, and also she needs to kiss some girls. I refuse to believe that Wu Zetian is the only girl who wants to rage against the machine in this world. There are others out there, she just needs to meet them.

(And she cannot lead a people’s revolution as an empress. We must abolish the empire. There will be no such thing as emperor or empress in our new anti-patriarchal, anti-imperialist future. That’s step number two on the liberation agenda, right after kissing girls.)

It’s very likely that we will get a liberation agenda of some kind in Iron Widow’s sequel, Heavenly Tyrant. I am almost scared to read it, as I’m always wary of the inevitable disappointment that sequels bring.

However, at this point I consider myself a certified Xiran Jay Zhou fan. I might not see eye to eye on all their creative decisions, but I sincerely appreciate their storytelling. My plan is to read the full trilogy once they release the third book, that way I can reserve my judgment for the series as a whole. And if there’s anything I would do differently, well. I can always write my own kissing-girls-liberation-agenda fanfiction. That’s what fandom is for.

All fanart was sourced from the Iron Widow Art Gallery on Zhou’s website.

Note: I am currently working on my own queer Asian YA fantasy novel, thus why I read Iron Widow. This is part of my study of the genre. If you have any suggestions for queer Asian books, not just YA fantasy but fiction of all kinds, please send!

I love a good quest

I was very drawn to book series as a child—Goosebumps, The Bailey School Kids, Nancy Drew. I made a point of reading all Roald Dahl books and watching every movie adaptation I could find. And of course, I’d hole up in my room for eight straight hours reading the new Harry Potter book every year (fuck J.K. Rowling by the way, what a hateful terf). There is something I love about completing a collection.

When I had the idea of focusing on Hayao Miyazaki for my next film challenge, the obvious choice would have been to watch all Studio Ghibli movies. But I had already seen quite a few, some several times (especially Howl’s Moving Castle and Spirited Away). I’ve also been wanting to branch out of my comfort zone and seek out older, less widely-known films. So I decided to watch his 25 favorite movies instead.

Witnessing a great artist being inspired by great art feels very special. I smile when musicians gush about the music they love to listen to, or when visual artists list their sources of inspiration. For Miyazaki specifically, I wanted to learn more about him through these films that he appreciates so much. Perhaps in the process, I can figure out how they shaped his mind, the marks that they made, and understand better what he’s trying to say back to the world.

The list of Miyazaki’s 25 favorite movies

Here is the full list from Far Out Magazine, along with links to those I found for free on youtube and internet archive. I added a rose (🌹) next to my personal favorites.

• Jaws (Steven Spielberg, 1975)

• Bicycle Thieves (Vittorio De Sica, 1948)

• Modern Times (Charlie Chaplin, 1936)

• My Darling Clementine (John Ford, 1946)

• Babette’s Feast (Gabriel Axel, 1987) 🌹

• Tale of Tales (Yuri Norstein, 1979)

• The Spirit of the Beehive (Víctor Erice, 1973)

• Ikiru (Akira Kurosawa, 1952) 🌹

• Priest of Darkness (Sadao Yamanaka, 1936)

• Peter Pan (Clyde Geronimi, Wilfred Jackson and Hamilton Luske, 1953)

• The Snow Queen (Lev Atamanov, 1957)

• Animal Farm (Joy Batchelor and John Halas, 1954) 🌹

• The Old Mill (Wilfred Jackson, 1937)

• Ashes and Diamonds (Andrzej Wajda, 1958)

• How Green Was My Valley (John Ford, 1941)

• Ran (Akira Kurosawa, 1985)

• Ballad of a Soldier (Grigory Chukhray, 1959)

• The King and the Mockingbird (Paul Grimault, 1980) 🌹

• Flame and Women (Yoshishige Yoshida, 1967)

• Seven Samurai (Akira Kurosawa, 1954)

• The Little Mermaid (Ron Clements and John Musker, 1989) 🌹

• Nostalghia (Andrei Tarkovsky, 1983)

• The Curious Adventures of Mr. Wonderbird (Paul Grimault, 1952)

• Hedgehog in the Fog (Yuri Norstein, 1975)

• Chikemuri Takadanobaba (Daisuke Itô, 1928)

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Miyazaki’s favorites by the numbers

Animated vs. Live action

Miyazaki has a slight preference for live action at 64%. Though with 36% of his favorite films being animated, my guess is that’s still higher than most 80-something year old adults.

Decade produced

Miyazaki’s favorite decade was by far the 50s, with the 70s and 80s as runner-ups. Seeing as he was born in 1941, he would’ve been a teenager in the 50s, a time when people often begin defining their personal taste.

He co-founded Studio Ghibli in 1985, so the 70s and 80s were likely formative years during his professional career. He also enjoyed some films from early childhood and before he was born, likely influenced by older generations.

There was not a single film on the list after the 80s; Miyazaki has a clear bias for older films. Perhaps he’s more influenced by what he’s seen before the age of 50, or perhaps they just don’t make movies like they used to.

Region produced

Miyazaki’s tastes are fairly wordly. Most of his favorite films were actually produced outside of Japan, with the US and Europe tying at the top. Of his animated favorites, none of them were produced in Japan. Perhaps this international influence can help explain how he has achieved such wide fame and recognition outside of Japan.

Themes from Miyazaki’s favorites

Small-town interactions and conflicts

Miyazaki has a preference for stories set in smaller settings that have familiar locations and a recurring cast of characters, many of whom know each other.

For example, Bicycle Thieves and Priest of Darkness both focus on the local neighborhood as a setting. Babette’s Feast, Ikiru, Seven Samurai, The Spirit of the Beehive, How Green Was My Valley, Jaws, and My Darling Clementine all take place in a small town. Animations like Animal Farm and The King and the Mockingbird focused on a single farm or a single castle. Because everyone in these places knows each other, the conflict quickly becomes well-known and widely discussed amongst all the characters

There’s something very intimate about this “small town” feeling. Through watching, we also feel like we know these people and live in this place, making the story feel more real to us. We care about the conflict as much as the characters do, we are invested. It creates an undeniable connection between people and place, making the story compelling because it could not be told quite the same in any other place.

The harsh impact of war, and how love soothes the pain

Many of Miyazaki’s favorites portrayed either war based on real events (Ballad of a Soldier, Animal Farm), fictional battles (Seven Sumurai, Ran, Peter Pan, My Darling Clementine), or the chilling aftermath of war (Ashes and Diamonds, Tale of Tales).

Emerging from this theme is another trend: love. Ballad of a Soldier, My Darling Clementine, and Ashes and Diamonds all feature a love story where the romance helps us to find solace from the violence. The love is tender and pure, serving as a reminder that human connection is still desirable even after experiencing all the horrors around them.

Japan and Russia were notably at war in the early 20th century over imperialist pursuits in Manchuria (present-day China and Russia) and the Korean Empire. Japan thus became known as the first Asian empire to defeat a European empire in modern times. So I find it interesting that Miyazaki is a fan of Soviet films like Ballad of a Soldier and Tale of Tales, which portray the harsh impact of war on the common Russian people. This would imply to me some level of resistance against Japanese nationalist propaganda and empathy for people abroad, however small.

Beloved animal characters

Perhaps this is a given with animation, but many of his favorites include adorable animal characters. Tale of Tales, Peter Pan, Animal Farm, The Old Mill, The King and the Mockingbird, The Little Mermaid, and Hedgehog in the Fog all include animals as main characters, often with anthropomorphic characteristics.

The use of animal characters is not only entertaining, but helps tell the story in a more evocative way. Who better to mock the tyrannical king in The King and the Mockingbird than a bird who can fly around and taunt him in his castle in the sky? And of course viewers would feel deep sympathy for animals like horses, chicken, and sheep in Animal Farm while looking down on the authoritarian pigs for being greedy and selfish, for pigs are commonly seen as slovenly creatures. The animalistic characteristics lend themselves to the emotional narrative in a way that live action could not accomplish so easily.

Interestingly, even in animations where animals are able to speak and sing like humans, dogs usually remained dogs. I noticed this most in The King and the Mockingbird, Animal Farm, and The Little Mermaid. While other animals were representative of human characters, dogs typically remained obedient, curious, wordless creatures that relied on scent and instinct.

Yearning for another world

In both The Little Mermaid and Peter Pan, the main character dreams of living in a magical world very different from their own.

I grew up on Disney animated films as a child, and I was surprised to learn these were Miyazaki’s favorites because they wouldn’t be my first pick. My favorites—Mulan, Lion King, Tarzan—were focused on growing stronger, becoming leaders, and reclaiming identity. Very different from Miyazaki’s whimsical choices, which are focused on exploration, imagination, and finding a sense of home.

In Seven Samurai, Ikiru, Animal Farm, and The King and the Mockingbird, the characters not only yearn for but actively fight for a brighter future. Rather than just whimsy, the new world is a cause around which the characters unite around and believe in. Which leads to my last point: anti-capitalism.

Power to the people

Miyazaki was born in the midst of WWII, and during his formative years the globe was erupting with socialist revolution and movement. There were many films on his favorites list that contained anti-capitalist, anti-aristocratic, and pro-proletariat themes. This includes Modern Times, Animal Farm, How Green Was My Valley, and The King and the Mockingbird. Arguably, you could also include Seven Samurai for being pro-farmer, Ikiru for being anti-bureaucracy, and Jaws for being anti-greed.

As covers, Miyazaki was a union man himself. Back in the early days of his career, he was a member and later general secretary of the Toei union. The animation industry is notoriously exploitative no matter what part of the world you’re in, with workers toiling for long hours with few benefits. In a way, it’s validating to learn that an acclaimed animation darling like Miyazaki also hated giving up his time for labor and wanted to get home at five. He’s human like us, and he also believes in people power.

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Reviews of my personal favorites

Of Miyazaki’s 25 favorites, I picked out my top 5 to review. Warning for spoilers ahead.

The King and the Mockingbird (1980)

Watch this if you’re in the mood for surrealism, weird art, and sabotage as action.

A French animation directed by Paul Grimault and co-written by Jacques Prevért, this one is interesting because in 1952, the producer released an unfinished version to the public without the consent of either Grimault or Prevért. This became known as The Curious Adventures of Mr. Wonderbird in English. Eventually, Grimault was able to obtain the rights of the film and release a version nearly thirty years later that captured his original vision.

I watched both versions, and can confirm that the 1980 one is better. It tells the story of a tyrannical king who rules over a fantastical kingdom with nothing but vanity and cowardice. The art blends neocolonial French aesthetics with satirical technological inventions in a wonderfully bizarre way. The king whizzes around on his throne like a motorized shopping cart at the grocery store. Whenever it appeals to him, he executes his servants by pressing a button, causing the floor to open up beneath them so that they can fall to their deaths.

Honestly, it’s top notch. The animation and art direction is original, clever, and so very cunty. I love this story for its strangeness, but also for presenting the clear division of power between the king and all his subjects as an injustice that must be remedied. Even the police, who exist only to enforce his royal decrees with direct violence, are expendable. A very intriguing, strongly anti-monarchy tale.

Babette’s Feast (1987)

Watch this if you like a slow burn leading up to indulgent food porn.

Gabriel Axel wrote and directed Danish film Babette’s Feast based on the book with the same title by Isak Dinesen (real name Karen Blixen). I watched this expecting to be bored, and to be fair I was in the first half. But then I was utterly enthralled.

The French maid, whom two older Danish sisters employed in their home, had the chance to return to the homelands that she fled after the war. As her parting gift, she asked to throw a feast for the death anniversary of the sisters’ father, a beloved church pastor in their small town. The townspeople’s fear of her ingredient sourcing (live tortoise, baby chicks, etc.) amused me, and their unwillingness to confront her about it cracked me up (as you may know, fear of open conflict is a white supremacist characteristic).

What really had me yelling at the screen was that after a beautifully sumptuous feast, with every course assigned a very specific drink pairing, the French maid revealed that she was actually the head chef of a famous restaurant in France. I was furious, you gotta be kidding me! This whole time, these uptight Danes had a professional chef cooking unseasoned fish and fucking bread soup without complaint for fourteen years?!

And yet in this absurdity lies a deeper message about safety, indulgence, and community relationships. Because the ungodly dinner that the villagers feared so much, that the maid selfishly spent her life savings on, was what smoothed over years of resentful conflict and brought them back together.

Ikiru (1952)

Watch this if you’re prepared to cry, ponder death, and rediscover the joy of life.

Miyazaki’s favorites include three films directed by renowned Japanese director Akira Kurosawa—Ran, Seven Samurai, and Ikiru. I enjoyed all three immensely, but Ikiru was probably my favorite amongst them.

The narrative structure of Ikiru was incredible. The first half contained nothing but hopelessness, a man who’d spent most of his life mindlessly working in an office discovered he had a terminal illness, and started spending very inappropriate lengths of time with a much younger woman in an attempt to feel alive again.

It was only after his death that we learned, through the conversations that pieced together his story bit by bit at his funeral, that in the last months of his life he poured all his energy into rebuilding a flooded cesspool into a public playground. The gender division here also felt intentional, as the local residents near the cesspool were all woman who had no choice but to live through the consequences of the flooding, and the bureaucrats who refused to take action were all men who couldn’t care less. But the protagonist cared, he gave a shit. Because he had everything to lose if he died without experiencing the meaning of life, which he determined to be creating something beautiful for people.

I loved this film. I don’t see how anyone couldn’t.

Animal Farm (1954)

Watch this if you’re a loving critic of communist revolutions that morph into paranoid authoritarianism.

Based on the 1945 novella by George Orwell, Animal Farm is an interesting story because depending on who you talk to, they will either tell you that it’s pro-communist or anti-communist. Orwell wrote the book as a critique of the Stalinist era of the Soviet Union, framing the pigs as a metaphor of Stalin’s rise to power and their dogs as Stalin’s secret police.

Now, you might know from my Anti-Colonial Chinese Mixtape vol. 1 that I am not a state-apologist, nor do I believe that a communist revolution that successfully overthrows the monarchy can stay successful simply by nominally claiming to be communist. If there’s harm and exploitation of people, land, and labor, call it whatever you want, but that’s class hierarchy

That being said, I view Animal Farm more as a cautionary tale of what a people’s revolution could become if we are not careful, rather than what it would always inevitably turn out to be. When we overthrow the ruling class, we cannot simply replace them with “communist” leaders, we must abolish them entirely in order to create a truly liberatory society. Also, the 1954 adaptation is just a damn good movie. Great animation, great storytelling. A far cry from whatever the 2026 adaptation is turning out to be.

The Little Mermaid (1989)

Watch this if you’re an ADHD girlie who loves to dance.

Wow, how could I forget how much of a banger this movie is? The Little Mermaid was directed by John Musker and Ron Clements, with production starting after Clements discovered the Hans Christian Andersen fairy tale in a bookstore. It was the first Disney film to receive such significant funding in decades and the last to use the hand-painted cel method of animation. Amazing musical score composed by Alan Menken. Truly a work of art.

I haven’t watched this film since I was very young. And I don’t know how I never realized, but now that I am an adult medicated for ADHD, I can see that Ariel is incredibly ADHD-coded. She loses track of time in pursuit of her special interests, she obsessively collects gadgets and is enamored by things she finds novel and curious, and she makes rash, life-altering decisions in pursuit of love. However since she’s a designated #HotGirl, this neurodivergent behavior is simply chalked up to her being quirky and eccentric.

If only it were possible for me to travel back in time and watch this film with Miyazaki for the first time. Then, I could witness his joy at seeing Ariel comb her hair with a fork, and ask him, “So which character do you relate to most? It isn’t the mermaid princess…is it?”

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Honorary mention goes to

• Modern Times (1936) - The story waned for me in the second half and the politics were hit or miss, but I did love seeing Charlie Chaplin give his factory boss hell in the opening act.

• Bicycle Thieves (1948) - If I’d seen this ten years ago, it would’ve blown my mind, but now I just watch it and think…well yeah, of course. People steal because they are desperate and in need of resources, not out of some moral failing. Very enjoyable watch though.

• Flame and Women (1967) - This one felt absolutely haunting to me, a tale of a woman whose sterile husband forces her to undergo artificial insemination so they can raise a child together. I would definitely watch it again. I also disagree with its official summary, I don’t think it’s about parenting rights at all, but rather female sexuality, bodily autonomy, and the legacy of patriarchy.

• The Snow Queen (1957) - This would’ve been on my favorites list if only it had a better takeaway message. The charming animation and the adventure our protagonist, a brave young girl, embarks on feels incredible to watch. But choosing to love and forgive those who treat you like shit because that will break the evil curse they are under? With no ask for apology or accountability? No thank you.

• Seven Samurai (1954) - I love almost everything about this movie, I just wish I’d been better prepared to watch three and a half hours of old Japanese men with bad haircuts hanging around and talking battle strategy.

• Chikemuri Takadanobaba (1928) - Adding to honorable mention purely because through this film, I discovered BENSHI, the Japanese art of narrating silent films. It’s unfortunate I wasn’t able to find any versions with coherent English subtitles or translations, but I did love the narration aspect (despite not understanding any Japanese).

These didn’t do it for me but I appreciate their artistry

• Animations by Yuri Norstein - specifically Tale of Tales (1979) and Hedgehog in the Fog (1975). I was not particularly taken by the animation style. But I was fascinated to learn about their methods of employing layers of glass and incorporating mixed media. It also warms my heart that Norstein and his wife Francesca Yarbusova will sometimes take decades to make one short film. The refusal to speed up their process in rejection of profit and out of love for their craft—I respect it.

• Nostalghia (1983) and The Spirit of the Beehive (1973) - Both of these films feel like poetry to me, and I’m learning that I’m a viewer who prefers the feeling of theater in a film instead. I like to be fed the narrative more directly and then contemplate the concepts afterward. For that reason, I struggled to stay engaged during these two. That being said, they are both visually stunning, masterfully executed, and revealed interesting symbols and themes.

Thank you for joining me on this journey

In watching Miyazaki’s favorites, I can now proudly say that I better understand him as an artist and some of my favorite Studio Ghibli films from a new perspective. Spirited Away especially exemplifies many of the themes that Miyazaki admires—a small-town setting, beloved animal characters, yearning for another world, and anti-capitalist, people-power sentiment.

Now that I’ve watched my favorite actor’s entire filmography (all hail Gong Li) and my favorite animator’s favorites list, I’m looking forward to what’s next. And while I’m already cooking up something related to AMC’s adaptation of Anne Rice’s Interview with the Vampire, I am also always open to suggestions.

If you have any thoughts on any of the films and themes mentioned above, please share! I love to gab.

You can imagine my confusion when, in elementary school, they taught us how to say Happy New Year in Chinese and it was, “gong hey fat choy.”

What was that? I had only ever heard people say, “xin nian kuai le.” Why did it sound so foreign to me? This wasn’t like any Chinese I’d ever heard. Either they’re lying to me, or they must’ve invented a new form of Chinese here in the states that I wasn’t aware of. (It was Cantonese, y’all. I discovered the Cantonese language through white people.)

In my adult life, my less blissfully but still sometimes ignorant life, I have a huge interest in the diversity of Chinese. My sister told me that in the founding of China as a country, they were trying to pick the national language and had narrowed it down to Mandarin and Cantonese. One reason they went with Mandarin was because the sub-dialects were more similar to each other. In general, there is more linguistic diversity in southern China due to its many hills and valleys, preventing frequent travel. The North, on the other hand, had larger expanses of flat land, leading to more inter-regional exchange and fewer linguistic variation.

This post is the summation of a research rabbit hole I fell down when I was pondering the breakdown of Chinese languages in the US and how they differed from majority Sinophone countries. Recognizing that there are many other countries in the Sinosphere, I focused my scope on China and Taiwan. I hope you enjoy reading as much as I did researching!

(FYI: I cite Wikipedia as several of my sources. No this is not good enough for an actual research paper. But unfortunately I do not have the time for or access to more reputable sources. Wikipedia is good enough for hobby research, imho.)

The breakdown of Chinese speakers in the US, China, and Taiwan

In a 2005-2009 survey of what Chinese was spoken at home in the US, they found that 2.9 million people spoke Chinese, but 1.9 million did not specify what type. Of those that remained, Mandarin (47.3%) and Cantonese (44.6%) made up a huge majority, followed by Hokkien (7.5%) and Wu aka Shanghainese (0.3%).

In a combined 2019 survey of native speakers in China, the most common type of Chinese was by far Mandarin (65.4%), followed by Wu (7.3%), Yue (6.2%), Jin (5.4%), and Min (4.6%). And even though they’re not entirely synonymous given regional dialectal differences, for the purposes of simplifying my research I’m considering Wu synonymous with Shanghainese, Yue with Cantonese, and Min with Hokkien.

In the 2010 census of languages spoken at home in Taiwan, the most common types of Chinese were Taiwanese Mandarin (83.5%) and Taiwanese Hokkien (81.9%). Due to their nearly equal distribution, we can assume that many people are bilingual. The next most common language was Taiwanese Hakka (6.6%). Taiwan is also home to many indigenous, non-Chinese languages.

These results were very interesting. Keeping in mind that this isn’t a perfect study as they all measure different things (speakers in the US, native speakers in China, and household language users in Taiwan) I decided to run some comparisons.

Compared to China, Chinese speakers in the US are 0.7 times less likely to speak Mandarin. Compared to Taiwan, they are 1.8 times less likely. This is pretty consistent with my experience meeting other Chinese speakers. Mandarin is a relatively modern language derived from Chinese dialects in the north, and is the official language both in China and Taiwan.

Compared to China, Chinese speakers in the US are 7.2 times more likely to speak Cantonese. This is also consistent with my experience, especially if you go to Chinatown and Chinese restaurants. Cantonese is a family of languages originating from Canton (aka Guangdong) in southern China. Many people in southern China and Hong Kong speak Cantonese, and their secondary language is often Mandarin, English, or both if they’re well-educated.

Compared to China, Chinese speakers in the US are 24.3 times less likely to speak Shanghainese. This is a staggering difference, and a number I’m very interested in since part of my family is from Shanghai. I can count on one hand the number of Shanghainese speakers I’ve met in the states. Shanghainese is part of a family of Wu languages from eastern China, mainly Shanghai, Zhejiang, and parts of Jiangsu.

Compared to Taiwan, Chinese speakers in the US are 10.9 times less likely to speak Hokkien. However, when accounting for Taiwan’s size and compared to the combined populations of China and Taiwan, Chinese speakers in the US are 1.2 times more likely to speak Hokkien. Hokkien is part of the Min family of languages originating from southeastern China, specifically Fujian. Taiwanese Hokkien speakers are mostly the descendants of Chinese immigrants from Fujian (pre-ROC).

So in summary, compared to China and Taiwan, Chinese speakers in the US are

• Slightly less likely to speak Mandarin

• Much more likely to speak Cantonese

• Significantly less likely to speak Wu (Shanghainese)

• Much less likely to speak Hokkien compared to Taiwan, but slightly more likely compared to both China and Taiwan combined

Okay, fascinating. Now, my main question is—why?

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Why are there more Cantonese speakers in the US?

Compared to China, Chinese speakers in the US are 7.2 times more likely to speak Cantonese.

The reason for a higher percentage of Cantonese speakers can be traced to the same driver of nearly all human migration patterns in the past 500 years—imperialism. In this case, the Qing Dynasty and the many European empires conducting the African slave trade and other fuckery.

Let’s look at the 1800’s. The Qing Dynasty had rapidly expanded both its borders and population thanks to a combination of improved water management technology and imported crops that improved nutrition and created agricultural opportunities in the newly settled land. At the same time, their governance could not keep up with the rapid expansion, and there were large-scale rebellions and uprisings driven by famine and poverty.1 Apparently, everyone hated the Qing Dynasty.

At the same time, there was an increased demand for cheap labor on plantations, mines, etc. European settlements in the Americas had previously used enslaved Africans, but as Africans were liberating themselves from this unjust system, Europeans were seeking alternatives in Asia. Steam ship technology also allowed for faster maritime transportation.

There are two noteworthy ports in southern China, both of which were significantly influenced by European powers.

1. Guangzhou was the only port in the Qing Dynasty that allowed for foreign trade for about 80 years (1757–1842), and because it was far away from the imperial core, it was less regulated by Qing officials.2

2. Hong Kong was also under British colonial rule for 156 years (1841-1997).3

In comparison, the rest of the Qing Dynasty was largely closed off from foreign trade until they were defeated by the British in the Opium Wars, resulting in the Treaty of Nanking 1842, where multiple other treaty ports opened. Later, the newly formed sovereign state of the People’s Republic of China closed off foreign business again in 1949, banning emigration until the economic reforms of the 80’s.4

And so considering all these factors: Chinese people were incentivized to search for opportunities elsewhere, Europeans were incentivized to seek laborers they could exploit, and the major ports in Canton and Hong Kong were open to international trade. So of course, emigration from the south makes sense.

There are two main drivers of early Chinese immigration to the US, the gold rush and the railroad construction. The first wave of Chinese immigration was in 1848. From 1850 to 1882, about 322,000 Chinese immigrants arrived to the US.5 Then came the Chinese Exclusion Act of 1882, the first major form of immigration law in the country.

Now, the story of Chinese workers building the railroads has become somewhat of a romanticized story of pride. Look at these railroads, our nation was built by immigrants! Isn’t that amazing! But I don’t believe any pride in railroads can be had without pride in workers and labor organizing. Democrats have also been using a “nation of immigrants” as a modern re-branding of the colonial Manifest Destiny and American Dream. But migrant labor is almost always exploitative and coercive.

I don’t want to assume that all Cantonese people were coerced into migrating, but probably a great deal of them were. The coolie system guaranteed Europeans a steady stream of Chinese labor to Peru, Cuba, Southeast Asia, and California. Labor recruiters, or 客头 (ke tou) tempted poverty-stricken farmers and fishermen with promises of gold to sign indentured servitude contracts. Even though conditions in the US were better than those in Peru and Cuba, Chinese workers still built some of the most dangerous parts of the track while being paid half what white workers were paid. All while local Guangzhou officials pocketed emigration taxes.6

This is the unfortunate story of how many of the first Chinese immigrants arrived, however in the years to come they would build strong communities, farming and mining practices, Chinatown neighborhoods, and family-owned businesses. The strong culture they have built here is of course very admirable. And since so many early Chinese immigrants were Cantonese speakers, it makes sense that more would continue to settle in the US in the years to come.

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Why are there barely any Shanghainese speakers in the US?

Compared to China, Chinese speakers in the US are 24.3 times less likely to speak Shanghainese (Wu).

Part of my family is from Shanghai. When I was a kid, I’d sometimes hear my mom speak Shanghainese on the phone, but to all other Chinese people she only spoke Mandarin. I had assumed all my life that Shanghainese was a much rarer form of Chinese.

Imagine my surprise when I looked at the numbers and learned there’s actually an estimated 15 million more people in China who speak Shanghainese than Cantonese. In hindsight this shouldn’t come as a surprise, as Shanghai alone is one of the largest cities in the world at 24.9 million people in 2023.7 It’s just extremely rare for Shanghainese speakers to immigrate to the US.

Interestingly, Shanghai was also given over as a treaty port to the British, and it was famously home to several European and Japanese settlements. Like Canton and Hong Kong, Shanghai became a highly populous international hub of trade, commerce, and culture. So if Shanghai was also a foreign treaty port, why did Shanghainese people not also cross the Pacific to California?

Unfortunately, I wasn’t able to find many answers, as most of my web searches pointed to immigration to Shanghai rather than away from. Any further research would probably require me to seek data sources in Mandarin, a level I haven’t reached quite yet.

So as of now, I can only offer theories:

1. The South historically had less farmable land, therefore it was more common for people to become fishermen and sailors.8 In comparison, the Shanghai/Zhejiang/Jiangsu area was largely an agrarian society. Fishermen and sailors are more likely than farmers to get on a boat to cross a vast ocean, which could explain why more people emigrated from the South.

2. Geographically, Canton and Hong Kong are much closer to South and Southeast Asia and have a direct path to Africa, making them high traffic ports for the British Empire. Perhaps European ships were more likely to leave from the south once they had already done business in multiple Asian regions. In comparison, Shanghai is further north, closer to Japan and Korea, so perhaps it got less international traffic?

3. Shanghai is closer to the Qing Dynasty capital Beijing, and therefore trade during the 1800’s and early 1900’s was more likely to be regulated by Qing officials, even as a treaty port. Apparently, Qing officials preferred to keep international trade far away from the imperial capital to keep the “foreign barbarians” away.

   

4. In the 20th century, many people fled from Shanghai due to conflict (the Japanese invasion, the Chinese Civil War) but most went to Hong Kong and other parts of Southeast Asia.9 Relations with the US were exceedingly poor during the communist revolution, and the PRC banned emigration to foreign countries before the 1980’s. There were legal barriers and perhaps cultural barriers that kept Shanghainese migration within Asia.

5. While the older generation in Shanghai largely speaks Shanghainese, the younger generations use Mandarin at work and school. Shanghainese is now considered a dying language, especially amongst the youth. Perhaps there are more Shanghainese speakers in the US, but they self-reported as Mandarin speakers instead of Shanghainese.

These are my best guesses as to why Shanghainese is much more rare in the US, though I’m sure there are many factors still left unexplored. I wonder if these numbers and migration patterns will change? Selfishly, I would love more Shanghainese restaurants to open here, as I desperately crave soup dumplings and fried dough.

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Why such different amounts of Hokkien speakers?

Compared to Taiwan, Chinese speakers in the US are 10.9 times less likely to speak Hokkien. However, when accounting for Taiwan’s size and compared to the combined populations of China and Taiwan, Chinese speakers in the US are 1.2 times more likely to speak Hokkien.

The origin of Hokkien speakers can also be traced to imperialism! This time, to a mix of Dutch, Qing Dynasty, and Japanese colonization as well as Han Chinese nationalism and US imperialism.

First, to explain why so many Taiwanese people speak Hokkien, and why the Hokkien-speaking population may be less likely to migrate to the US. Hokkien is a major branch of Min languages that originates from the southeastern coast of China. As you can see, it’s a region right next to Taiwan.

Chinese settlers, largely Hokkien speakers from Fujian, migrated to Taiwan as early as the 1600’s during the Ming Dynasty. Taiwan was also under Dutch colonial rule 1624-1644, and the Dutch recruited Chinese workers to help “develop” Taiwan. During the Qing Dynasty, Chinese settlers arrived in the thousands every year, driving the population up to over a million in the mid-1700’s.10

Before Chinese settlement, Taiwan was home to several different Austronesian Indigenous peoples. Chinese, Dutch, and later Japanese settlers all regarded the Indigenous peoples with disdain, using racist slurs to describe them as “savage” and “uncivilized” and employing violence to colonize and subjugate them.

The Qing Dynasty successfully conquered the western side of the island but struggled to do the same in the mountainous region that divides the island into west and east. They thus referred to Natives as “Plains people” 平埔族 (ping pu zu) for civilized and “High Mountain people” 高山族 (gao shan zu) for uncivilized. Today, indigenous peoples continue to resist the gao shan label, even though it’s the official term for indigenous Taiwanese people in mainland China.

I find Hokkien as a language somewhat unique in the topic of language revitalization. Historically, it was a colonial language during early Chinese settlement of Taiwan. Then, the Qing Dynasty ceded Taiwan to Japan after the First Sino-Japanese War 1895. Japanese was introduced as an official language, and Hokkien was highly discouraged. Then, the Kuomintang (Chinese nationalist party) fled to Taiwan after losing the Civil War, where they established the ROC (Republic of China) and went on to ban Hokkien and Hakka in schools and official settings in 1964.

The new KMT immigrants were intent on establishing Mandarin as the national language. Recently, Taiwanese people have returned to using Hokkien as a matter of pride and national identity unique from mainland China. I find the revitalization of Hokkien in the face of Chinese and Japanese colonialism very admirable. At the same time, we can’t forget its role in the erasure of the island’s indigenous languages.

Taiwanese immigration to the US significantly increased after the Immigration and Nationality Act of 1965, which favored skilled workers. Taiwan experienced an economic boom in the 60’s and 70’s, partially thanks to doing business with the anti-communist US. Even when the US moved from recognizing Taiwan to mainland China as the “official” government, they passed the Taiwan Relations Act, allowing entry for up to 20,000 Taiwanese starting in 1982.

However, it’s likely that most Taiwanese immigrants coming to the US were Mandarin instead of Hokkien speakers. I wasn’t able to find any data correlating household income to language spoken, but I was able to find at least colloquially that Mandarin speakers look down on Hokkien as uneducated or rural, a bias particularly prevalent amongst wealthy urbanites.11

Indeed, in Taiwanese movies and shows, the gangsters and criminals are often depicted speaking Hokkien or Hakka (or potentially another non-Mandarin language that I’m unable to identify). And since Taiwanese Americans are documented to be some of the wealthiest and well-educated ethnic minorities in the US, it makes sense that many Taiwanese Americans would be Mandarin speakers (or they primarily speak Mandarin and did not self-report as Hokkien speakers).

But as for why there are slightly more Hokkien speakers overall, I believe that’s thanks to the expansive Hokkien diaspora in Southeast Asia, which has led to multiple migration paths to the US, including when emigration from mainland China would’ve been banned. The use of Hokkien was so significant that it was served as the lingua franca for all overseas Chinese communities in Southeast Asia instead of Cantonese or Mandarin.12

There were several avenues for Hokkien speakers from different regions in Southeast Asia to immigrate to the US, especially Indonesia and the Philippines (the Philippines also had unrestricted immigration to the US after being annexed as a territory).13 And of course, there came immigrants directly from Fujian, many of whom arrived in NY during the 80’s and 90’s.14

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In conclusion

The Sinophone culture we experience in the US is heavily influenced by migration patterns, and isn’t necessarily an accurate portrayal of the international Sinosphere. A friend from northern China once told me he tried Cantonese food for the very first time while studying abroad in the US. Indeed, a great deal of Chinese restaurants that Americans frequent are Cantonese, which is just one of many different types of Chinese cuisine. But to most Americans, it’s the only thing they think of as “Chinese.”

It’s so interesting how our perceptions of a culture are shaped by our immediate surroundings, and how much migration and trade are shaped by geography and imperialism. What we believe is true may not be at all what reality is. I can’t believe I thought Cantonese was more widely spoken than Shanghainese for so many years. I can’t believe nearly all of Taiwan’s Hokkien speakers are still on the western side of the mountains.

For my parting words—I hope that we can continue to revitalize and pass on local languages and dialects to resist standardization and neocolonial language projects in all forms. I hope that we can all connect with our languages of origin in a way that’s fulfilling and pragmatic. I hope all Indigenous languages will continue to live and thrive.

Hello readers and fellow soy sauce appreciators,

This post started as a simple note on my phone when I was standing in my kitchen, waiting for water to boil. On a whim, I thought it might be fun to figure out where my kitchen pantry items come from.

Kikkoman soy sauce is one of the brands I default to at the Asian grocery store because I grew up with it. It’s a classic, up there with Kokuho rice, Kadoya sesame oil, and Lee Kum Kee chili crisp. I’m sure many of you can relate to this—the comfort of nostalgia and routine. There’s no way of knowing if this is “the best” soy sauce out there, but it has served me well so far. So I will eat this forever.

It struck me that after decades of using Kikkoman soy sauce, I know almost nothing about it. Where is it made? Who makes it? In today’s modern world, our food is created at the intersection of thousands of workers, borders, and policies, yet it lands in the lap of consumers as if by magic. So please, grab a snack, a nice beverage, and join me on this journey to discovering the origins of soy sauce.

The Kikkoman brand

Kikkoman soy sauce is ICONIC. The design has barely changed since my childhood, which I love.

The design’s most recognizable trait is the hexagon at the top, which contains the stylized character 萬 which means “10,000” or “myriad” and is pronounced “man” in Japanese. The hexagon shape alludes to the pattern of turtle shells, which are an auspicious symbol and thought to live a long life of 10,000 years. Turtle shell 亀甲 is pronounced “kikkou” in Japanese, making Kikkoman (turtle shell 10,000) a symbol of longevity and good luck.1

The production of Kikkoman soy sauce (Japanese-style shoyu) can be traced as far back as the 1600’s in Noda, Japan. In 1917 eight family-owned companies merged and became Noda Shoyu Corporation. They later re-branded as Kikkoman International, a publicly traded company on the Tokyo stock market. Current majority owners include the Master Trust Bank of Japan and the Japan Trustee Services Bank.2

If you are in Noda, you can actually visit the Kikkoman Soy Sauce museum for free! You just need a reservation for a tour, and then you can learn all about the different stages of fermentation and soy sauce production. They even have a gift shop and a cafe with soy sauce-flavored ice cream. (Not sponsored, I just really want to go.)

You might think this means all the Kikkoman soy sauce in my kitchen is made in Japan, but all Kikkoman products in the US are produced by Kikkoman Sales USA, Inc., the North American subsidiary. Kikkoman’s production facilities are based in Wisconsin and California.3

Raw material sourcing

Wanting to learn more about what I’m eating, I looked for information about Kikkoman USA specifically. According to their website, Kikkoman soy sauce uses local water, US soybeans, US wheat, and North American salt.4

Fair warning, this is where I start to get like this:

1. Soybeans

The US is the second largest soybean producer in the world at 28% global share (Brazil is the first at 40%).5 Soybeans are also the second-largest crop by acre planted by American farmers, second only to corn.6

The states with the highest production of soybeans are Illinois (16%), Iowa (14%), and Minnesota (8%). In general, American soybean farming is concentrated in the Midwest.

Not only is soybean farming an industry worth billions of dollars, it’s embroiled in trade and immigration issues. China used to be a top buyer of US soybeans. In 2024 alone, the US sold nearly 27 million tonnes to China for $12.6 billion. However after Trump’s tariffs in 2018, China hit back with retaliatory tariffs and drastically decreased their reliance on US soybean. Now they import zero, nada, NO soybeans from the US and make up for it with by trading with Brazil and other South American countries.

This has a significant impact on American agriculture, as soybean used to be by far the largest agricultural export to China. Given the hit to the US economy, it’s no wonder the US has been hitting us with anti-China propaganda.

The soybean farming industry is suffering, not only from the trade wars but from rising costs and shortages in labor. To summarize this economics rabbit hole I fell down:

1. Most cropland in the US is rented (54%) rather than owner-operated, especially for grain production such as soybean and wheat. Of rented farmland, 80% is owned by non-operator landlords, meaning they are not actively involved in farming. Farmers often can’t afford to buy their own land.7

2. Soybean farmers are also hit with heavy costs due to war and tariffs. Fertilizer prices rose due to Russia’s invasion of Ukraine in 2022 (Russia is the only major exporter of all three macronutrients needed in farming). Tariff rates also raised the prices of specialized pesticides from India, a major global supplier.8

3. Agriculture has a high amount of undocumented workers compared to other sectors. Over the last three decades, undocumented workers make up on average about 40% of the labor force. The highest amountof H-2A workers come from Mexico (90%), followed by South Africa at the second highest (chosen for their English proficiency and often employed on highly mechanized corn and soybean farms).9

Despite American agriculture’s reliance on undocumented workers, this has not stopped the Trump administration’s racist and violent ICE campaign. Trump has even suggested that undocumented workers should be registered and pay taxes, but not offered a path toward citizenship.10

Kikkoman doesn’t list their suppliers, so I can’t be sure. But I think it’s highly likely that the soy sauce in my kitchen was made from soybeans grown on rented land in the Midwest, treated with imported fertilizers and pesticides, and farmed by Mexican and South African workers. To all the field workers, machine operators, dock workers, and more in the supply chain, thank you! To all the landlords, no thank you.

While researching, I couldn’t help but wonder. Why soybeans? Corn I can understand, as it’s a crop native to the Americas. Even if the amount of corn we grow today feels unseemly and is mostly not for human consumption, Indigenous peoples have been growing corn for centuries before the US existed. But soybeans are native to Asia, so how did they become one of the most important crops in the US?

After doing some digging, I found that soybean is an incredibly versatile crop. It can be used to make bio-diesel, nutritional feed for pigs and poultry, and food products for human consumption. Because it’s a legume, nitrogen fertilizer is not needed in the production. Since the demand for meat and protein is so high (especially in China and the US) and there’s global pressure to meet low carbon emission goals, it actually makes perfect sense to invest in soybeans.11

Learning all this makes me question carbon emission targets. Corporations and government entities often use these numbers to brag about their environmental sustainability efforts, but they don’t explain how they meet it. Is increasing bio-diesel production really the more sustainable option, if we’re still operating within this system of privatized land and worker exploitation?

2. Wheat

The US ranks fifth in the world in wheat production, with farming concentrated in Kansas (18%) and North Dakota (16%). Interestingly, because of the different types of wheat grown, wheat has both a winter and spring growth calendar in the US, creating a staggered harvest schedule.12

You can see that the wheat and soybean harvest calendars match up in September-October, making October a likely time for crop harvesting, processing, and transporting to either to storage facilities or Kikkoman factories. Autumn is known to be an especially busy time for truck drivers, as supermarkets are stocking up on goods for the winter.13

In terms of US field crops, wheat ranks third in planted acreage (behind corn and soybeans). However unlike corn and soybeans, wheat is primarily grown for human food use, and demand is susceptible to changes in population and consumer preferences. In the past decade, there’s been a rising interest in gluten-free foods and low-carb diets, lowering the demand for wheat.14

Of the wheat grown, only 36% is consumed domestically while 50% is exported.15 The world’s top exporters of wheat are China, India, Russia, US, and Australia while the top importers are comprised primarily of developing countries that have limited wheat production potential (including those in Africa, the Middle East, and Southeast Asia). Specifically, most US-grown wheat goes to Mexico, the Philippines, and Japan.

The divide between developed exporters and developing importers highlights not only a global power dynamic, but how modern agriculture is increasingly led by technological advancements. In the next couple decades, all wheat farms may become smart farms, integrated with Internet of Things (IoT) systems to monitor and analyze the fields for things like soil conditions, weather parameters, crop health, and pest infestations.16

IoT might sound lavish, but I’ve designed IoT interfaces for a client before and it’s actually pretty simple. You take a device with a sensor, like temperature or humidity, and give it an internet connection. Once you start collecting data, you can set up monitoring alerts if something unexpected happens. These kinds of systems are critical for spaces like food warehouses and hospitals, where a change in environment could become a life or death situation. While I have a general disdain for modern tech like AI and bitcoin, IoT feels very utilitarian to me.

I have mixed feelings about the technological advancements of agriculture. I have no doubt that farmers would find the additional information useful, and it could be a game-changer for crop yields. At the same time, technology that promises convenience often turns out to be the complete opposite and behaves poorly, or replaces human jobs, or serves military technology, or all of the above.

3. Water

Soy sauce production requires a significant amount of water, not only in the fermentation process but also wheat and soybean production. For this research, I wanted to focus specifically on water used in the soy sauce making itself, as that needs to be fit for human consumption.

Wisconsin has several sources of water from the Great Lakes and its own lakes and rivers.17 Kikkoman has made multiple donations to higher education institutions for water research, including $1 million to the University of Wisconsin-Milwaukee to establish The Kikkoman Healthy Waters Environmental Health Laboratories in 2013, and another $2 million in 2023 to support the construction of a Great Lakes research vessel.18

This leads me to believe the Great Lakes is likely a primary source of water for Kikkoman, so I looked into the lakes. Due to their location bordering several regions in North America, Great Lakes-St. Lawrence River basin water usage is managed in partnership by Illinois, Indiana, Michigan, Minnesota, New York, Ohio, Pennsylvania, Wisconsin, Ontario, and Québec.19

Specifically for Kikkoman, whose new factory is being built in Jefferson county, located just outside Milwaukee, their designated water source would be Lake Michigan. Water in Jefferson is distributed and monitored by the city’s water department. Jefferson also has four deep water wells, making local groundwater another possible source for Kikkoman.20

Whether the water is sourced from the lake surface water or from groundwater surfaces, all water goes through treatment before being stored and distributed to end users. After use, the water then goes into wastewater treatment and a large portion is returned back to the lake. Water utility workers in this process are likely part of the Utility Workers Union of America (UWUA) or the Wisconsin Laborers’ District Council.

Reading about water as a resource, I can’t help but think about the dangers of privatizing water and the consequences of the water supply breaking down. I think of the Flint water crisis and Enbridge’s oil line construction in the Great Lakes. In Wisconsin, the fight against Enbridge is led by the Bad River tribe and environmental groups, as the pipeline’s crude oil transport from Canada to the US is a threat to Indigenous land, drinking water, local ecosystems, and yes, potentially Kikkoman soy sauce as well.

To all the water utility workers and water defenders, thank you! To Big Oil and the cowards who permit it, burn in hell.

4. Salt

Kikkoman says they use North American salt, which leads me to believe they source salt from a combination of Canada, the US, and possibly Mexico.

Salt is mined from salt deposits, which are often discovered unexpectedly while drilling for oil. The world’s largest underground salt mine is in Goodrich, Ontario, Canada. Other large salt deposits can be found in Michigan, New York, Ohio, Kansas, and along the coastline of Louisiana and eastern Mexico.21

Salt mines are massive underground complexes dug over 1,000 ft deep (about 305 meters). In an interview with a salt miner, Justin, on , he shares that the mine workings are huge and dark, like an “endless warehouse.”

“The only places that have lights are maintenance areas. Your cap lamp or headlights on your truck are usually your only source of light. It’s almost overwhelming when you turn your light off and stand in the dark. Like being in a deprivation pod.”

Justin also shares the process of loading explosives into 20-foot drill holes using a plastic tube. They would load two tons of explosives per shift for three shifts a day (so six tons per day). This all sounds absolutely terrifying to me, and definitely not a job I could do with a steady heart rate. So they have all my admiration.

Given the safety concerns, I looked into salt mining labor organizing. To my surprise, salt mining is considered the least dangerous form of mining (Really? Even with the explosives?) though they still require PPE and must meet Mine Safety and Health Administration standards (MSHA).22 I wasn’t sure if individual salt mines had their own unions, but it seems like the United Steelworkers (USW) union represents workers across mining industries of both metals and non-metals (gypsum, salt, soda ash).23

To all the salt miners and health and safety inspectors, thank you!

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Soy sauce production

First, a quick overview of how soy sauce is made based on Kikkoman’s amazing museum pamphlet:

1. Raw ingredients - soybeans, wheat, salt, water, and microorganisms (aspergillus, lactic acid bacteria, and yeast).

2. Raw ingredient processing - steam soybeans at high temperatures and roast and finely crush wheat.

3. Koji production - add aspergillus to processed soybeans and wheat to make soy sauce koji, a fermentation starter.

4. Shikomi, fermentation, and aging - mix brine (salt and water) with koji to make moromi, then age for about six months.

5. Pressing and refining - pour moromi into cloth and press out. Leave soy sauce to clarify in tanks for several days.

6. Heating and filtration - either heating or filtration can be used to remove microorganisms to adjust color, taste, and aroma.

7. Bottling - pack soy sauce into containers.

8. To your dining table - shipping through distributors.

Kikkoman USA recently announced they’re planning to build another plant, making it their third in the US and second in Wisconsin. Kikkoman plans to invest at least $800 million in the 240,000 square foot facility, and will be awarded up to $15.5 million in tax credits from the Wisconsin Economic Development Corporation.24 Given the struggles of American soybean farms, it makes sense that the Wisconsin government would want to incentivize soybean-related business.

As a location, Wisconsin makes a lot of sense. It’s close to the highest producers of US soybeans and wheat, to Canada, and to the Great Lakes. Wisconsin also has a fairly low cost of living, 1% lower than the national average.25 I also discovered they have the highest percentage of manufacturing workers nationwide, and the state has no taxes on inventory or equipment, all making it ideal for manufacturing.26

In terms of labor organizing, workers are part of the Kikkoman Labor Union of the Kikkoman Corp., which is a member of Food Rengo (JFU), a federation of food-related labor unions based in Japan.27 However, I was unable to find much information for workers in the US. If they are part of a union, I would guess it’s UFCW (United Food & Commerical Workers Union).

To all the Kikkoman machine operators, technicians, bottlers, food scientists, and other workers making our beloved soy sauce, thank you!

In terms of safety practices, Kikkoman has three environmental and workplace safety or health violations filed by EPA and OSHA in the last couple decades (if we include their distributor JFC International, that number rises to eleven).28 I’m no expert on corporate violations so I have no frame of reference, but under five violations over twenty years doesn’t seem too bad? However, I wonder how much goes unreported.

The sustainability practices that Kikkoman applies to their own manufacturing is fascinating, and very logical. They have reduced fossil fuel consumption by using soy sauce oil as carbon-neutral fuel since 1994. This soy sauce oil floats the top while raw soy sauce is stored in a clarifier tank. This means that their manufacturing byproduct can also power the manufacturing process itself. They also engage in other research, such as using soy sauce cake for animal feed and paper products.29

Kikkoman also now uses gas boilers instead of oil boilers, which emit less CO and produce steam more efficiently. There’s no record of what machinery they use in Kikkoman’s US facilities, but I can make some guesses. There are quite a few high-efficiency gas boilers on the market, all going for about $3K-$4K each. I can also guess they’re using industrial fermentation tanks and mixers/blenders in the process.

It’s hard to say where American factories source their machinery in general, though it seems like the US generally imports more than it exports in machinery. The top import partners for machinery in 2024 were Mexico, China, Germany, Japan, and Canada. Given Kikkoman is a Japanese company, perhaps we can assume that the machinery was imported from Japan to help maintain global consistency in their products. However, it’s also worth noting that in 2023-2024, US exports of food-processing machinery rose by 6.5%, and imports decreased by 8.4%. So perhaps Kikkoman USA’s machinery was domestically sourced, I can’t be sure.30

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Shipping and distribution

Kikkoman’s partner JFC International is in charge of their wholesale business. JFC is one of the largest international Asian food and beverage distributors in the world, with several locations in the US.31 Their main four markets are restaurants, Asian grocers, mainstream supermarkets, and the military (booo). On their website, you can find a grand total of 34 Kikkoman soy sauce products they carry.

The construction and maintenance of food distribution warehouses is incredibly finicky, as they must maintain a high level of control and monitoring at all times for food safety. I was able to find a few providers for JFC, one being KBD Group, who provided design-build services for general office space and warehouse storage facilities, and Bastian Solutions, who provided technological improvements to warehouse systems and management.

JFC workers in Illinois are recorded to be part of Teamsters, one of the largest unions in the country (and perhaps the world). In 2014, they were able to negotiate higher wages, stronger retirement contributions, and overtime raises as delivery drivers make overnight runs to markets outside of Illinois.32

Truck driving is a notoriously difficult job. They work long hours, often 80-90 work weeks, since they have to meet tight deadlines and are paid for miles driven. Unable to take breaks on the road, many drivers pee in a bottle and toss it out the window on their long drives. This results in bottles (called trucker bombs, torpedoes, or pee bottles) accumulating by highways and requiring hazardous waste crews to dispose of them.

Some states hit truck drivers with fines for throwing trucker bombs out the window, which is a classic example of policing culture using punishment to address “crime” rather than addressing the root cause. The best solution would be to improve the working conditions for truckers and remove the profit incentive that demands such inhumane schedules.

To the truck drivers, forklift operators, warehouse workers, construction workers, and safety inspectors, thank you!

Some things to ponder

As I sum up my extremely detailed, somewhat unnecessarily long soy sauce research, I can’t help but ask myself some questions about the global supply chain and its relationship to the revolution.

• What does the land back movement look like when considering non-native crops, undocumented people, and international trade?

• What is the best way for workers to organize not only within their industry, but across industries and borders in the supply chain?

• How can food production become more localized while also staying culturally relevant for international settlers?

• How much food do we actually need to produce if we weren’t concerned about profit?

I ask these questions not to be facetious, but to actually provoke thought. I strongly believe in land back and an Indigenous-led, worker-led movement. Studying the supply chain can help us uncover valuable insights to move in solidarity.

I wonder—in the US we import a great deal of our fresh produce from Mexico. The shipping required creates a huge energy cost, and severs the connection between people and land. But if US farmers were incentivized to grow crops outside of corn and soybean, and if they actually had the resources and capital to do so, communities could source produce more locally, both in Mexico and in the US.

I also wonder—could we build a soy sauce factory that exists within a closed-loop, where it’s right next door to a wheat farm, soybean farm, a freshwater source, and pig farm? This way the factory can source its raw materials from close by, use its own soy sauce oil to power machinery, create soy sauce feed for the pigs, and use the pig manure as fertilizer for the crops. And ideally the water sourced can be used for crop irrigation, food processing, and pig water. (Yes, I’m aware that’s just… traditional farming. So much of decolonization is returning to older, slower ways of doing things).

I hope you enjoyed this deep dive into soy sauce as much as I did. Stay curious, resilient, and well-fed. <3

The mixtape concept is inspired by ’s piece Introduction to Afrofuturism: A Mixtape in Black Literature & Arts. Similar to DuEwa’s perspective on the layered and ever-changing nature of Afrofuturism, I also see Chinese and Sinophone culture as incredibly complex. And what better way to showcase multi-cultural eclecticism than a mixtape?

For me, the complexity of the Sinosphere lies in the tension between rapid modernization and centuries-old tradition, of being both the victim and driver of colonialism, of seeming homogenous to foreigners while in reality being home to hundreds of languages, ethnicities, and cultures.

In our modern age, the borders of nations can seem permanent and infallible. But all state lines are a social construct. Only a year after israel declared itself a state, the People’s Republic of China was founded in 1949. Prior to the PRC, the region was home to several dynasties whose borders fluctuated dramatically. Notably, the PRC did not give up the colonies they acquired during the last dynasty, and these colonies are now autonomous provinces (Tibet, “Xinjiang,” and Inner Mongolia).

The tension also lies in the western gaze, from both racist anti-China conservatives and pretentious pro-China Marxists alike. Pro-China tankies are an interesting bunch. They laud the virtues of “Socialism with Chinese characteristics” and treat authoritarian states with the same reverence one might reserve for a religious idol, or perhaps an OnlyFans foot model. I would like to emphasize this mixtape is not part of that world. This mixtape is about feeling and knowing and loving all things in the Sinosphere and rejecting all things capitalist and imperialist, in the most honest and human way possible.

Books, zines, and paper literature

China on Strike: Narratives of Workers’ Resistance
Edited by Eli Friedman, Zhongjin Li, and Hao Ren

China has been the fastest growing major economy in the world for three decades. It is also home to some of the largest, most incendiary, and most underreported labor struggles of our time. China on Strike, the first English-language book of its kind, provides an intimate and revealing window into the lives of workers organizing in some of China’s most profitable factories, which supply Apple, Nike, Hewlett Packard, and other multinational companies. Drawing on dozens of interviews with Chinese workers, this book documents the processes of migration, changing employment relations, worker culture, and other issues related to China’s explosive growth.

I think anyone interested in labor organizing should read this book. Because of its massive manufacturing infrastructure, China is intricately woven into the fabric of global capitalism. The interviews with the workers and their brave resistance against exploitation were incredible. I was particularly taken by the story of the workers who did not march, did not fight the police, but simply walked out and got food. They took the day off the collectively draft a list of demands while their boss freaked out and begged them to come back. Very powerful.

(Of note, the All-China Federation of Trade Unions is the world’s largest union. All unions are required to register under ACFTU and are not allowed to organize independently. How much ACFTU actually represents the interests of laborers and the working class has been called into question.)

We Uyghurs Have No Say: An Imprisoned Writer Speaks
By Ilham Tohti

In Xinjiang, the large northwest region of China, the government has imprisoned more than a million Uyghurs in re-education camps. One of the incarcerated--whose sentence, unlike most others, has no end date--is Ilham Tohti, an intellectual and economist, a prolific writer, and formerly the host of a website, Uyghur Online. In 2014, Tohti was arrested; accused of advocating separatism, violence, and the overthrow of the Chinese government; subjected to a two-day trial; and sentenced to life. […] Here are Tohti's own words, a collection of his plain-spoken calls for justice, scholarly explanations of the history of Xinjiang, and poignant personal reflections. […]

Summary shortened for brevity. See link for full summary.

I really enjoyed this read. Tankies will undoubtedly jump on the chance to call this “Sinophobic” western propaganda, but if you actually pay attention to Tohti’s essays, it’s fairly underwhelming. Yes, he cites several instances of Chinese oppression of Uyghurs, but he doesn’t actually advocate for “separatism” or anything remotely abolitionist or revolutionary.

Instead, he argues that racial prejudice can be solved if Uyghurs and Han Chinese people engaged in a healthy dialog to overcome their cultural differences. He especially wants to see more Uyghurs elected into office and entering the workforce. Honestly, Tohti sounds like the equivalent of a neoliberal Asian-American who goes hard for Andrew Yang. Calling him an extremist is actually hilarious, considering how much he respects China’s borders and status quo.

From Palestine to “Xinjiang”
By Palestine Solidarity Action Network

Since October 7th of last year, many analyses have pointed out that Israel and China have borrowed “counter-terrorism” tactics and surveillance techniques from each other in the context of genocide and settler colonization, but there has been little discussion of the similarities between the two in terms of forced labor and the rule of capital. […] Thus, discerning the relationship between capital and forced labor/settler colonization is particularly important at the present time. With a little comparison, we can see that the structures of oppression for Palestinians and Uyghurs are extremely similar: state-initiated and capital-driven. This article will analyze the structural similarities and differences between forced labor and capital exploitation of Palestinians and Uyghurs from a left-wing perspective. The author hopes to dispel the myth of campism and call for inter-racial/-ethnic/-national proletarian solidarity against the oppression of colonization, capital and totalitarianism.

Summary shortened for brevity. See link for full summary.

If you are a leftist wondering, “What should I think of China?” Read this zine! The partnership between China and israel has flown under the radar for many western leftists, probably because we are (with good reason) preoccupied with western imperialist support of the zionist occupation. I understand that it might seem confusing at first, with the US and China being political enemies and the US being a staunch supporter of israel, but keep in mind China is israel’s 2nd largest trade partner. They are very interconnected.

This zine as well as other education put out by highlights not only the connections of trade and technology between China and israel, but the similarities in lived experience for Uyghurs and Palestinians under militant policing and surveillance. If you’re looking for a shorter read specifically about China’s relationship with the zionist occupation, check out Between Chinese Surveillance and Israeli Settler Colonialism.

Blockchain Chicken Farm: And Other Stories of Tech in China’s Countryside
By Xiaowei R. Wang

In Blockchain Chicken Farm, the technologist and writer Xiaowei Wang explores the political and social entanglements of technology in rural China. Their discoveries force them to challenge the standard idea that rural culture and people are backward, conservative, and intolerant. Instead, they find that rural China has not only adapted to rapid globalization but has actually innovated the technology we all use today. From pork farmers using AI to produce the perfect pig, to disruptive luxury counterfeits and the political intersections of e-commerce villages, Wang unravels the ties between globalization, technology, agriculture, and commerce in unprecedented fashion. […]

Summary shortened for brevity. See link for full summary.

I’m currently reading this book, and I’m obsessed. Wang is an amazing writer who seamlessly weaves their everyday travel interactions with very thorough research. An ongoing trend that Wang identifies is how global capitalism and the free market are primary drivers of food safety and public health crises in China. And yet, to address these issues, Chinese enterprises respond with more privatization and industrialization. Like a wound bandaged by another knife.

It’s very difficult in the west to get unfiltered views of daily life in China. If you rely on English sources, you are likely getting very buttoned-up western propaganda. Even if you speak Chinese and travel to China, you are likely getting the tourist experience. Wang interviews technologists, farmers, police officers, and more all in Chinese and writes about it in English, making this book incredibly intimate and insightful.

From Victory to Defeat: China’s Socialist Road and Capitalist Reversal
By Pao-Yu Ching

How can a country that developed the most advanced socialist society in the history of the world change directions so quickly and so completely? In From Victory to Defeat Pao-yu Ching dissects this question, providing economic analysis of what it means to actually “build socialism” with all of the necessary contradictions and obstacles that must be overcome. Addressing seven commonly asked questions, Pao-yu Ching gives accessible explanations to the complicated issues China faced in its socialist transition and the material basis for its capitalist reversal.

This book available as a free PDF! This is currently on my to-read list, though I’m happy to report that I’ve already lent it to a friend and they found it very informative. A common question that people have is what political/economic system is China actually operating under? Socialism? Communism? Capitalism? From all my family visits to China, I could practically feel the capitalism oozing in the air, but it’s nice to find a resource that explains the transition from communist revolution to state-owned capitalism. And for more about China’s current state, you can check out Why China is capitalist by Lausan Collective.

Open Sesame
By LAVA 北京

There are 4 issues of Open Sesame. Here is the description for the 4th issue:

We might joke that we can’t live without Taobao, but for some people it is a literal matter of life or death. The 4th issue of Open Sesame, a magazine about the world of Taobao, revolves around the topic of Staying Alive and how important Taobao was during the pandemic. From Covid protection gear for dogs to whole cling-film wrapped cakes to sketchy home remedy pills, Taobao provides for all of your needs while you’re stuck inside. The publication is full of witty articles introducing weird images and products on the site, showing a side of Taobao you’ve never seen before.

This magazine is so nutty, so unhinged, so deliciously freaky. I recommend it to everyone who has an interest in design, technology, and internet culture. I bought issues 2 and 3 from Stack and am searching for an affordable way to buy issue 4 as we speak. It does an amazing job of highlighting the madness of consumerist culture and the sort-of-but-also-not free market economy in China.

ISSUE 7: China 中国
By Logic(s)

The “world’s factory” has long been patronized as a place of copying, rather than creativity. But in fact, since its founding, the People’s Republic has been driven by dreams of rapid modernization and innovation, with engineers turned politicians drafting policy at Zhongnanhai. Apps in China now operate at scales American entrepreneurs only dream of. Our China issue explores the situation on the ground, from biometric surveillance of Muslims in Xinjiang to the new global map that Chinese tech is drawing.

This magazine is also on my to-read list. Of note, this issue was published in 2019. I’ll be curious to experience Chinese literature from pre-Covid times and compare it to today. Modern technology has completely transformed Chinese society, to the point where cash is virtually never used and all payments and interactions are tracked digitally. My older relatives have a difficult time keeping up. I had to manually add myself on my grandma’s Wechat because she couldn’t figure out how to do it. This has a huge impact on all Chinese elders, as everything is done on Wechat and Alipay these days. I support all literature that explains the rapid modernization in China and its global impact without falling into the xenophobic trap of demonizing all non-western regimes.

Bullshit Jobs in China
By Krish Raghav

This zine collects all 8 “Bullshit Jobs” comics (as seen on Twitter) + an exclusive 9-page post-script that goes into the creation and future of work, dignity and pointlessness in China today.

Raghav’s comics highlight an underlying trend of technology claiming to make life seamless, convenient, and hassle-free when in fact it actually introduces more problems. More work. And more exploitation. While it focuses on bullshit specific to China, I think this is actually relatable to bullshit globally. Because how many of us actually want to use the mandated AI feature?

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Indie publishers and shops

Paradise Systems

Paradise Systems publishes exemplary comics in translation. Inspired by, but unfaithful to comic conventions, we seek to create a community of writers and readers that relish in weird, sincere, experimental storytelling. Since 2017, we’ve released 26 comics, including Naked Body, the first major anthology of Chinese comics to be published in English.

Paradise Systems is my go-to for Chinese indie books, comics, and zines. I’d like to shout out The South Park, a comic created by gantea, who was born in Urumqi (the capital of Xinjiang).

Z I N E C O O P shop

Founded in 2017, ZINE COOP is the first collective and platform in Hong Kong dedicated to promoting zine culture through grassroots publishing and DIY creativity. Founding members 4res (Forrest Lau) and Beatrix Pang are passionate about editorial design, book arts, and building community connections through zine making and education.

An absolutely beautiful collection of zines from independent artists and writers in Asia. If you a dollar-user not based in Hong Kong, don’t let the high prices fool you, as all listings are in HK dollars. I have to admit, I am trying to avoid ordering international goods as US tariffs on all imports are pretty ridiculous right now. But if I could, I would buy this entire store.

50 Watts Books

50 Watts is a bookstore with a focus on visually-striking and unusual books from around the world -- incredible art books and artists’ books, surreal picture books, graphic design icons, underground comics, risograph zines, Writers No One Reads, deep backlist finds, odd vintage arcana, and funky gift books, prints, and ephemera. Expect to find lots of publications from Japan and Europe.

Yeah, westerners are obsessed with Japan lol. But there are also a few Chinese and Sino-centric gems here as well. I have bought quite a few Chinese and Arabic typography and graphic design books from this store.

Online blogs and publications

Known in English as the Palestine Solidarity Action Network, this organization puts out valuable political education about global solidarity with Palestine with a focus on Chinese audiences. They created the aforementioned zine From Palestine to “Xinjiang”. More content can also be found on their instagram.

Chaoyang Trap is a newsletter about everyday life on the Chinese internet. It’s a regular, usually fortnightly, exploration of contemporary China, one important niche at a time. We’re interested in marginal subcultures, tiny obsessions, and unexpected connections. We want to feel like the best group chat you’ve ever been in.

The OG newsletter. Chaoyang Trap was the first substack that I ever became obsessed with due to how incredibly weird they are. Their posts are written in a group chat format, with multiple people chiming in to talk about anything from advanced lesbianism to Taiwanese indie to Wechat stickers. They are very grounded in the abundance of China’s rich internet culture, and promote nuanced rather than black-and-white thinking.

We bring you stories created by Chinese visual journalists, artists, and filmmakers in Chinese media, and provide analysis of the important social and cultural topics in the country. China is a complicated, multifaceted society that deserves to be understood from diverse points of view. Far & Near seeks to provide human-centric coverage centering on agency and autonomy, and help people understand the country from the inside, beyond geo-political headlines.

I discovered Far & Near through their collab post with Chaoyang Trap on Covid lockdown, specifically the controversy surrounding the rigid zero-Covid policy and unsafe quarantine centers. They also wrote a post about the blank paper protests following the deaths of those trapped in a fire in Urumqi. I love the honesty and vulnerability of their visual storytelling.

Lausan Collective

Members of Lausan Collective came together in 2019 in order to translate and amplify left interventions in Hong Kong’s Anti-Extradition Bill movement. We saw the need for a platform for critical left voices in the city’s ongoing movement for self-determination and the possibilities of connecting it with other liberatory uprisings across the world.

…Our transnational work centering on Hong Kong has also brought us into contact with others across Asia who also resist authoritarianism and neoliberalism. This has made regional solidarity a long-running aspect of our work and we aim to continue providing a space for political discussion and international solidarity with ongoing struggles in Hong Kong and its diasporas from a radical left perspective.

About description shortened for brevity. See link for full description.

I was very heavy into Lausan during the days of early Covid, when there was both rising anti-Chinese and anti-Asian racism in the US as well as tons and tons of news about the protests in Hong Kong. This was a strange time for me, as the same people who criticized the violent, anti-Black police response toward racial justice protesters in the US also lauded the HK police response toward HK protesters.

Something important that most Americans don’t seem to grasp is that HK and mainland China are culturally, linguistically, and politically in different worlds, and that HK was a Qing Dynasty colony before it was a British colony. HK is also an incredibly diverse city with all the racial and class struggles that come with being a global economic hub. And so I really appreciate Lausan’s focus on uplifting workers and migrants and their strong stance against nationalism and imperialism.

Northern Square

我们向大海走去
树洞投稿请私信

My attempt at translation: We go toward the sea. Please DM to submit anonymous accounts.

Northern Square is an instagram account that covers direct actions, political prisoners, and first-hand accounts in China. A great deal of their reporting is in Chinese, with some English translation. I am particularly taken by their post on “Stories from Xinjiang” with anonymous reports on policing, surveillance, and incarceration experienced.

Malaya Movement

China, hands off the Philippines! Defend Philippine Sovereignty!

Malaya Movement USA joins the Filipino people in strongly condemning the latest water cannon attacks by the Chinese Coast Guard against Philippine vessels near the Pag-Asa Cay 2. This recent incident comes amidst increasing tensions in the territory, fueled by ever-increasing US military presence in the region.

This one is not a blog but rather a full-on political campaign. Malaya Movement is a grassroots organization that advocates for human rights in the Philippines. Specifically in their campaign to defend Philippine sovereignty, they detail how US and Chinese militarism in the West Philippine Sea endangers the Filipino people. This is a great example of how the impending “war with China” threat will ultimately have a greater impact the surrounding, more disenfranchised parts of Asia (at least, that’s my prediction).

88 Bar

88 Bar (八八吧, pronounced bābāba in Mandarin) is a group blog about tech, media and design in China and the rest of the Sinophone world. Our “bar” is a virtual space for our writers to come together and explore ideas as a group. While we don’t have a fixed editorial mandate, we have covered several topics regularly over the years: Ethnography of Tech, China Meme Report, Typography Design, State Capitalism Watch.

I can’t quite remember how I came across 88 Bar. I think it’s from discovering this post about Chinese typography, which discusses why Chinese fonts are so incredibly difficult to make. (Because it doesn’t fucking have an alphabet! It’s just thousands and thousands of characters!!)

What I appreciate about 88 Bar is that they speak out against western orientalism and over-simplified takes on China, but are by no means state-apologists for China either. Rather, a driving belief to their work is that to commentate on China you really must seek to fully understand China and how its technology, language, arts, society, and culture are all inter-connected.

Radii

RADII (rā’dē-ī’) is a multi-brand media platform of artists, writers, and creators dedicated to providing a window into from the rarely explored sides of Asian youth culture. Founded in 2017, RADII produces multimedia content, articles, and events that empower young, globally-minded thinkers. In 2023, RADII joined forces with Goldthread, originally launched under the banner of the South China Morning Post, to further revolutionize perceptions of contemporary Asian culture around the world.

I was somewhat hesitant to include Radii because they are the most mainstream and algorithm-driven media source of the bunch. Also worth noting, South China Morning Post is owned by tech giant Alibaba, which was co-founded by Chinese billionaire Jack Ma. Ma is so strange that he once left Elon Musk speechless. So that should give you an idea of kind of money behind this operation.

However, I’ve noticed that tankies will have you believe that everyone in China is a smiling peasant eager to study communism and filled with nationalist pride. So in the interest of discovering what modern culture is really like in China, you have Radii for that.

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Films

Ascension
By Jessica Kingdon

Ascension is the only documentary to make it to my list of all-time favorite movies. It’s a visually stunning display of labor in China, starting from grueling factory work and going up the social ladder to business dinners with the wealthy bourgeoisie. Middle class workers in particular projected an anxiety that was palpable through the screen, as their place in the social ladder was the most precarious. They desperately wanted to join the ranks at the top, but they could fall down at any moment if they fell out of line or questioned their boss. I recommend this to all interested in labor and class.

All films directed by Zhang Yimou

Zhang Yimou is known as one of China’s greatest directors of the Fifth Generation. He’s one of my favorite directors, and I genuinely recommend watching any and all of his work. Quite a few of his films have been banned from being shown in China for their critiques of the PRC and CCP.

Specifically, I recommend To Live for following the struggles of a family through three decades of immense social unrest:

As well as The Story of Qiu Ju for its critique of bureaucracy and paternalism:

Something to keep in mind is that these films are fictional stories. I agree with their criticisms of the mob mentality of red guards and the unreasonable bureaucracy of the Chinese state. But the historical events that occur in these films should be taken with a grain of salt, as they are from a creative perspective.

Uproar in Heaven
Produced by Shanghai Arts and Film Studio

Nothing hits quite like the Monkey King. This animation is a work of art and quintessential piece of Chinese culture, as is any retelling of the Journey to the West (西游记). For whatever reason, modern adaptations of the Journey to the West seem to paint Sun Wukong either as a social outcast who just wants to fit in and make friends, or as a dark, grim video game protagonist.

Seriously? Sun Wukong is a cunty freak whose primary personality trait is being rebellious. He’s clever, cunning, and confrontational, and his challenging of social hierarchies makes him a threat to all heavenly bureaucrats in the fictional world. In fact, I’d argue that he symbolizes the hidden rebellious spirit that lives in all Chinese people (how else would he’d gotten so popular?) Perhaps this is why modern retellings change him to be more conformist, as an attempt to maintain social order.

Nezha Conquers the Dragon King
Produced by the Shanghai Arts and Film Studio

Funny story, I recently asked my grandma if she’s seen the Nezha. I was referring to the new record-breaking, billion-dollar 3D version that is Nezha 2. But my grandma said yes, thinking I was asking about this charming 1979 version.

Nezha 2 is a fascinating movie because it has become the highest-grossing animated film in history, and one of the top 10 highest-grossing films of all time, making it yet another threat to US world domination (you think I’m joking, but it’s true). Entertainment has historically been dominated by Hollywood, and can be seen as another propaganda tool (this is why so many people worldwide think the US is so marvelous, and often don’t find out the truth until coming here).

The success of the film has led to a huge surge of nationalist pride in China, as well as online censorship of Nezha 2 criticism. If you’re familiar with K-pop fan culture, then you are probably aware that East Asian fans like to weaponize their numbers to prove a point. I was amused to find out that hoards of people would keep buying tickets to ensure the movie would remain a success. It terms of box office profit, it dominated in every province except for Shanghai (where part of my family is from). Disgusted, some Chinese netizens scoffed, “They like foreign films with their coffee.”

If you want my take, Nezha 2 is just okay. The animation is technologically impressive, if not sporadic and nausea-inducing sometimes. The story has its ups and downs, and did not particularly move me. I wouldn’t see it again (and that’s really my opinion of Chinese nationalism in a nutshell).

Until next time

You may be wondering, what the hell? No music in a mixtape?

Not this time, no. As I was curating this collection I found myself far more interested in reading materials, and I didn’t want to half-ass the music section. I’m also hoping to watch many more Chinese political films in the coming year. So with any luck, look forward to music, movies, physical spaces, and more in Anti-Colonial Chinese Mixtape vol. 2.

My podcast technique

This is a language learning technique that has served me well in the past few years, which I call active listening.

This is the opposite of passive listening, where I put on a podcast or watch a show while doing the dishes or riding the bus. If I don’t understand something while passive listening, that’s fine. I’m just trying to listen to as much as possible.

Active listening is where I listen to a podcast while reading the transcript with the intent of understanding as much as I can, annotating the transcript for new vocab. Sometimes, I listen to the same episode several times, and often read the transcript out loud.

This has several benefits—the written language is reinforced by the audio, so I’m reading and listening at the same time. I can also practice speaking in a way that copies the cadence and pronunciation of a native speaker. The content also gives me a list of vocabulary that I can add to my word bank.

Let me take you through the entire process.

First, I identify a podcast that’s at an appropriate level for me. I should be able to understand at least 60-70% without having to look anything up (I usually consider understanding less than 50% as too challenging for me).

Then, I download the transcript (these are usually available for free or for a small fee if you can find the podcast’s website or Patreon). For Mandarin, I almost always use Talk to Me in Chinese 聊聊东西, whose transcripts are available on Patreon.

It’s important for me to download the transcript as opposed to simply watching the subtitles, since I like to annotate. I open the transcript on my tablet (I use CollaNote, it’s free with ads but you can use whatever document app you want). Then, I begin a series of listens in 10-minute segments.

1. In the first pass, I read and listen while highlighting words I don’t know.

2. In the second pass, I mark every 30 seconds with my level of comprehension (which I measure by my ability to explain it in my native language).

   1. Check (✔️) - I can explain everything

   2. Tilde (~) - I can explain the general idea

   3. Cross-out (x) - I can explain practically nothing

3. Then, I tally everything up. Check is 1 points, tilde is 0.5, cross-out is 0. For example, if I get 17/20 points, that means I understood 85% of the material. This is a useful reference to look back on if I want to measure my progress

   

4. In the third pass, I listen again and try to guess the highlighted words based on context clues. When I have free time, I go through and look them all up, and then write the pronunciation and meaning in the margins.

After these initial three steps, which I think of as my foundation to starting out a new episode, every session is essentially the same 10-20 min.

1. I listen to a 10-minute segment while reading the transcript.

2. If I have energy, I read out loud what I just listened to.

If there’s something I’m not sure how to pronounce, I can go back to that segment and listen again, then copy them. This is similar to shadowing, where you copy the speech as you listen, but I prefer listening to a whole segment first before speaking. What you do is up to you!

I also make sure to give myself permission to stop after only listening/reading if I’m busy or feeling low energy that day. Or maybe I’ll read 5 min instead of 10 min. Language learning is not a race, and I care more about consistency and longevity than speed. (This is how I can still keep going after 4 years.)

This is a great routine to have, especially once you’ve finished the initial passes and annotations, because after that you can simply pull up the podcast and listen/read over and over again.

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Perhaps you have some questions

What counts as “Check (✔️) - I can explain everything”?

This is a great question, as sometimes I’m unsure if I should mark a segment as check (✔️) or tilde (~). I generally believe that even if there are words I technically don’t know in a given segment, as long as I’m able to guess them all from context clues with confidence, I count that as a check (✔️).

If I’m really unsure, then I just start explaining the segment in English. If I find there are big gaps in my explanation, for example, “They went to…this place a few years ago, and then applied for…a thing, and they thought it was really challenging and…something else,” then it’s for sure a tilde (~).

How often do you do active listening?

My goal is to do active listening for Mandarin twice a week, which I meet most of the time. I also try to listen to at least 20 min of content everyday (for passive listening).

Even though an active listening session is only 10-20 min long, it does require an intense level of focus. Twice a week feels like the most sustainable cadence for me to maintain. However, if you have more capacity and/or a shorter deadline for your target language, I might go as often as 4-5 times a week.

How do I find the right podcasts for me?

If you’re not sure where to start, just look up “[language] intermediate podcast” or “learn [language] podcast.” Then, just give it a listen. If you’re able to understand 60-70% of the content, then it’s at the right level for you.

Also, I like being a little internet detective. So if you want me to help you out, just hit me up.

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How do you study the new vocab you learned?

This is a tricky question. I used to make flashcards on Quizlet for all new vocab that I picked up from all sources—HSK vocab lists, reading, active listening, and whatever themed sets I felt like making (e.g. body parts).

I also used to practice writing new vocab on character sheets and repeating the word out loud (shout out to other ABC kids who went to Sunday Chinese school). This was especially helpful in my HSK 2 and 3 days, when I really needed to build a foundation of basic characters.

To be honest, I haven’t had the capacity to do flashcards or writing drills for a while, so for vocab retention I’ve just been trying to do as much repetition with podcast episodes as possible. Depending on your capacity, any of these tactics could work for vocab retention.

Tldr, learn vocab through:

• Flashcards

• Writing drills

• Listening repetition

Why don’t you use a reading app instead?

You may be wondering, why don’t I just use apps that have an audio and reading component, like Maayot and Du Chinese? This way, I don’t have to manually look up the words, I can just use their built-in translations. Well, there are a few reasons:

• There’s a whole world of content out there with podcasts

• You can support individual creators and teachers this way

• If the podcast is more conversational or non-scripted, you can listen to and speak more like native speakers

• Reading apps often use more formal language that is only used in texts

That’s not to say I don’t use reading apps, I used to use Maayot almost religiously and Du Chinese is currently part of my daily routine. But I also think podcasts are an amazing resource for more conversational practice.

I don’t have a tablet or large touchscreen, can I still do active listening?

Yes of course, if you don’t have a tablet you can do active listening by printing out the transcript and annotating by hand, or using a PDF annotation software on your computer. I just use my tablet for convenience.

I don’t know how to read in my target language, what do I do?

This is pretty common for heritage speakers, where if you grew up with the language at home, your speaking and listening abilities are fairly strong but you don’t know have a formal education.

I would say in this case, don’t jump into active listening right away. Focus on learning the writing system of your target language first, and practice reading through some simple, beginner-level texts or books for children.

When you feel like you have a good grasp of the writing system, I recommend trying out beginner-level podcasts. Do not use podcasts geared toward native speakers, as these will probably be too advanced, and start with 5 min instead of 10 min sessions. Even if you find the listening content too easy, remember your focus is on catching your reading abilities up with your listening.

As you feel more comfortable, you can work up to more intermediate podcasts and longer sessions. And if you’re a heritage speaker, I’m sure you’ll pick up fairly quickly.

How did you learn about this technique? Are you a teacher or linguist?

I am not a teacher, linguist, or even academic in any way! I’m actually a designer who is passionate about learning languages in my free time. I primarily learn Mandarin to connect with my family’s culture of origin.

I was inspired by the many self-study learners and language enthusiasts online, especially on youtube. After watching several polyglot videos for inspiration, I made this one up.

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More for the language lovers out there

If you’re on the language learning journey, I have some more goodies for you.

Here, I talk more about my general approach to learning languages and some more techniques that I use in my self-study routine:

The main takeaway from that post is my routine of Plan, Do, and Reflect. Plan your language learning routine and identify all the materials to use, do the actual learning activities, and reflect on how the routine is going.

And if you’re also a masochist like I am and learning Mandarin Chinese, you can check out this master list of resources I made:

The list includes my favorite Mandarin podcasts, which you can try out for active listening or just listen to in general, as well as a selection of my favorite apps, shows, and movies for Mandarin learning.

I hope this was helpful for your learning journey!

Spring of 2025. I was moving apartments after living in the same spot for years, and I had accumulated tons and tons of junk.

As I embarked on the weeks-long declutter journey, I finally admitted to myself what years of working from home, depression, and injury had led to—I hated about 80% of my clothing. I wanted to get rid of them all.

It was around this time my good friend started making me think more deeply about clothes. I call them a fashion influencer (even though they hate that word) because I was inspired by how they documented their closet and put so much thought into fabrics. It made me realize how much I avoided getting dressed and posing for pictures. What I thought was a temporary side effect of quarantine was perhaps a much larger, subconscious effort to avoid being seen.

Fast forward 9 months, I have now created what some might call a capsule wardrobe, about 50 pieces not counting accessories and jewelry, filled with meticulously thrifted items using an attention to detail, color, material, and fit that I have never before attempted. That 80% clothing that I didn’t like? I donated all of it to clothing swaps and thrift stores and started over.

I like systems, I like tracking data, and I like new projects. So I really enjoyed re-doing my entire wardrobe. I also like efficiency and versatility, so it made sense why I went for a capsule wardrobe. But in the process, amidst the casual research and inspiration, I also became fascinated by the tension between over and under consumption in modern fashion culture.

I had first encountered the concept of a capsule wardrobe about a decade ago when I was trying to live without the financial support of my family for the first time. The idea of a small collection of clothing that I could easily mix and match to create countless combinations was appealing to me.

But at that time, I wasn’t earning a lot of money, I hadn’t come out as nonbinary, and I wasn’t very good at thrifting. I couldn’t figure out why my capsule wasn’t working, but these were the invisible barriers I was up against. So I gave up.

Back to Spring of 2025, where I had plenty of expendable income, I was happily nonbinary, and I was still not good at thrifting.

Thankfully, that was about to change. was the catalyst who sold me on the virtues of feeling good in your clothes, all-natural materials, minimizing pollution, and harm reduction in labor exploitation. Whereas I previously thought that caring too much about clothes meant you were materialistic and just feeding into over-consumption, I realized that intentional fashion was a way to treat your body, the environment, and the labor economy with care and intent.

(Pea Prince/ss runs a Substack called “dress rehearsals” that you can check out below.)

dress rehearsals

putting my pants on two legs at a time (and other experiments in getting dressed)

By Pea Prince/ss

Suddenly, I found myself watching endless and endless fashion content. How to prepare for seasonal changes, how to mix and match, how to find those essential wardrobe pieces. I especially became addicted to the side of youtube that focused on thrifting and capsule wardrobes, sifting through them for advice and thrifting tips. They had some pretty good stuff, and I was optimistic about change

But what really struck me was the corporate misery of it all.

How ironic it seemed to me, that a capsule wardrobe—meant to embrace all the elements of minimalism, frugality, and pragmatism—had become entrenched in the capitalist machine. I thought a capsule wardrobe was about consuming less, not more.

But these influencer talking-heads, some of which looked suspiciously AI-generated, came at me with the 5 basics everyone absolutely needs, the 12 essentials to every wardrobe. The must-have’s of the Summer 2024 capsule. The Fall 2024 capsule. The Winter 2024 capsule. The Winter 2025 capsule, it’s not too late. The beige trench coat. The plain white tee. The chino pants. The denim shacket.

Of course the fashion industry would grab onto the capsule wardrobe as a marketing ploy. Why sell just one item of the season’s newest trends when you could sell an entire collection?

And make sure consumers feel like their entire reputation depends on it. No self-respecting, white collar working professional would miss out on this over-priced grey wool blend blazer made in a sweat shop in Bangladesh! Get it now while you can! But don’t worry because if you don’t, it’ll just end up in the landfill to make way for the next season’s hottest new blazer that actually looks exactly the same.

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Under capitalism, growth is better, progress is more. As long as it makes more money, your business is successful, and it doesn’t matter how many landfills you clutter or workers you exploit. The capsule wardrobes that dominate the internet are not only about selling fashion, but selling a lifestyle of “quiet luxury” and “corporate casual.”

Interestingly, this aesthetic of bland neutrals and Parisian mimicry is the hallmark of the capsule wardrobe aesthetic. This claim that “these timeless classics will never go out of style” when really it’s just full of trends of the middle class western canon. Nothing is timeless, everything changes, but they don’t want you to believe that.

But from my perspective, that’s not necessarily what a capsule wardrobe is. It’s only one version. Sure, this corporate vanilla version is the most popular one, but I would argue you can also have your pink Barbie dream house version. Your goth e-girl version. Your cunty librarian grandma version. Your trans skater punk version. Your third-time divorced auntie with no kids version. To me, a capsule wardrobe is more of a system and a mindset of organizing your wardrobe than it is a specific list of items.

For example, this amazing video by StealTheSpotlight showing 35 outfits from 11 items that is not corporate vanilla at all.

Since I was in the middle of moving, I hated the idea of owning things that I didn’t use (I was confronted with this reality everyday as my packing became more and more desperate). I wanted a wardrobe that I could actually wear, that I felt good in. But the typical capsule wardrobes either bored me or creeped me out. So in my quest of constructing a capsule wardrobe of my own, I started watching fashion content creators that were much more wacky, creative, and out of the box.

I really enjoyed the work of Beep World (Hi !) and YO’ HOMEGIRL, both of whom have explosions of color and texture in their wardrobes. Even though their styles are vastly different from mine and I probably wouldn’t wear most of their wardrobes, I really enjoy watching how they own their style. The level of thought they put into different outfits depending on the weather, activity, and setting is incredibly impressive.

I don’t even wear skirts and I don’t own a single dress, but I love watching Liz talk about skirts:

I have also never been drawn to colorful, floral sweater vests until I saw this video specifically:

It was also at this time I realized my lack of attention to my clothes pointed to a more concerning lack of attention to my body. I’m someone who gets cold easily, I have multiple joint injuries, my muscles get chronically tight, and my skin is sensitive and prone to itching. What capitalism and ableism has taught me is to ignore my bodies’ needs in the pursuit of productivity, and while I thought I had liberated myself from this antiquated thinking, alas. I was still in it.

I’m no expert on somatics, but I do know that one of the core concepts is the connection between the physical and mental state, and that you can care for your mental state by attending to your physical state, and vice versa. But how can you care for yourself if you’re not aware of what you’re feeling?

Back to Spring 2025. I was already about a year into weightlifting and physical therapy from a bad back injury. I realized that part of the reason my body felt so crooked was because my brain had lost connection to certain muscles, and I was over-engaging others. My joints were mis-aligned. I needed to reconnect my brain to my muscle fibers the same way I needed to reconnect it to the nerve endings on my skin.

I didn’t even have a good idea of what temperature meant. 50s, 60s, 70s, these numbers meant nothing to me (and probably nothing to you if you use Celsius like the rest of the world). I had stopped checking the weather long ago and just threw on whatever coat I thought wouldn’t leave me too hot or too cold, even though I do get too hot or too cold quite easily. My lack of attention to my surroundings was a problem. I needed to take better care of myself.

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Capitalism is both powered by and promotes ableism. Ableism encourages us to abandon our bodies in the pursuit of profit. We must reject ableism! We must listen to and attend to our needs! So I thrifted a line-up of jackets and recorded which ones felt good to me at different temperatures. I started documenting when an outfit or piece of clothing felt right for the day’s weather, and when it felt off. My awareness is increasing.

The last thing I studied was color. Okay, listen, I’ve been doing art in some kind of professional and academic capacity for decades. So it always confused me why the color palette of my clothes felt so…off. Like they didn’t look right together and they didn’t look right on my body. I finally realized that I was judging the color as seen on the rack, not on my own skin tone, and I was looking at the item alone, not in a collection.

I needed to think of color as a system where my skin tone was the centerpiece, which I’d never done before. I usually bought clothing on a whim or whenever I badly needed a functional piece. Not anymore!

The western fashion industry focuses on color that looks flattering on white people and lighter skin tones (though this has definitely improved in recent years). Mainstream Chinese fashion is also geared toward fair skin as the ultimate beauty standard (do not get me started on these skin whitening salons and products). I learned that I needed to study what colors looked good on my skin tone, which is darker even compared to other Chinese people.

To be clear, I’m not someone who believes in racial justice through “representation.” Diversity definitely can’t save us all. But it is telling that I grew up in mostly white neighborhoods, and most of the clothing advertisements I’ve seen in my life are on white models.

While looking for inspiration, I got really into Asian fashion, especially the Japanese city boy aesthetic.

And of course I got very into the fashion on Street Dance of China, especially Wang Yibo:

There is something very affirming about having a personal color palette. It feels like I’m no longer running away from my ethnicity. When I was younger, I remember subconsciously wanting to look more white. And even as I worked through that internalized racism as I got older, I don’t think I fully realized how much my ignoring my clothes was an extension of not wanting to draw attention to my skin tone.

We should want to wear what is most flattering to us. We should want to look good in our own skin.

once mentioned that it’s important for South Asians to wear gold jewelry, not only for the beauty and cultural significance but because for women, this is a form of wealth you can own, inherit, and pass down. For Chinese people, the equivalent would be jade.

I never gave jewelry much thought before, but now I always try to wear at least one item of jade jewelry, whether it’s a pendant, a bangle, or a ring. Jade is meant to have protective qualities and grows more beautiful over time (I believe because the oils from your skin help polish it). I’ve also begun to collect sterling silver rings, which I’ve been able to scout out at Mexican flea markets and Asian malls.

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Lastly, I am pushing myself to embrace change.

I have a habit of undergoing massive re-organizing projects that dramatically shift my life upside down, and then entertaining the delusion that I’m done with this forever, I don’t need to think about this anymore. My wardrobe is finished for good and it will remain this way until the day I die.

While I intentionally bought items with a looser fit that can accommodate fluctuations in weight, I am challenging myself to think of my wardrobe, as with everything else, as something that belongs in a cycle. My style will change, my needs will change, my environment might change, the world will change. I will change.

I sincerely hope I won’t have to do such a dramatic purge of my wardrobe again, and that I can simply re-evaluate my inventory a few times a year, removing items to donate and identifying new items needed (you know, like a normal person). But more specifically, I hope that I can continue these gentle check-in’s with my wardrobe as a way to make sure I am in an intentional relationship with my body, my environment, and everything that connects us.

I watch a lot of TV. Growing up as a 90’s kid, I always have.

My taste in media hasn’t changed all that much in the past 10 years. I still enjoy dramas, thrillers, sci-fi/fantasy, and the occasional sitcom or anime. I love a good story. But my politics have evolved significantly.

I don’t think I need to recap the past 10 years because we all lived through it. But a lot of shit happened. And whereas before I saw capitalism as an inevitable truth of our world, I now understand it to be the violent exploitation of people, land, and resources for the benefit of the ruling class. Add policing and prisons, and you get fascism. Add international exploitation, and you get imperialism. Add white supremacy, and you get the United States.

(Add Hindu nationalism and you get India, add Han nationalism and you get China, you get the idea.)

These days, I’m watching TV with a different worldview, and I’m noticing messages that I probably wouldn’t have ten years ago. Stories that glorify policing, imperialism, a lack of accountability. Not necessarily because that’s the main takeaway, but almost as if the creators don’t know how else to tell a story.

We love watching TV, these are the kinds of stories that deeply affect our psyche. They are fictional, but they influence how we feel and think, and ultimately how we behave. I don’t believe we should censor our media intake, but I do hope that we can enjoy our TV while being aware of the subliminal messaging.

Warning for spoilers up ahead for Demon Slayer, Arcane, Attack on Titan, Squid Game, and Queer Ultimatum.

How do we abolish the cop in our head if they’re a cute anime character?

Demon Slayer was a fun watch. Even though the action sequences sometimes dragged on and the story borrowed heavily from predecessors, I enjoyed the art and thought the character design was beautiful. But the plot was more or less glorified copaganda.

What do I mean by that? Well, it had a classic monster-of-the-week narrative where the demon in question was responsible for the crimes committed against whatever village of innocent humans that Tanjiro and the gang encountered. Tanjiro also had a tragic backstory where demons attacked his family and turned his sister into a demon, prompting him to commit to training to be worthy of the demon slayer academy.

Training to become stronger to defeat evil beings? Sounds like Tanjiro wants to become a cop.

Most copaganda portrays a literal police or state military force. I consider this show a more subtle form because demon slayers don’t actually call themselves cops. But fundamentally, police think of themselves as heroes who swoop in to save innocents from criminals, and that is the role demon slayers play in this world.

In this case, the demons were a metaphor for criminals. There were weaker, lone demons (petty crime), a ring of powerful demons led by the final boss (organized crime), and certain demons, often beautiful women, who were deemed “good” but still demons nonetheless (non-violent crime).

You can’t solve crime by targeting crime, you need to address the root of crime. The problems that common people face aren’t caused by demons, but by capitalist exploitation and fascist violence. Furthermore, people living in a given neighborhood already have a strong grasp of what they need, and outsiders swooping in to save the day often cause more problems than not.

Above all, Demon Slayer enforces a mentality of policing. It fortifies the cop in our head by glorifying punishment as the solution. Meet the villagers, kill the demon, save the day. Next.

But if we take stealing as an example, why would someone steal? Is it because they’re evil, or is it because they need food? So if we understand they need food, why can’t they afford to buy it? Is it because they’re evil, or is it because the food cost is too high and their job doesn’t pay enough, or they can’t work for some reason? The more we go down this train of thought, the more we realize we throw out tons of food every year to keep the cost of food high enough for Big Food to make a profit.

We should not kill the food-stealing demon. Instead, we should be assisting all the food-stealing demons in creating a network of sustainable local food production. We should overthrow the feudal lords who create a system of exploitation and scarcity so that food producers own the means of production. Demon Slayers are out, Demon Community Organizers are in. Where’s the anime about that?!

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Shut up about both sides, shut up about both sides, shut up about both sides

When I say “both sides,” I am referring specifically to the argument that the occupation of Palestine is a “conflict” instead of an active form of settler colonization. It is the neoliberal belief that violence is everyone’s fault. If only we could stop fighting, then we can achieve peace! /sarcasm

While the shows Arcane and Attack on Titan aren’t a direct analogy for the zionist occupation, there are several elements that echo the “both sides” belief.

The people of the Undercity in Arcane are painted as violent thugs living in poverty, either dealing or addicted to drugs. The antagonist Silco, a creepy-looking gang leader, is seen as conniving and ambitious for wanting to separate the Undercity from Piltover and found the independent city of Zaun.

Okay, let’s be real. The people of the Undercity are oppressed. They are violent because they are under-resourced. The idea that any group of people is more violent than the other in a way that deserves punishment is inherently racist. Silco recognized the need for their own governance and management of resources without being criminalized. And he gets shit for being a gang leader? Please, the police are one big gang.

Now let’s look at Attack on Titan. At first, the story centered on the Colossal and Armored Titans’ attack on Paradis Island, which brought about thousands of deaths and hours of heart-wrenching trauma. After our protagonists learned the truth, Eren launched an attack on Marley, killing many innocents in his quest for revenge. Then Marley launched a counter-attack, then Paradis Island fought back, etc. etc. At one point, we see young children crying, wondering when the violence will end. Please, just make the fighting stop!

Okay, are we just going to ignore the fact that Marley attacked Paradis Island for resources? Their goal was to get the Founding Titan, a mythical power that they could leverage for military might, and access a wealth of fossil fuels on the island. Their attack wasn’t out of hatred, it was an act of imperialism.

(Invading a land and killing its people for oil, sound familiar? 🇺🇸)

Paradis Island was also segregated from the rest of the world and its own history for most of the story. When they understood who they were up against, they realized Marley was significantly more powerful—more technologically advanced, more populous, and more well-resourced.

So my question is, why are we trying to stop the violence when we should be demanding accountability? Why is violence always seen as bad, but viewed as inevitable if it comes from the oppressor? What does justice look like for Paradis Island?

Unfortunately, any real revolution against the oppressive power was foiled by a selfish and mentally unstable (but very cool) anti-hero in the form of Jinx and Eren. It felt weirdly strategic from a propaganda perspective, to concentrate the will to fight back on this young teenage character. They could be the driving force for justice, but instead, they are insane. They are in a petty squabble with their responsible older sibling. They just want to kill people. And if we are sympathetic to their cause, well, we’re crazy too.

The unstable, vengeful anti-hero subtly pushes the audience to look down on revolution as a petty act of revenge, rather than a form of liberation. It instills the belief that answering violence with violence is wrong, rather than a form of revolt that oppressed peoples have historically used around the world.

How do you think enslaved people won their freedom, by asking their slave masters nicely?

What we need to understand is that prejudice is the not the source of inequality. Exploitation is the source of inequality, and prejudice arises as a result. Therefore, we fundamentally cannot address inequality by getting both sides to understand each other. We need to dismantle the oppressive power structures that create inequality.

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We got so close to a successful armed rebellion and toxic old man yaoi, but all we got was this AI baby

I was a big fan of Squid Game when it first came out. While some audiences believed S2 didn’t live up to the hype, I actually enjoyed it quite a lot.

How could I not get excited about a major TV production depicting a metaphor for working class armed rebellion? Regardless of what certain anti-Asian anti-communist IGNORANT viewers may think, Squid Game is a metaphor for capitalism and fascism, and the revolt was a class revolution. The captives are the working class, the pink soldiers are the police and prison guards, and the Frontman became an undercover fed.

The games were intentionally designed to keep captives desperate to play, held under the illusion that they could win, and pitted them against each other so as to weaken their class power. Seong Gi-hun, aka Player 456, was the first captive to recognize they should direct their murderous intent on the enforcers of the game rather than each other. But the pink soldiers have guns, others protested. We’ll take their guns, he said.

Perhaps my favorite moment was when beautiful trans icon Cho Hyun-ju strategically shot every surveillance camera she came across. In the modern age, it’s easy to accept surveillance as an inevitable truth. But it’s not. Surveillance is a tool of the state, and all tools can be destroyed.

By comparison, S3 felt so…basic. It felt like a regression on the plot, on the character development, even on the level of emotion that the show inspired.

I didn’t expect the armed rebellion to be successful. They were out-numbered and out-equipped, and infiltrated by that sexy Frontman. But I wish we could have felt some impact of their rebellion. They killed several pink soldiers, so it would’ve been more realistic if the games weren’t running properly due to being short on staff. Or even a second wave of rebellion following S2, since that is how movements for justice work in real life.

Alas, all we got in S3 was this creepy AI-powered baby.

Do they need therapy, or do they need an actual community?

Any season of the Ultimatum, no matter the country, no matter if it’s straight or queer, is a gathering of the most mentally unwell and insecurely attached people you will ever meet.

For those who don’t know, here’s the premise of the show. You get a group of couples. One person in the couple wants to get married, and the other doesn’t. They “break up” with their current partner, go through several rounds of speed dating, and then choose a partner from the pool to spend their trial marriage with. After a few weeks, they engage in another trial marriage with their original partner.

I have to say, the reason I watch most Netflix dating shows is because watching straight people suffer is hilarious. But watching queer people hurt each other and break down is actually pretty sad. Even though I know they are putting on a performance and being compensated for this work, it just hits different. It’s harder for me to enjoy it.

“This person needs therapy.” I hear this all the time—online, from friends, from enemies. We watch these shows and shake our heads at how toxic these people are and wisely prescribe them with talk therapy.

But do they need therapy, or do they need an actual community who loves and uplifts them? Do they need therapy, or do they need a communal support structure outside of their romantic partner? Do they need therapy, or do they need people to hold them accountable when they are being abusive and manipulative?

I remember watching S1 and thinking wow, Rae is in trouble. She has difficulty accessing how she feels, not just expressing her emotions but actually feeling and understanding her emotions. She doesn’t know what she wants. Her indecisiveness was a good balance to her authoritative and ambitious partner at first, but because she couldn’t advocate for herself, the relationship eventually fell apart. I’m sure she could benefit from therapy, but what if she just had people in her life who stopped telling her what to do and actually listened to her?

Watching Marie in S2 felt like a train wreck. She had to sit there and watch her partner cheat on her, then lie to her face about it. I felt so uncomfortable seeing her put on a smile and say she was fine with not getting married, fine with not having kids, what she wants has evolved. It was clear she didn’t want Mel to dump her. And then the reunion, oh boy. The tension on her face as she commandeered the reunion to interrogate the people who wronged her. I’m sure she could benefit from therapy too, but what if she was in a loving community that didn’t tie her self-worth to her desirability and allowed her to be openly vulnerable?

In some ways, “they need therapy” has slowly emerged as the new “just call the cops.” But to be clear, I’ve gone to therapy for years and found it immensely helpful. I am pro-therapy, but I also believe it’s being treated as a one-stop shop to mental wellness. Therapy is an individualist solution for a societal issue, much like policing is for crime. And we cannot hope to succeed if we continue to rely on individualism, we must rely on each other.

In my post How I teach myself languages, I talk about how to cultivate a daily habit and identify your ideal activities for self-learning based on the level you’re at.

Here, I’m going to share my favorite Mandarin resources that I’ve used over the past 4 years. Nothing is sponsored, I genuinely love using these and they’ve been indispensable on my journey to reclaiming my family’s language. Those with a star ⭐️ come highly recommended.

希望大家喜欢我推荐的资源！

Apps

$ - low cost or free | beginner to intermediate

• HelloChinese ⭐️ - Similar to Duolingo but not nearly as robotic and annoying, this is geared specifically for Mandarin and is based on the HSK curriculum. You can choose between simplified or traditional characters, and to show or hide pinyin. I got through the entire HSK 1-3 curriculum and part of HSK 4 using this app.

• Mango Languages ⭐️ - This is the hands-down the best app I’ve ever used for language learning. It helps break down phrases that you would actually use in conversation through critical thinking exercises and lots of repetition. Some units also have listening and reading chapters. I got it for free with my public library card. ❤️

• Pleco - This is my go-to dictionary app. I especially like their handwriting feature for when I see a character that I don’t know how to pronounce. You can also search using either Chinese or English, and with either pinyin or characters.

• Quizlet - I used this for flashcards, especially HSK 2-4 vocab. There’s also plenty of public flashcard sets up for grabs if you’d rather not make your own from scratch. Yes, it’s always better to learn vocab in context rather than flashcards, but this is especially helpful for learning how to read without pinyin.

Honorary mention

• Duolingo - I’m not the biggest fan of Duolingo, mainly because the damn thing is too gamified and doesn’t actually teach you anything. But it’s great for getting you in the mindset of building a daily habit.

• Drops - This one is meant to help you learn vocab through fun little visual exercises. With the free version, you get 5 min a day. I just wish you could easily skip words you already know.

Courses

$$$ - high cost | intermediate

• Intermediate Mandarin on Coursera - This course provided a fairly helpful overview of grammar when I was just starting out with HSK 2/3. My main gripe is that the university used non-native speakers for their videos, and I believe strongly in listening practice with native speakers.

• HSK 4 on Udemy ⭐️ - This course was very long but extremely comprehensive with regards to HSK 4 grammar and vocab. The teacher is also a native speaker and was able to provide cultural context for when you might use a certain phrase or expression.

Youtube videos

$ - low cost or free | beginner to advanced

• Mandarin Corner - There’s a variety of HSK vocab videos that you can check out on youtube, I just happened to prefer Mandarin Corner. This was very helpful for learning and reviewing HSK 2-4 vocab, and includes pronunciation and example sentences.

• Free to Learn Chinese - I watched these while getting ready for my trip to China. They explain how to do all sorts of practical things in clearly-spoken Mandarin, like taking a taxi or shopping online.

• Xiaoguo Comedy - Honestly, what better way to learn a language than through stand-up comedy? This channel is pretty advanced since it’s an actual Chinese comedy show, but all videos have both English and Chinese subtitles. Very funny, and also includes a surprising amount of HSK vocab.

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Reading

$ - low cost or free | beginner to advanced

• Maayot Stories ⭐️ - I used this when I first started out around HSK 1-2. They offer 3 reading levels—beginner, intermediate, and advanced—and send a daily short story to your inbox for a subscription or a weekly one for free. It was immensely helpful in exposing me to beginner-friendly reading and listening. Just FYI, some of their stories also have a pro-imperialist1 angle.

• Chinese HSK Reading - There’s a bunch of free graded readers online so I’m not suggesting this is the best one, it just stuck with me for some reason. I recently finished the HSK 5 stories. Though some of the vocab isn’t super practical for me (when am I going to say haystacks?), they pack a lot in one story.

• Chinese Reading Practice - This is literally someone’s personal project, which is so cool. I like that it not only includes HSK graded readers, but actual short stories and letters from Chinese literature. Highly recommend for those who want to get more into international reading.

• Du Chinese - This offers a library of stories and articles from complete beginner to advanced (which I suspect is around HSK 6). I’ve just started using it, and while the app could use a redesign, the optional pinyin, definitions and translations, and audio accompaniment are pretty useful.

Podcasts

$ - low cost or free | intermediate

• Teatime Chinese 茶喝中文 ⭐️ - I started listening to this when I was at HSK 4. Nathan, the host, speaks very slowly and clearly. I’d say this is a very early intermediate-friendly podcast for anyone interested in doing more listening. He also does a fair bit of research on current events and Chinese news, though has some pro-prison beliefs2.

• Chinese Podcast with Shenglan 学中文 - Another slow and accessible podcast at HSK 4-5, Shenglan covers a wide variety of social topics in China. I listened to this when I was feeling burnt out with learning and needed something a bit slower. Great to listen to while cooking, but Shenglan also has some Han nationalist beliefs3.

• Dashu Mandarin Podcast - This is a fun podcast of three uncles chatting about how to learn Mandarin. Since two are mainland Chinese and one is Taiwanese and they interview a wide variety of students, you can listen to Mandarin spoken with many different types of accents. I am fond of these uncles, but I question their cultural competency sometimes4.

• Talk to me in Chinese 聊聊东西 ⭐️ - One of my favorite podcasts, hosted by Candice and sometimes her friend Yifei. They discuss a wide variety of topics related to work, family, and current events. This is great for HSK 4-5. Transcripts are also available for free on their Patreon, which I often download and read as I listen.

• One Call Away 打个电话给你 ⭐️ - Another banger of a podcast hosted by friends Wendy and Iphie. They’re very similar to 聊聊东西, though they focus more on cultural topics than current events and speak a bit faster, so I’d say this is slightly more advanced at HSK 5.

Chinese podcasts hold a special place in my heart. I write about some of my favorite episodes through amateur translations in this post:

Film and TV

movies on youtube | $ - low cost or free | advanced

• The following is a list of some of my favorite Gong Li movies that you can find for free on youtube. Some of these are true Chinese cinema classics. They are all pretty advanced, so I recommend watching with English subtitles, especially if you’re earlier on your journey.

  • Raise the Red Lantern ⭐️ - A young woman marries into a rich household as the patriarch’s fourth wife.

  • To Live ⭐️ - A family lives through decades of war and revolution.

  • Red Sorghum - After her husband dies, a young woman takes over a red sorghum wine distillery.

  • Saturday Fiction - An actor arrives in Shanghai to star in a local play and engage in espionage against the Japanese.

  • Temptress Moon ⭐️ - The evolving relationships between the children from a wealthy household in their adulthood.

  • Leap - Follows the story of China’s women’s volleyball team and their coach.

Gong Li is an iconic Chinese actor. I recently watched her entire filmography and shared my thoughts here:

shows on youtube | $ - low cost or free | intermediate to advanced

• The following is a list of Chinese dating shows with a Terrace-house-like format. The contestants live together in the same house or villa, and go on dates and adventures. Every night, they write a letter to someone who caught their attention. All pretty approachable for HSK 4-5.

  • Hello Summer 相遇的夏天 ⭐️ - My first Chinese dating show and a great watch. Set on an island with a beach and seafood market.

  • Heart Signal 心动的信号 ⭐️ - There are multiple seasons of Heart Signal (originally a South Korean show) - season 6 was set in Beijing.

  • Relationship 我们恋爱吧 ⭐️ - Set in the countryside where they do cottage-core things like catch chickens and harvest vegetables.

• Heroine - This is a Taiwanese lesbian dating show. The production isn’t the best in terms of audio quality and camera angles, but it’s very cute and a fascinating peek into queer Taiwanese culture.

• Day Day Up 天天向上 - I discovered this talk show through Wang Yibo, which is hilarious because he barely says anything. My mom jokes he hosts the show just to watch from the stage. This is a very fun talk show where they invite guests, play games, and discuss interesting topics such as Chinese fashion and recycling systems. But FYI, it’s very advanced since their target audience is highly educated native speakers.

• Street Dance of China 这就是街舞 - This is a very entertaining and multilingual hip-hop dance show, also discovered through Wang Yibo. Since many of the contestants are foreigners (mainly Japan, France, and the US) rehearsals don’t contain a lot of Mandarin, but judging and deliberating is great for Mandarin practice. Approachable for HSK 4-5.

• Journey to the West 西游记 - A classic. I absolutely loved watching this as a kid, and I can still imitate the voices. If you’re not familiar with the Monkey King, I recommend hopping down that internet rabbit hole immediately. It’s worth noting that since this is a fictional series made in the 80’s, so their style of talking isn’t super relevant to modern conversation, but it’s still a fun watch.

movies on netflix | $$ - medium cost | advanced

• The following is a list of heart-wrenching Taiwanese movies. I’m a big fan of Taiwanese media, especially since they’re less censored and more queer-friendly.

  • Dear Ex ⭐️ - A woman and her son try to figure out why her late husband’s will gave everything to his gay lover. Lots of crying and yelling.

  • A Sun - A family deals with the aftermath of one son’s incarceration.

  • Marry My Dead Body ⭐️ - A homophobic policeman finds himself attached to a gay ghost who died under mysterious circumstances.

• The following is a list of animated Chinese films. They talk very, very fast. I can barely understand them without English subtitles. Proceed with caution.

  • Nezha - An animated retelling of Nezha, a powerful protection deity in Chinese folk religion. Nezha 2 is known for being one of the most successful animated films of all time (personally, I thought it was just okay).

  • The Monkey King - Not nearly as good as Journey to the West, and in my opinion it completely misunderstands the premise of Sun Wukong’s character, but it’s entertaining.

  • Wish Dragon - An ordinary guy discovers a dragon who can grant him wishes.

shows on netflix | $$ - medium cost | advanced

• The Untamed - The show that got me committed to learning Mandarin in 2020. The show that inspired a fanfiction scandal that led to the crackdown of queer media in China and almost destroyed Xiao Zhan’s career. You gotta watch this. Since it’s a xianxia fantasy, the vocab can get quite weird so I suggest English subtitles.

• Falling into your Smile - A young woman gets recruited on a professional gaming team and slowly falls in love with the team captain. All the villains are Korean, which is hilarious to me.

• God Troubles Me - The phone and black cat of a young woman who lives by herself transform into two deities. They get into shenanigans together. They also speak very fast, but this is great for learning modern lingo, slang, and trends.

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Material resources

$$ - medium cost | all levels

I avoided naming any brands here because I don’t want to give the impression that I’m doing endorsements or paid advertising, but if you’re curious about which brands I prefer feel free to DM me.

• Notebooks - For Chinese (or any East Asian language, really) I recommend grid instead of lined paper to help keep the characters nice and tidy. My preferred language notebooks are size B5 with card stock covers and 60 pages long.

• Mildliners - These are highlighters that aren’t too bright or harsh. Great for keeping notes organized and highlighting vocab while you’re reading, though I would also caution against over-highlighting (I like to use just one color at a time).

• Gel ink pens - Perfect for smooth note-taking. I prefer the 0.5mm size.

• Character writing sheets - Great for practicing writing. These are often printed on very thin paper since you’re supposed to go through quite a lot.

• Planners for tracking - I use a monthly planner to track all the activities I do in a single day, that way I can reflect on the past month and decide what to change. If you want to get really serious, you can color-code by activity type.

A note on learning Mandarin in a politically conscious way

Now that I’ve shared over 40 of my favorite resources to learn Mandarin, should we talk politics?

I don’t believe it’s possible to learn in a vacuum—everything is political, whether we want it to be or not. Languages especially are our conduit for communication, and the creation, enforcement, or extinction of a language is often due to political struggle and migration patterns.

Some of the resources I shared include small touches of imperialist and Han nationalist sentiment, which I’ve noted in the footnotes. In this context, I refer to imperialism as China’s international and colonial exploitation, or partnership with another imperialist entity (e.g. Israel). Han nationalism refers to support for the nation-state led by the Han Chinese ethnic group (which accounts for about 90% of the population).

While some leftists believe that Chinese imperialism is in opposition to western imperialism and even beneficial to global liberation, I believe they are two sides of the same coin. If you’d like to learn more, I recommend , especially this piece From Palestine to Xinjiang (which is in English).

Even the enforcement of Mandarin as a national language can be considered a nationalist project. Whether it’s as violent as the enforcement of English or the creation of modern Hebrew is probably subjective. If your family’s native language is an Indigenous language that’s nearly extinct in what’s now known as North America, I have no doubt you’d view English as more violent. For many ethnic minorities in China, they are going through a similar fight with Mandarin.

I don’t think the footnotes mean we should not use a resource or that a resource is “bad.” I’m more interested in providing context to help you make informed decisions on what to spend your time and money on. These should be based on your own politics, values, and capacity. In truth, I actually think it’s helpful to get a realistic portrayal of average Chinese people and how they view political issues. Whether or not I agree with them is a different story.

I hope that no matter where you are on your learning journey, you will always choose international solidarity with all oppressed people. ❤️

Note: When I initially published this post, I recommended Orange Blossom Education as a resource for online Mandarin courses. It’s since been brought to my attention that they have not taken accountability for firing two workers without transparent communication in November 2025. Unfortunately, I can no longer recommend them until that harm is repaired, and have removed them from this post. Read more on PSAN’s instagram.

Spotify links have also been removed.

Hello gays, theys, and babes,

Like many others, I have recently become enthralled by the majestic homoeroticism that is Heated Rivalry. And I have so many feelings.

First and foremost, I am so deeply grateful for this type of show. The type of show that not only crackles with sexual tension, but tender forehead kisses, immense courage, secret heartbreak, and so much gay, gay yearning. A big round of applause to book author Rachel Reid, show writer/director Jacob Tierney, and the entire cast and crew. The writing, the music, the Russian language, the cinematography, the intimacy, the acting. The ACTING. Damn, these boys acted their pants off.

This is the type of show I wish I had as a teenager, back when I didn’t fully know what queer meant but I knew there was something simmering in my chest and I was devouring every piece of LGBTQ+ media I could find. The type of show that doesn’t shy away from but rather showcases the homoerotic dynamics of team sports and media-fueled rivalry in the spotlight it deserves.

(Specifically, there’s that scene in episode 2 that involves a Vegas skyline, hotel chair, and surprisingly good vodka. You know the one. I have re-played that scene too many times to count.)

Do I have some gripes with the show? Yes. I wish we could have seen more of Shane’s Asian heritage (he’s half-Japanese, I demand more diaspora kid tells), and I wish the women characters had more of their own personalities outside of being emotional support (but that wasn’t the point of the story and I get it, we can get our own WLW spin-off).

Honestly, and I can’t believe I’m saying this, but I wish we could’ve seen more hockey. I want to see more of their games! I want to know what kind of players Shane and Ilya are besides one being highly technical and the other quite aggressive. Isn’t Shane supposed to be hockey-obsessed? Let that Autistic boy talk hockey! If this is supposed to be his special interest, I’d expect to hear much more from him.

But make no mistake, I adore the show. I think they did an absolutely amazing job, especially considering the tight schedule and limited budget. No one expected the show to take off the way it did—a roaring, feral success.

Hudson Williams (who plays sweet Autistic cookie Shane Hollander) and Connor Storrie (who plays big bad Russian beefcake Ilya Rozanov) were relatively unknown before this show, and now suddenly the entire internet is obsessed with them. And I have to say, I’m a bit concerned about what’s in store for them.

We have already seen a precedent of mass harassment in the modern age

Let me take us back to two other gay romance shows: Heartstopper and The Untamed.

Heartstopper is a queer coming-of-age teen romance show based on the graphic novel series by Alice Oseman. Shy, nerdy Charlie Spring (played by Joe Locke) develops a crush on the popular rugby captain Nick Nelson (Kit Connor). This show is so, so sweet and wholesome, and includes a wonderful cast of characters that tell the stories of sapphic band love, trans artist girlfriend with film geek boyfriend, asexual/aromantic awakening, and so much more.

The Untamed (陈情令) is a Chinese xianxia fantasy series based on the boy’s love (BL) novel Grandmaster of Demonic Cultivation by Mo Xiang Tong Xiu. It features cheerful and mischievous Wei Wuxian (played by Xiao Zhan) who at first annoys but later endears the stoic and rather uptight Lan Wangji (played by Wang Yibo). After a bunch of wild stuff happens (don’t want to give away too many spoilers), the two eventually go on a murder mystery adventure, where it is heavily implied that they fall in love along the way.

It’s noteworthy that these shows came out recently, The Untamed in 2019 right before the whole world was rocked with the death grip of Covid, and Heartstopper in 2022 when we were still feeling the shocks of quarantine. I believe that’s relevant to the type of parasocial relationships that audiences developed with the lead actors, since quarantine heightened our level of isolation and our desire for human connection.

In late 2022, Kit Connor was spotted in public holding hands with a woman. From my perspective, it seemed sweet and wholesome enough. But suddenly, the hashtag #KitConnorGoAwayFromHeartstopper was trending on twitter. Fans were accusing Kit of queerbaiting and profiting off a queer image. They believed he ruined the show. Kit ended up deleting twitter and later coming back to come out online as bisexual, not by choice but rather to appease the hoards of angry fans. And he was only 18.

What really gets me about this type of vitriol is the mis-use of the term queerbaiting. Queerbaiting is something that media producers do to draw in queer audiences and queer romance appreciators. They tease the idea of a queer romance through funny innuendos and scandalous promos without following through. They want the viewership numbers but not the actual romance because they are either homophobic, cowardly, or both.

A real person can’t queerbait, because that’s their actual life. There is nothing a person could do to disappoint you, because they don’t owe you whatever performance of sexuality you expect from them, no matter how public a persona they are.

How could you not feel sorry for Kit? He put in so much heart into this role. And now that I know he’s bi, I can only imagine how much it must’ve meant to him to play a character who realizes that he’s bi and develops a crush on a boy at school. I can see that he loved playing Nick Nelson, and I wish he could’ve come out on his own terms.

(Also, I hate to break it to you, but it’s possible for bi people to be in straight-passing relationships. That’s kind of part of the definition.)

Of course we are sick of seeing straight actors dominate gay roles and cisgender actors dominate transgender roles. It’s tiresome. When they had that spit-fuck scene in Brokeback Mountain, every gay man in a hundred-mile radius immediately knew that director Li An did not get gay (penetrative) sex. When asked why she thought of Dumbledore as gay, professional terf J.K. Rowling said she’d always thought of him as a very lonely person. Movies like Boys Don’t Cry and The Danish Girl feature cisgender actors fall into despair as that’s the only path conceivable for their trans characters.

Queer stories told by cis-hetero writers, actors, and producers are almost always overrun by a mountain of pity (ohhh how sad it is to be born in the wrong body) or cringe scenes where queer people are lazy comedic relief instead of an integral part of the story (I’m looking at you, Supernatural and Sherlock).

I understand the rage that queerbaiting induces, I’ve felt it too. I am sick of Hollywood only throwing scraps of queer relationships when they can squeeze more profit out of it. And I do not think it’s acceptable for cis-hetero actors to treat queer and trans characters like they are mere thought exercises or pity parties. But bullying a teenager to come out is not the way.

Now, let’s look at what happened to Xiao Zhan. In 2020, users on Chinese social media site Weibo posted links to RPF about Xiao Zhan and his co-star Wang Yibo.

RPF stands for real-person fanfic, it’s basically fanfiction written about real people instead of fictional characters. This genre is especially popular for music artists and pro athletes. Is it weird they’re about real people? Yes. But is it inherently unethical? You could go either way, but I believe that as long as it doesn’t negatively impact the people involved, it’s relatively harmless.

The fanfic in question, Falling (下坠), portrays Xiao Zhan as a trans-femme (or potentially not trans but cross-dressing?) sex worker. Now, we stan sex worker rights and trans rights in this house. I want to be very clear that is not the problem here, nor is the problem the creative exercise of writing Alternate Universe (AU) fanfic.

The fine line that we’re walking here is that Xiao Zhan is a real person, and this fanfic is undeniably an inaccurate portrayal of who Xiao Zhan is. So his loyal fans took offense to the characterization and reported the fanfic host site, AO3, for sexual indecency and character defamation, leading to the site being banned by regulators in the entire country of China.

If you’re a fanfic connoisseur, you get why that’s a wild thing to do, because people love their fanfic. Suddenly, millions of Chinese AO3 users who had nothing to do with Xiao Zhan discovered they couldn’t reach their beloved site. Xiao Zhan fans and AO3 users descended into cyberbullying wars, sometimes leading to doxxing and real-life consequences at work or school. In retaliation to the ban, AO3 users launched far-reaching and coordinated boycott attacks against Xiao Zhan and his brand endorsements. The hashtag #BoycottXiaoZhan was trending on Weibo, framed as a way to hold him “accountable” for the behavior of his fans.

As for Xiao Zhan himself, his Weibo account was temporarily suspended, and he later lost brand deals over the boycott pressure. His studio released an official apology for the whole ordeal and for taking resources and attention away from Covid-19 response.

First of all, Xiao Zhan didn’t even do anything. So what the fuck?

Second, I would’ve never expected fanfiction to be so wrapped up with government regulation, market economy, and digital security the way that it did, but here we are.

And third, Chinese netizens have demonstrated that they have the admirable ability to organize millions of people to pressure corporations and governing bodies to take action. I wish they could use even a fraction of this energy in the BDS campaign for Palestine, rather than harassing celebrities or tattling to censorship enforcers.

If you are a fan of The Untamed, you are probably familiar with the wonderful chemistry between Xiao Zhan and Wang Yibo. It’s clear in their behind-the-scenes footage and interviews that they became good friends through filming, and have deep admiration and respect for each other. They’re also both very good-looking, talented, and charismatic.

So I get going crazy for them, I really do. I understand the urge to squeeze their little heads together and say, “Now kiss.” I’m not saying we should shame these kinds of intense feelings. But Xiao Zhan and Wang Yibo are not fictional characters, they are real people who went from being close friends to never being seen together in public again. Is that the type of impact we want to have?

To be fair, Kit Connor and Xiao Zhan are currently thriving in their careers, so it doesn’t appear that these scandals had long-standing consequences, at least from that standpoint. They also both have a level of wealth that most of us could only dream of, which I firmly believe no one should have. Actors occupy an interesting class position because financially, they could be considered part of the ruling class, but their labor is still exploited by media producers and corporations.

This is perhaps an important conversation for another time—what does a class revolution look like with our favorite celebrities in the mix? I’m sure we have so much to get into, but for now let’s focus on the parasocial gay obsession.

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Why do we seek parasocial relationships in the first place?

With actors Hudson Williams and Connor Storrie, I already see parallels with Heartstopper and The Untamed. Like Xiao Zhan and Wang Yibo, Hudson and Connor have amazing chemistry and their interviews are a treat to watch. They have also made it clear that they want their personal lives to stay private, despite speculation about their sexualities and insinuation that their on-screen chemistry is more than just on-screen. Like Kit, Hudson is rumored to have a girlfriend whose identity people are already trying to snoop out (stop, don’t do that).

It’s weirdly fascinating, isn’t it? That we feel so entitled to knowing someone’s sexuality and relationship status, usually only the type of information you’d know if you were in community with that person. If you were family or friends with them. Sometimes, we truly believe we know celebrities like that. But we only see celebrities through their interviews, public appearances, and social media posts. And they have no idea who the vast majority of us are. So how did this happen?

I’m not a psychologist, sociologist, or even scholar in any sense of the word. My day job is designing software. So I’m not here to write an academic paper, but just to give my personal views. I think parasocial relationships are so strong and far-reaching for a reason. If we are to find the origin of parasocial relationships in the modern age, I believe we must seek the origin of loneliness. So many of us feel it. I’d even go so far as to say we are trapped in it.

There are so many layers to our loneliness, the first and arguably most painful source being capitalism. A capitalist society is built on the exploitation of labor and extraction of wealth. It destroys social relationships by putting a price tag on every person, every object, and every exchange, so that our focus is no longer on human connection, but on the monetary value we are losing or gaining.

Capitalism forces us to work so that we don’t end up unhoused and hungry, but the work also demands us to constantly be productive, which is so utterly unnatural for our bodies and wears us to the ground. In the US, we are not afforded the dignity of universal healthcare when we are worn to the ground. While there are plenty of needs, the only work that makes good money serves consumerism and the military industrial complex. We want to be with community, but we are either too tired to gather or we can’t afford to take the time off. We want to be seen and appreciated for who we are, but we are only judged by our productivity and efficiency.

Capitalism also actively destroys the notion of a third space. A space other than home or work where you can gather with community without spending money. If you’re in a public space, you’re loitering. If you’re in a private space, you need to buy something. It’s in human nature to gather. But where are we supposed to go? This is the world we are living in, no wonder we are lonely.

Then, there’s identity. Queer and trans people are lonely because we are outnumbered. Many of us can relate to being the only gay kids in school or the only gay cousin at the family function, and we are constantly being told that relationships and gender need to work a certain way. People of color are lonely when we are in majority-white spaces and we have to give up a part of ourselves to assimilate. People in diaspora are lonely when we feel misunderstood in the west and also misunderstood by our own families in our home countries. Women are lonely because they are constantly being told there is a right way to be a woman, but whatever they’re doing, that’s not it. Men are lonely because they are not allowed to express their emotions, as it’s a sign of weakness. We are all so fucking lonely.

And then, there’s a lack of conflict-resolution skills. We hurt each other, we betray trust, we forego accountability, we get disappointed, we get angry, we don’t know how to give a genuine apology unless it’s a public announcement for youtube views and instagram followers. We ignore our exes. We forgive abusers and blame the abused. We often destroy the few relationships we actually have.

It’s not hard to imagine why we, as a society, would get so lovestruck by parasocial relationships. We are dying for human connection. If fictional characters have moved us so much that we are seeking emotional connection with them, I would argue that’s a sign of a production well done. I don’t think it’s helpful to unilaterally denounce parasocial relationship seekers as crazy, creepy stalkers because so many of us feel the same desire for intimacy.

I would also argue that this idea that celebrities are our friends, that we know them on a personal level, that we somehow have the ability to become close with them, is (at least partially) an intentionally manipulative PR tactic. Consumers are more likely to spend money on something if we are promised a level of closeness to it. And on social media, we interact with celebrities in the same way that we interact with our closest friends and family, which gives the illusion of intimacy.

I mean, look at the Kardashian family, they have practically mastered the art of parasocial obsession. Their fame was largely achieved through dating and sleeping with celebrities, knowing their scandals would always cause a stir, and their reality TV show gives audiences the illusion that we are privy to their real lives. Everyone hates them for being trashy, superficial, awful, shitty people. I hate them too, but I also think they are capitalism geniuses, because they make people feel things, whether that be hatred, envy, or obsession, and profit off it. They want people to be obsessed with them.

As for why parasocial relationships lead to such grandiose levels of harassment, well. Perhaps it’s because in our minds, we think we are actually in a relationship with this person. And some of us treat our closest friends and family like shit. How often we do unfairly project our feelings on others? How often do we take out our anger and frustration on them, deciding they are worthy of punishment and we are the arbiters of justice? I would argue if someone is treating a celebrity with a punishment mindset, they are probably treating their real-life relationships in the same way.

When we’re in parasocial limerence, we genuinely believe that we’re in a two-way relationship with this celebrity, but we’re not. It’s one-way on our end and a million-way on theirs. When we get into conflict, it’s not actually a fight, it’s them not knowing who we are and millions of us (the population of an entire major city) yelling at them online. This is not a normal interaction.

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Why do we love gay hockey romance so much, and where do we go from here?

There’s an interesting mix of haters of Heated Rivalry. There are straight male hockey fans who are just plain homophobic (no surprise there). There are those who consider themselves too sophisticated to get dragged into snorting lines of yaoi coke with the rest of us heathens (your loss). And there are gay men who denounce MM romance as a franchise full of straight women fetishizing gay men and male bodies. Of course I get why queers would be sensitive to tokenization, so I get why this is not the show for some.

But I will also defend horny gay romance to the end of time. Because…I just love it. It fills my gay little heart with hope and optimism (and I’m sure the horny feelings are doing wonders for my low blood pressure). The weight of the world often feels so heavy, the violence of imperialism and white supremacy inescapable. It is such sweet comfort to see buff hockey players kiss.

There are many theories for why Heated Rivalry and MM Romance in general are so popular, especially for why HR appeals so much to women and those raised as women (think of the genderqueers and nonbinary babes). I love hearing about these theories, especially when the equally fascinated Hudson and Connor discuss them.

Perhaps the theory that I relate to the most is that romance between men, even if it is considered forbidden and taboo in the characters’ world, inherently feels more equal and safe, and therefore more exciting. We don’t have to worry about women being harmed, controlled, or limited in the same ways, it’s like a weight lifted off our shoulders. Realistically, fictional characters are often written better when they are men, and we are drawn to characters with more personality and depth because it creates more chemistry.

Also, it’s just hot. Plain and simple, MM is sexy.

I believe that for those of us who are hopelessly hockey-pilled by Heated Rivalry, we should think of this as an opportunity to cultivate a fandom culture that is undeniably horny, but also respectful and collectivist. One that supports the work of the cast and crew without getting hypnotized into parasocial behavior or giving into toxic flame wars.

But this kind of commitment isn’t just limited to gay romance, or even TV in general. If we are to actually decrease the harm caused by parasocial relationships, we need to build community and third spaces and chosen family. We need to not be so fucking lonely. We need to make sure that people are in healthy, emotionally fulfilling relationships in their real-life community so that we don’t feel the need to engage so heavily in toxic parasocial dynamics.

We need to understand boundaries and consent on an interpersonal level with people we actually know in real life. We need to practice active communication and conflict-resolution. We need to foster healthy, respectful, and reciprocal relationships.

We need to abolish capitalism, the source of our isolation and so much harm and violence. We need to end ableism and homophobia and transphobia and the patriarchy. We need to overthrow the entertainment companies who reap the profits of the cast and crew’s labor. We need to seize the social media companies churning out dark patterns that fuel doom scrolling while tracking and selling our data. While we’re at it, we need to send Jeff Bezos and Mark Zuckerberg and Elon Musk and every tech billionaire to the moon and just leave them there.

As Mariame Kaba said, hope is a discpline, and I am confident we can whip ourselves into shape just like Connor Storrie trained his glutes and Hudson Williams gained 9 pounds of pure “clappable material.” May the power of gay hockey carry us to heights we could only dream of.

In my quest to become “Into Film” I decided to pick an actor and watch their entire filmography. Not in any particular order, not skipping any flops, just watching every single feature film so I can appreciate their complete collection.

I’ve never done anything like this before. This isn’t usually how I experience media—I only half pay attention to movies and I can barely remember a director or actor’s name. Cinephiles are devoted, loyal, and articulate. I’m one for a brief fanfiction-fueled obsession with a random TV show, and then I move on, forget it as if nothing happened.

For whatever reason deep in my soul, I needed something to be loyal to. So I turned to her. Gong Li is one of the most celebrated actors in China. Talented, versatile, and beautiful, she felt like the perfect artist to pull me out of my non-committal media habits and ground me.

As of 2025, Gong Li has starred in 35 feature films spanning 1987 to 2020, and I have now watched every single one.

If you have ever watched an actor’s entire filmography (or are considering it) I’d be curious on your take on this endeavor. It’s ambitious, nerdy, and exhausting. Some things I learned through this experience:

• You will become an expert at pirating movies

• You get to explore a wide breadth of genres, eras, and styles

• You have to watch some bad movies

• You will love some directors and come to despise others

Before we dive into my observations, here’s a quick reference on the major phases of Chinese film as described by Economic Cinema:

1. 1896-1940: The Introduction of Cinema and the Golden Age

2. 1944-1951: The Second Golden Age

3. 1951-1964: The Communist Era

4. 1967-1986: The Cultural Revolution and its Aftermath

5. 1986-1990: The Fifth Generation

6. 1990-2000: The Sixth Generation and New Directions

7. The 2000’s and Beyond: A fusion of the Generations, and the coming of Hollywood in China

Gong Li and her collaborators are widely considered to be of the fifth and sixth generation of Chinese cinema. The fifth is known for its experimentation and artistic vision, a departure from how film was previously monopolized as a political propaganda tool, and the sixth is known for its realism and low-budget productions.

Gong Li films by the numbers

Gong Li has worked with 241 directors across 35 films—most of which with ex-romantic partner and on-and-off collaborator Zhang Yimou (26%), one of the most famous directors in China. Other notable directors include Chen Kaige, Wong Karwai, and Sun Zhou.

Gong Li began her career in China and since branched out to Hong Kong and later the US and Europe. Most of her films were made by Chinese producers (66%).

Gong Li began acting in the late 80’s and has been active up until 2020. Her most active decade was the 90’s, where she starred in 51% of her films. She became less active in later decades, likely because she was busy with film festivals and sponsorships.

The many worlds that Gong Li inhabits

Common characters that Gong Li has played: loving mother, peasant woman, servant, sex worker, noble woman, and evil temptress.

If you are interested in seeing her play a beautiful, somewhat bitchy lady floundering under the heavy weight of patriarchy, I recommend: Shanghai Triad, Raise the Red Lantern, and Curse of the Golden Flower. Honorary mention2 for Memoirs of a Geisha.

If you are interested in seeing her play a hardworking mother struggling to get by, I recommend: To Live, The Story of Qiu Ju, Coming Home, and Breaking the Silence.

Some notable themes include: female rivalry, life imitates art, food as care, adultery, story through song, Japanese violence, Confucian patriarchy, and sad/ambiguous endings.

If you are interested in films where the story is about the art and the art is about the story, I recommend: Farewell My Concubine, Eros: The Hand, A Soul Haunted by Painting, and 2046.

If you are interested in films that feature Japanese occupation and colonial violence, I recommend: Saturday Fiction, Red Sorghum, and Farewell My Concubine. Honorary mention to Shanghai.

Some notable symbols include: paper puppets, chrysanthemum, fabric, mahjong, cards, lanterns, birds, fish, and the color red.

If you are interested in some particularly visually stunning films rich in symbolism, I recommend: Temptress Moon, Raise the Red Lantern, Curse of the Golden Flower, To Live, Judou, and Farewell My Concubine.

A closer look at the color red. Color symbolism across different cultures has always fascinated me. Black is the funeral color in the west, whereas for China it is white. White symbolizes death in the east, whereas for the west it symbolizes virginity. White is the color for weddings in the west, whereas for China it is red.

Red can have quite the negative connotation. Blood, violence, aggression, errors, stop signs, mute buttons, communism. Better dead than red, some say. But in Chinese culture, red also represents prosperity and good luck. Red welcomes the new year. The bride wears red to her wedding. Red was the color of the Cultural Revolution, symbolizing unity, progress, and change.

Knowing that the color red can have such wildly different meanings, especially for Chinese culture, made Gong Li’s Chinese films a fascinating watch. It created a delicate ambiguity to watch for—a tenderness in the violence, a danger in the happiness. Did the rose symbolize romance or manipulation? Did the red bridal gown symbolize a joyous new union or a cursed future?

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Concepts that Gong Li films make me ponder

The director and the muse

Gong Li has worked with some amazing directors in Asia, but she is perhaps most known for her creative-romantic relationship with the amazing Zhang Yimou.

I’m not surprised a director would fall in love with Gong Li, I think it would be very difficult not to. Her beauty is transcendent. Her versatility knows no bounds. Her characters are often deeply flawed, but easy to sympathize with. Stubborn, passionate, strong-willed. This is the type of character she’s known for, and perhaps at least part of the person she is.

Gong Li and Zhang Yimou were together for nearly a decade after their debut film Red Sorghum. After their split, Gong Li stopped working with him for a while, but returned for a few projects in her later years. I wonder if she was looking for a sense of self outside of his influence. Or perhaps to prove that she didn’t need him. Maybe she simply needed space from her ex. Zhang’s work practically defined her career and made her into the artist she is today. But how does she feel about that?

A century of change

For the land now known as China, the 20th century was hit with turbulent change. The collapse of the last dynasty. Rebellion. Civil war. Japanese and European occupation. Cultural revolution. The founding of the PRC. Red guards. Economic reform. Rapid modernization.

It’s fascinating, if you think about it. Gong Li was making films in the 90’s that look back at the 20’s - 50’s. I originally thought these films were contemporary, but turns out they’re historical. She didn’t live through this time, these were stories that would’ve been told by her parents and grandparents. Indeed, these are stories I’ve heard from my own family—my uncle joining the red guard, my grandma watching Japanese soldiers drag her uncle away, my grandparents surviving the invasion of Nanjing.

It’s worth noting that any western media portraying international uprising is imperialist propaganda. So of course they will demonize any movement led by the people. But this feels different from the western gaze. This is the Chinese people looking to their own past and wondering, what the fuck happened?

Individualism vs. collectivism

Having been born and raised in the US, I grew up on Hollywood. The story of the strong hero seemed like a given to me, a default to a film’s structure. It wasn’t until I started watching more international film that I realized this was not universal.

Gong Li’s Chinese movies, particularly the dramas, have an undeniable focus on the relationships between characters rather than any individual character themself. It’s almost as if a character doesn’t have any real significance without others in the story.

It’s difficult for me to articulate why this feels so meaningful for me. The tension between individualism and collectivism is a common one felt by people with non-western backgrounds. I have been sequestered to only consider the individual for a long time. I don’t think I fully appreciated how much a collectivist mindset can change narrative storytelling until I watched all these Gong Li movies.

Feeding the white man’s ego

Like I mentioned, if you watch an entire filmography, be prepared to watch some bad movies. And I hated almost every Gong Li movie made by an American producer.

White America would believe that they are the world’s saviors, as opposed to the most harmful settler colony in history. Gong Li’s American movies all gave her a white male love interest who also happened to be the ugliest man on screen. You can tell he’s the protagonist, because he’s the only one who “gets it.” He’s the only one trying to do the “right thing.” And Gong Li never got her own story, she was only there to affirm the heroism and desirability of the male lead.

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Full stack rank

Voila my full stack rank of every Gong Li movie3, from worst to best (based purely on my own enjoyment). I added a red rose 🌹 next to the ones I believe are absolute essentials for Gong Li lovers and Chinese cinema appreciators.

• Miami Vice (2006) ⭑⭐︎⭐︎⭐︎⭐︎

• Mulan (2020) ⭑⭐︎⭐︎⭐︎⭐︎

• Shanghai (2010) ⭑⭐︎⭐︎⭐︎⭐︎

• Memoirs of a Geisha (2005) ⭑⭐︎⭐︎⭐︎⭐︎

• Chinese Box (1997) ⭑⭐︎⭐︎⭐︎⭐︎

• The Maidens of Heavenly Mountains (1994) ⭑⭑⭐︎⭐︎⭐︎

• Codename: Cougar (1989) ⭑⭑⭐︎⭐︎⭐︎

• Hannibal Rising (2007) ⭑⭑⭐︎⭐︎⭐︎

• The Monkey King 2 (2016) ⭑⭑⭐︎⭐︎⭐︎

• God of Gamblers III: Back to Shanghai (1991) ⭑⭑⭐︎⭐︎⭐︎

• Mary from Beijing (1992) ⭑⭑⭐︎⭐︎⭐︎

• What Women Want (2011) ⭑⭑⭐︎⭐︎⭐︎

• The Empress Dowager (1989) ⭑⭑⭑⭐︎⭐︎

• The Great Conqueror’s Concubine (1994) ⭑⭑⭑⭐︎⭐︎

• Flirting Scholar (1993) ⭑⭑⭑⭐︎⭐︎

• Zhou Yu’s Train (2002) ⭑⭑⭑⭐︎⭐︎

• A Terracotta Warrior (1989) ⭑⭑⭑⭐︎⭐︎

• 2046 (2004) ⭑⭑⭑⭐︎⭐︎

• Breaking the Silence (2000) ⭑⭑⭑⭐︎⭐︎

• Eros: The Hand (2004) ⭑⭑⭑⭐︎⭐︎ 🌹

• A Soul Haunted by Painting (1994) ⭑⭑⭑⭐︎⭐︎

• Judou (1990) ⭑⭑⭑⭐︎⭐︎ 🌹

• The Emperor and the Assassin (1998) ⭑⭑⭑⭐︎⭐︎ 🌹

• Red Sorghum (1988) ⭑⭑⭑⭐︎⭐︎

• Saturday Fiction (2019) ⭑⭑⭑⭐︎⭐︎ 🌹

• Leap (2020) ⭑⭑⭑⭑⭐︎ 🌹

• Shanghai Triad (1995) ⭑⭑⭑⭑⭐︎ 🌹

• Curse of the Golden Flower (2006) ⭑⭑⭑⭑⭐︎ 🌹

• Farewell My Concubine (1993) ⭑⭑⭑⭑⭐︎ 🌹

• Temptress Moon (1996) ⭑⭑⭑⭑⭐︎ 🌹

• The Story of Qiu Ju (1992) ⭑⭑⭑⭑⭐︎ 🌹

• To Live (1994) ⭑⭑⭑⭑⭐︎ 🌹

• Coming Home (2014) ⭑⭑⭑⭑⭑ 🌹

• Raise the Red Lantern (1991) ⭑⭑⭑⭑⭑ 🌹

Some Gong Li films I just feel like chatting about

2046
Directed by Wong Karwai
This is one of those films that I would like better if everyone were gay. It was neither new nor compelling to see a man mistreat his girlfriend, depict women as love robots, and chase after emotionally unavailable relationships. The only good part of this film was seeing Zhang Ziyi being a cunty little bitch, I honestly didn’t know she had it in her. I guess she replaced Gong Li in more ways than one4.

Judou
Directed by Zhang Yimou
Is this one secretly a horror comedy? I was either creeped out, anxious, or experiencing secondhand embarrassment the entire time. I know Judou is a classic but I could never enthusiastically recommend this to people based on that freaky little kid alone.

Leap
Directed by Peter Chan
I need to know how they directed these volleyball scenes. The production value of this film is off the charts, and I would legitimately watch an entire TV series of Gong Li coaching women’s volleyball if only they would fund it.

Raise the Red Lantern
Directed by Zhang Yimou
Hands down one of my favorite films of all time. A masterpiece.

Temptress Moon
Directed by Chen Kaige
I have a list miles long of the visual symbolism in Temptress Moon. I need to see this as a live play, a music video, and museum. The theatrical dialog and artful cinematography felt like a slap in the face when delivering such sordid levels of sexual trauma and treachery. I know Farewell My Concubine is considered the main essential to Chinese cinema but please, consider this as a strong contender.

Curse of the Golden Flower
Directed by Zhang Yimou
I am genuinely obsessed with how Shakespearian this one feels. The set design looks like a gold mine threw up on it, it’s gorgeous and way too much at the same time. The family fell apart because each member failed a Confucian family value except one. As always, Gong Li manages to play a sympathetic and nuanced character despite being a total bitch the entire time.

Saturday Fiction
Directed by Lou Ye
Finally, they gave Gong Li a gun. That should give you enough reason to watch this.

I love Chinese podcasts.

I listen to them as I shower, on the train, on the treadmill, as I do dishes. I started out listening to practice Mandarin, but I often surpass my minimum of 20 minutes a day as I become enraptured by the glimpse into Chinese culture that I never had.

Since I grew up in the US, I didn’t have context for what Chinese culture was like outside of my direct family. I thought being Chinese meant eating rice at home and eating chicken nuggets at school, staring blankly at strangers who try to wish me a happy new year in Cantonese, and performing a dance as a blade of grass in a spring meadow at the Chinese school talent show. I thought it meant being a math nerd, a greasy chef, and a dirty communist all at once.

For a lot of diaspora kids, we are spoon-fed a version of our heritage either from our traumatized family, western orientalist views, or a cursed combination of both. So for me, listening to podcasts recorded by ordinary people living in China chatting about their life felt like such a relief. They talked about anything from dating to saving money to arguing with parents to finding your MBTI personality type. They are the same as me, but somehow charmingly unique and different.

As a way to supplement my Mandarin learning, I decided to translate snippets from some of my favorite episodes and share them with you, my English-speaking friends. I hope you enjoy my amateur translations and find some insight in these conversations from across the globe.

Podcasts recommended for Mandarin learners at level HSK 4-5.

You go on 100 dates every year and still can’t find a husband?

One of my favorite podcasts, 聊聊东西 - Talk to Me in Chinese, is hosted by Candice and sometimes her friend Yifei. They chat about news topics, Chinese social phenomena like livestreaming and trendy Buddhist temples, and updates in their personal life.

In this episode, Candice opens by explaining the concept of 相亲 (xiang qin), which can loosely be translated to “matchmaking.” Traditionally, it’s the process by which your family meets with another, potentially through introduction of a matchmaker or family friend, to see if you’re compatible for marriage.

To be clear, this isn’t the same as an arranged marriage. The children aren’t forced to marry, but they are highly encouraged. In many collectivist cultures, marriage is considered a union between families more so than two individuals.

The topic of xiang qin was on Candice’s mind because she recently came across a news article:

A journalist encountered this woman online and conducted an interview with her. This is her story. From 2017 when she first started xiang qin to 2023, for 6 straight years, she has gone on an average of 100 dates per year. And she still hasn’t found her other half. She said in 2024 she will continue the arduous search.

[…] 100 dates in a year. In other words, that’s an average of one date every 3-4 days. Wow, I don’t know how she did it.

I don’t know either, that sounds like torture.

Candice reviews her profile—by Chinese standards, she completely fulfills the stereotype of an “eligible daughter.” When she first began her dating marathon, she was in her mid 20’s. She had a Beijing passport, worked in education, and her looks weren’t bad either. The question on everyone’s mind is, why hasn’t she found a match?

The journalist asked if she set her sights too high. This woman said no, her screening standards are very low. Men only need to be taller than 1.6 meters. Average looks are just fine, appearance isn’t important. If he doesn’t have a house or car, also not important. It’s better if he does, but whatever if not. She said she tended to prefer men slightly older than her.

I think for Beijing, these conditions are truly not too high. What I’m curious about is, why is there still no results after meeting so many people? And how did she filter down from so many people? She said she already had a very standardized process. She’s practically like HR, creating a management project.

She has all types of forms, probably excel or perhaps hand-written ones. She records the information of every person she meets, for example what time they met, who paid, where they met, including his height, age, education, passport, house, car, work sector, etc. She writes it all down.

Candice comes to the conclusion that (1) what this woman thinks she wants and what she actually wants probably aren’t the same thing, and that’s why she hasn’t committed to a relationship despite such an overwhelmingly large pool of candidates, and (2) stats on paper are one thing, but catching feelings is another, and in the end it’s not about your assets, it’s about if you actually like them as a person.

I completely agree with Candice, and I’ll add my own two cents: (3) this woman is either gay, autistic, or both, because at this point if she’s dated 600 men and doesn’t like any of them, I don’t think another 100 or so will change anything and (4) perhaps she is overwhelmed by the social pressure of being a wife, and she is seeking some level of control and structure by systemizing the dating process. Maybe she doesn’t want to get married, she just really likes spreadsheets.

Candice goes on to chat about other dating stories. She has a Russian student (to whom she teaches Mandarin) who developed a system where she takes first dates out for a walk. If she likes them, she takes them to a restaurant nearby, and if she doesn’t she claims there’s a work emergency and goes to catch the nearest train. She even knows the restaurants down to the serving speed, optimizing for the most efficient date possible.

Pretty clever, good for her.

Perhaps the funniest part of this episode is when Candice reads out the list of 10 criteria from a man seeking a match in Wuhan. See, from Candice’s perspective, most men don’t have particularly high standards, but it’s also rather difficult to find a full-package man (job, house, car, city passport, good looks) in a major city. Now, we finally have a full-package man, and this is his ISO:

1. Not seeking: smoking, drinking, gambling, wearing heavy makeup.

2. Don’t like: those who wear outlandish clothing.

3. Not seeking: chronically online, taking too many selfies with selfie filters.

4. Not seeking: someone with too many girl friends, especially if you love chatting with them.

5. Not seeking: people who spend all their money before the next paycheck.

6. Not seeking: socially competitive, overly sensitive.

7. Not seeking: always going out clubbing, especially wearing revealing clothes and staying out all night.

8. Not seeking: not respecting boundaries and having male best friends.

9. Not seeking: non-filial people.

10. Not seeking: someone who’s unemployed and wants to be taken care of by their boyfriend.

Wow, what a guy. I guess incels really are the same everywhere, aren’t they?

You can access full transcripts and support Talk to Me in Chinese 聊聊东西 on Patreon.

The myth of a homogenous society

TeaTime Chinese 茶喝中文 was the first podcast I started listening to on the regular. Hosted by Nathan, a polyglot student from China studying in Europe, it covers a range of topics about Chinese culture and history in slow, approachable Mandarin.

I was particularly drawn to this episode about the social credit system in China because, well. Talking Chinese politics in the west in a whole mess. On one hand you have neoliberal imperialist pundits framing China as the greatest evil to walk this earth. On the other, you have well-meaning but misled Marxists arguing that China is the epitome of socialist revolution and should be protected at all costs. I am a secret third thing—I am seeking nuance and a certain level of cultural competency with an abolitionist foundation.

In this episode, Nathan discusses the social credit system, or 社会信用体系 (she hui xin yong ti xi). He opens by describing a new supermarket that his family went to, where purchases are powered by facial recognition. All you have to do is fill your cart, stick your face in front of a screen, it links your face to your Alibaba or Wechat account, and voila! You just paid for your groceries.

Pretty freaky, right?

He talks about how the social credit system originated with 档案 (dang an), an individual’s personal record first developed in the 1950’s:

In the early days, only government employees had dang an, because the government needed to know who worked for them. Later, everyone in China had one. The dang an stored a lot of information: your place of birth, your parents, what schools you went to, what grades you got, where you worked, how was your performance there, etc. In its earliest form, dang an were all written on paper. However, people were unable to see their own dang an.

[…] Now, everyone’s dang an is all stored on the computer. It’s much easier to look up someone’s information or add new information. And now, more and more people are using phones for doing things: sending messages, buying things, borrowing money, buying train tickets, plane tickets, etc. The Chinese government thought of a clever idea, which is: you can take all the things you do on your phone and store it in your dang an.

Nathan goes on to describe the social credit score that everyone can check on their government app. There are four main categories—A, B, C, and D—with A being the highest score that affords you more educational and professional opportunities.

The issue is not only that those with a lower social credit score have less opportunity and social mobility, but the details of how you earn or lose points is incredibly unclear. And sometimes, it’s not “being a bad person” that could lose you points, it’s running a red light or criticizing the government online. During the height of the Covid pandemic, it could be not wearing a mask in public.

Now, if you’re an American reading this and freaking out that China has become a dystopian Black Mirror society, let me remind you that the FICO credit score was not invented until 1989, and credit scores are not universal. They were created in the US and also popularized in other settler colonies countries like Canada and Australia. The fact that we need good credit to apply for a loan, rent an apartment, buy a car, is fucked up. So in truth, I think of dystopia more a symptom of global capitalism than specific to any specific country.

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I’ve never known my own social credit score. I’ve also never used apps like Alipay. I think that in the beginning, the thinking behind the social credit system must’ve been good, but the results are making people worried. In the beginning, the government wanted to encourage people with social credit, and discourage people from doing bad things. But they didn’t tell people what’s a good thing and what’s a bad thing. People are also starting to think the government is controlling too much.

I’m grateful that Nathan points out the concerns of everyday Chinese people. Whether you’re in the China-good camp or China-bad camp, the west seems to have an overwhelming belief that the Chinese people and government are one in the same. But people are worried—about the surveillance, the control, the ambiguity of punishment, the bias of reward.

I don’t think it’s fair to say that all people of a nation support the nation-state. After all, how many of you support your government?

You can access full transcripts and support TeaTime Chinese 茶喝中文 on their website.

Spring festival: joyous new year celebration or held hostage at the family function?

I have spent the better part of this past year listening to the pleasant ramblings of 打个电话给你 One Call Away, a podcast hosted by long-distance friends Wendy and Iphie. Living on opposite ends of the country, they keep in touch by having conversations about lifestyle topics and posting them online.

In this episode, they discuss celebrating Spring Festival, aka Chinese New Year1. This peaked my interest because the New Year holds a tender place in our hearts for us westernized Asians. It’s a way to show off our cultural heritage and pride, especially after the rise of anti-Asian discrimination due to Covid.

Wendy and Iphie start by asking each other about what they think of 过年 (guo nian) or “passing the new year.” Let’s just say, it wasn’t the vibe I was expecting:

Iphie: When it comes to guo nian…when I hear the word “guo nian,” most of what I look forward to is the feeling of anxiety and rejection, even though we get time off.

Though I grew up in Shenzhen, the family has to guo nian together with elders, and the elders are not in Shenzhen. So back then, ever since I was young, we would first return to see grandpa and grandma (on dad’s side) to guo nian. Then we would return to grandpa and grandma’s place (on mom’s side). Since we were running around to two places, guo nian’s schedule was extremely busy.

Every year, the hometown would undergo more changes. But now, a very real issue is that I didn’t grow up in the hometown, so I don’t have any friends there. I’m just scrolling through my phone all day, it’s so boring.

How fascinating, that for young people in China, they anticipate the New Year with the same dread that many of us do in the US with Thanksgiving and Christmas.

Wendy and Iphie go on to describe the kinds of questions they get from relatives like it’s some kind of horror story. What kind of work are you doing? Do you have a full-time job yet? Why not? You’re making movies? What kind of movies are you making? Do you earn enough money? What’s your salary?

Having only celebrated the New Year as a kid, I was only familiar with getting red envelopes, wearing red clothes, and eating a big delicious meal with family, ideally hot pot or a giant steamed fish. I’ve never experienced the interrogation of being a Chinese adult on the New Year.

However, it’s not all torture. There are some tender moments, too:

Wendy: I actually remember guo nian when I was young, and the whole family would make dumplings together. I’m talking when I was very young, so of course I have little memory of that and most are what adults have told me. But I do remember when I was small, I really liked playing with the dough.

You have to cut it into strips, but first you have to knead the dough, knead it into a long strip, then it into little pieces. And the portions of the head and tail aren’t quite right, so they give the head and tail to little kids to play with. It felt like I was playing with play-doh or kneading clay. My mom would tell me, that dough would start out white, and was grey by the time I was done with it. Just kneading dough, that’s my memory of play.

It warms my heart that even though the holidays are universally a stressful time, there is still space in the kitchen for memories. This reminds me of my own dumpling artistry as a child. My family didn’t make the dough by hand, but I would take the pre-made wrappers and sculpt little animals out of them. Little cats and horses and dragons. Then, I would beg my parents to cook them along with the other dumplings. And I would nibble on my little creations, pleased.

You can access transcripts for a small fee and support 打个电话给你 One Call Away on their patreon.

You think the world’s oldest civilization wasn’t gay as hell?

OutChina is a podcast hosted by Ashley, a queer Chinese hip-hop dancer and social media influencer. She interviews a lovely array of LGBTQ+ Sinophone people from around the world, bringing a refreshingly queer perspective.

In this episode, Ashley invites Dorothy to talk about their polyamorous love life. Now, I’m barely out to my parents as queer. Even though I know that not all Chinese people are as homophobic as my parents, the idea of talking so openly about polyamory just feels like blasphemy to me. So listening to this, I felt like a guilty teenager hiding my smut from my parents—except I’m an adult and my smut is a nice podcast with well-made audio transitions.

Dorothy identifies as queer. Though they fall under the umbrella of lesbian identity, they feel more comfortable with nonbinary. They’re in their early 30’s, and recently moved from Beijing to Australia.

By now, I have about four years of experience with ethical non-monogamy. I first started out in an open relationship, but it quickly turned to polyamory. Right now, my current relationship is within a polyamorous framework with no limits, no hierarchy, known as relationship anarchy. Within this, basically every relationship is defined in a unique way. No exclusivity. The boundaries between friends and lovers are also not so distinct. So it’s all in a state of being able to freely define it for oneself.

If you listen to the podcast, even if you don’t understand Mandarin, you’ll notice that Dorothy uses a lot of Chinglish. They mostly speak in Mandarin but every now and then throw in an English “relationship anarchy” or “BDSM.”

This fascinates me, because queerness was definitely not invented by the west. There have been Chinese gays for longer than most nation-states have existed. Take the term “cut sleeve,” a euphemism for gay men thanks to the story of a Han dynasty emperor. Upon waking from his nap to discover his male lover fell asleep on his silk robe, he cut his own sleeves off so as to not disturb him. Now that’s gay.

So when Dorothy interjects with English words, is it because of the international influence of living in Australia? Did they learn these words in English, or does English just fit the vibe of their lifestyle better? They say you develop a new side of your personality when you learn another language. Does Dorothy feel love stronger in English?

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With a lot of people, we start out dating, and then we see if we want to develop that into a relationship, or if it’s better to keep casual dating. I have a pretty regular BDSM play partner, let’s call him J. J is a “bisexual fem-boy,” a very cute…well maybe I shouldn’t call him cute. A very pretty boy. And he’s also in an open relationship with his partner.

[…] When we first met, I thought, “Wow, this guy is so pretty.” Later, we became friends, and as we got closer we got to chatting and I asked him, “Are you looking for a play partner?” He said sure, so we’ve been trying out BDSM play. Nowadays, we meet 2-3 times a month, sometimes hanging out as friends since we’re in the same friend circle, or sometimes we’ll have a play date. I’m also very good friends with his partner. Sometimes we’ll all play together.

So he’s always been a good friend. But I’ve always had a bit of a crush on him, haha. But I’m truly a useless lesbian, I meet a pretty girl and get very shy. I can feel that he likes me, but in all this time I’ve never acted on it. Truly useless. I wanted to ask him on a date but I was too scared, so I asked his boyfriend, “Do you think he likes me? Can I ask him out?” And he said, “Go for it! Just try it out!”

After listening to this and clutching my pearls, I need Dorothy to write the Chinglish version of Ethical Slut.

You can listen to OutChina on Spotify and wherever else you listen to podcasts.

Why can’t Chinese parents admit they’re wrong and just give their child a hug?

Content warning for child self-harm and ableism in education in this section.

I’m going to take us home by going back to Candice’s Talk to Me in Chinese - 聊聊东西.

In a more recent episode, Candice and Yifei chat about being over-worked. Candice has recently become a personal trainer and is now working 10-12 hour days at the gym. Yifei is currently interning at a school while getting her masters in education while also raising two young children with her mom after divorcing her husband. I’m immensely happy for both of them, and I desperately want them to get some sleep.

Something that really touched me is when Yifei brought up her concern for young students while working at an international school. Since she’s fluent in English, she would sometimes get called to the principle’s office to help translate when parents visited (I’m assuming the parents are Chinese and the principle is not).

Sometimes, you’ll encounter students experiencing some issues—like emotional issues, behavioral issues, etc. There were two times that left the deepest impression on me.

One was with a student who self-harmed, even already showing signs of suicidal ideation. On their2 arms and thighs were those kinds of scars from cutting, you know? When I saw the photos, at that time I couldn’t hold in my tears, I was just so upset.

This child lived on campus. When we found out about this, we told the parents you really should be taking better care of them. We even advised their parents on how to care for them in this kind of situation.

There was another child at the school who also lived on campus who got into a fight with someone. We called the parents in and said, your child told us directly that they’re not happy. These were the exact words, they said, “I’m not happy. I want to go home.”

When the parents arrived, the dad grabbed their hands and saw their eyes were full of tears. We said, “tell your dad why you’re not happy.” That time, I sat there and the tears started falling from my eyes, I was so upset. The child was crying the whole time, and I sat there crying next to them. I was just translating!

I can’t imagine how heart-wrenching it must be to help a child express how upset they are in this kind of environment. The only thing more heart-wrenching is to be that child.

Yifei talks about another story where she helps an autistic, non-verbal child put away the toys. At least, she thought they were non-verbal. The international school requires everyone to speak English, so at first Yifei uses English to say, “let’s clean up the toys,” and the child silently nods along. Then, when Yifei tries Mandarin, the child finally speaks up. Turns out, they just had difficulty communicating in an English-dominated environment.

After Yifei recounts all these stories, she wonders:

Even though the education at this international school was good, the teachers were good, is it really necessary? Making [the students] so unhappy. Is studying that important? Is English that important?

Hearing this, I can’t help but think back to my own childhood. Getting confused by the mix of Chinese and English and barely saying a word til the age of 4. The stress of learning in a rigid environment that was not supportive of my ADHD. The overall misery I felt trying to meet my parents’ expectations for academic performance. Hearing these stories, I empathize deeply with the children and can’t help but agree with Yifei. Is any of this really more important than the child’s happiness?

When I first started listening to Chinese podcasts, I don’t think I realized what an emotional rollercoaster this would be. I never thought I’d spend hours listening to people talk about stories that made them cry, about their insecurities, imagining their future selves, reminiscing about their childhood. Like Yifei, I just came here to translate. But now I emerge, forever changed.

Some Chinese podcasts I’m excited to explore

I am in the midst of a learning milestone—the transition from podcasts targeted toward learners to those targeted toward native speakers.

While I am struggling a fair bit (they throw around all kinds of slang and references that I don’t get and speak very, very fast) I am very excited to dive into these podcasts. And I want to share them because their cover art is absolutely exquisite.

Here’s my attempt at translating their descriptions:

• M自闲聊: Chatting about love, cities, music, and gossip. Hope we can accompany you to work and to sleep using a relaxing and humorous outlook on all things that exist.

• 不开玩笑 Jokes Aside: A sometimes joking, sometimes not joking kind of podcast. Produced by Owl Comedy.

• 字谈字畅: “Zi tan zi chang” is the first to use spoken word to create a podcast focused on typography and print, hosted by Eric Liu and partners. Presenting “The Type.”

• 残言片语 Disabled Talks: A podcast using a disabled point of view to tackle mainstream questions.

• 其他垃圾: “Other garbage” is a weekly urban living publication worth listening to, created by two girls who love to get to the bottom of things. We examine life, decipher hot topics, and stand with all kinds of ways of life.

• 高贵FM: This program is brought to you in partnership by “Gao’s Island” host Gao Bincheng and “Actual humans” host Cao Fugui.

What can I say, there’s just something about Chinese podcast covers that are so good and juicy. I think the magic lies in the power of the character. One character can the root of a word or a whole word by itself. Four characters can be an entire phrase. Being able to communicate more with less on such a small space is a huge advantage for a designer.

Damn, I fucking love Chinese podcasts.

Note: This post has been updated to remove Spotify links, because fuck Spotify.

I remember the good old days of learning French in middle school, where our main topics of conversation were how big the elephant was, and if the balloon was red or purple.

As adults, our reasons for learning a language are probably different from when we were children. We are likely learning because we’re going to travel, we need to get a job, or we want to communicate with family members. So it doesn’t make sense for our first vocab to be the animals at the zoo. (Of course, children growing up in bilingual households or cultures often need to leverage language pragmatically and even translate for their parents. They’re probably not focused on elephants either.)

When I first started teaching myself Mandarin in 2020, it was pretty grim. I wasn’t sure where to start, and I reverted back to my middle school days and just started memorizing fruits and colors. What a surprise, when after a few months I still couldn’t carry on a conversation! I tried googling “100 most common words in Mandarin” which just came up with a list of words out of context. I, you, not, is, etc…

Over time, I slowly began to understand the types of words and phrases I actually needed to build a foundational structure. It took years of HelloChinese and Duolingo, watching HSK vocab videos, and memorizing flashcards, but I made it. Now as I’m looking forward to new languages on the horizon, I’m not so interested in starting over so slowly.

I do believe that the best way to learn a language is by experiencing it—watching shows and movies, listening to podcasts, talking to people, journaling. However, I’m not one of those prodigies who can magically learn how to swim when you throw them into pool. I need to equip myself with fundamentals first.

I created this list of 400ish essential words (and phrases, and concepts, and suggestions) to help myself and others get a jumpstart on the basics of any language. No matter what language. My dream is for us to be able to take this list and use it to become capable of carrying on a basic conversation, no matter how clumsy or awkward.

Please note, this list is focused on vocabulary. Not grammar, not pronunciation, not the writing system, just pure vocab. To fully learn a language, you will need more than a list of 400ish words. But consider this is just one tool in your toolbox. Talk out loud. Write about it in your journal. Create exercises for yourself. Use this vocab next time you talk to someone. Hopefully, it will get you one step closer to your goal.

(If you’re interested in a more utilitarian version, scroll to the bottom for a free download of this list in excel form.)

Conversational basics

If you are traveling somewhere for a week and need emergency language help, please for the love of all that is good, DO NOT just use Duolingo and learn these conversational basics!

Basic greetings

Hello, goodbye

Nice to meet you

What’s your name? My name is…

How are you? I’m doing well / not well / okay

Polite expressions

Please, thank you, you’re welcome

I’m sorry, excuse me

Yes, no

Exclamations

Seriously?

No problem

Exactly, of course, I agree

Never mind

That’s amazing!

What a shame

Basic questions

Who, what, where, when, why, how

Because

How do you say…?

Do you speak English [or native language]?

I don’t understand

What does…mean?

Basic information

Name

Phone number

Address

Email address

Buying and ordering

I would like / Can I have…

How much does it cost?

Do you have/sell…?

Money, cash, credit card

Cheap, expensive

Reservation, menu, check

Practical information

This is potentially my favorite section. Once you learn how to count and about concepts that use numbers (age, date, time), there is so much you can practice.

How to count

Numbers 1-100 (prioritize 1-20)

A thousand, a million, and a billion

Express age

How old are you?

I am…years old

Express the date and time

The formula for expressing the date/time can vary from culture to culture, and depending on how vague or precise you want to be. Learn all the different ways.

Days of the week, months, seasons

Morning, noon, afternoon, evening/night

Today, yesterday, tomorrow

Last week, next week

Formula for expressing date/time

How to tell directions

You might think that no one asks for directions anymore but trust me, when your phone is dead and your GPS isn’t working, you will be grateful for this.

Where is…?

How can I get to…?

In front of, behind

Go, turn

Right, left, forward, back

Here, there, over there

Emergency

Help me!

Be careful, danger, emergency

I need a doctor

I am lost, I am hurt

Useful little words

I wasn’t sure what to call these. Adverbs, particles, conjunctions? There’s a little of everything mixed in here, the point is that these words are meant to help string together phrases.

Before, after

With, without

And, or, but

For, of

Since, until

From…to…

First, then, later, last

At, in, on

Against, toward

During

As well, too much, very, a lot, a few

Essential verbs

If your target language includes conjugation, I recommend starting with present tense, then past, then future.

To be, to have, to do, to be able, to go, to live

To know, to understand, to see, to think, to want

To say, to speak, to ask

To arrive, to come

To read, to write

To buy, to use, eat, to drink

Adjectives and descriptions

Adjectives are incredibly useful not only in describing your surroundings, but describing your own emotions and opinions. This is the start of you affirming your place in this world!

Express the weather

Today, it’s…

Sunny, raining, snowing

Hot, warm, cold, chilly

Cloudy, windy, foggy

Emotions

I am / I am feeling…

Happy, sad, angry

Excited, tired

Nervous, calm, surprised

Sick

Appearance

Big, small

Tall, short

Long, short

Beautiful, cute, ugly

Old, new

Personality and qualities

Smart, stupid

Kind, friendly, mean

Strong, weak

Brave, shy

Fun, interesting, boring

Difficult, easy

Colors

Color

Red, orange, yellow, green, blue, purple, pink

Black, white, grey, brown

Essential nouns

Nouns are probably the longest list of vocab that will continue to expand further as you learn. Feel free to adjust this list so that the nouns are relevant to how you plan to use your target language.

Places

Place

Restaurant, hotel

Airport, train station, bus stop

Supermarket, mall

House, home

Hospital, school, bank

City, town, country

Capital

Countries: your home country, the country of your target language, etc.

Transportation

Airplane, train, bus, taxi

Car, bicycle

Ticket, passport, visa

Food and drink

Food and drink can get quite culturally specific. For example, you need to learn how to say chopsticks in Mandarin, but not cheese or sandwich (…I actually still don’t know how to say these in Mandarin). By contrast, cheese and sandwich were some of the first food words I learned in Portuguese. Learn the major food and drink you will come across.

Food, drink

Table, plate, bowl, spoon, fork, knife

(Any other culturally relevant utensils or dishware)

Breakfast, lunch, dinner, dessert

Water, milk, coffee, tea

Rice, bread, noodles/pasta

Meat, vegetable, fruit

Cake, candy, snack

Salty, spicy, sweet, sour

Delicious

(Any other culturally relevant food)

People

Person, people

Woman, man, boy, girl

Adult, child, baby

Youth, elder

Wife, husband, partner, girlfriend, boyfriend

Family members

Note that some languages specify if the sibling is older or younger, and if the family member is on your mother’s or father’s side. So of course, make sure to include this if needed.

Family

Parent(s), mom/mother, dad/father

Sister, brother, sibling

Grandma, grandpa, aunt, uncle, cousin

Child, son, daughter

Domestic space

Room

Bedroom, living room, dining room, bathroom, kitchen

Furniture

Chair, sofa/couch, bed, closet, cabinet

Window, floor, wall, door

(Any other culturally relevant furniture or spaces)

Clothes

Shirt, t-shirt, sweater

Pants, skirt, dress

Coat, jacket

Shoes, socks, sandals

Glasses, sunglasses, hat, scarf, watch

(Any other culturally relevant clothes)

Everyday objects

If there are any objects that you tend to use, or that you know you will use in the situation where you’re speaking your target language, make sure to include those.

Phone, cell phone

Bag, wallet/purse

Computer, laptop, television

Notebook, pen, pencil, book

Medicine

Gift/present

Suitcase, luggage

Body parts

Body

Face, head, eyes, nose, mouth, ears

Hands, arms, legs, feet

Chest, back

Abstract nouns

Some of these are actually a bit more intermediate than beginner, but can be important in you’re asking questions and discussing ideas.

Thing

Experience, situation, story

Idea, plan

Problem, question, example, reason

Basic animals

Okay…these words are not that essential. I included these mostly for old time’s sake. Middle school nostalgia.

Cat, dog, bird

Pig, horse, cow

Bug

(Any other culturally relevant animals)

400ish Essential Words To Learn In Any Language

10KB ∙ XLSX file

Download

Download

And that’s all

Thanks for reading, I hope this list of helpful.

What are some language topics that you’re currently working? What are some words or phrases that are particularly unique in your target language? Do you have any suggestions for essential words to add to this list? Comment below with your thoughts and subscribe for more language resources and random thoughts. :)

Emoji graphics sourced from Openmoji

If you’re browsing the internet for language learning resources, I’m sure this isn’t the first advice article you’ve come across. There is quite a lot out there. But I’m not here to pretend I have the superior strategy, nor am I here to promise you’ll be fluent within 6 months. I am simply here to share the methods that have worked for me, and I hope you can take something with you.

I’ve been teaching myself Mandarin Chinese, the native1 language of my parents, nearly everyday for the past 4 years. Teaching, self-studying, re-learning, re-claiming—all of the above. I went from barely able to string together a sentence to having full conversations, from reading only about 50 characters to now about 1,000 characters and 3,000 words. Earlier this year, I was able to travel to China by myself for the first time (I always relied on my parents to translate in the past) and successfully bought souvenirs, checked into hotels, and even went to the dentist.

As you can see, Mandarin is my primary focus and main goal. I’m also about a year into learning Brazilian Portuguese, a tentative beginner of Latin American Spanish, and I’m in the midst of regaining my French as well.

In this process, I’ve built up a self-study routine that I balance with a full-time job and various hobbies and life obligations. I’ve learned a lot throughout this experience, as it wasn’t easy (the first and a half year of Mandarin was pretty much a flop) and it takes quite a bit of dedication. But I also think it is worth it. It creates cultural connection, builds relationships and solidarity, and especially for myself with Mandarin, it’s incredibly healing.

Here’s my advice

Dedicate time for consistent practice (ideally everyday)

I really want to emphasize that learning a language isn’t a one and done deal. Like exercising, brushing your teeth, drinking water, I think of it as a muscle you should consistently work and take care of in order to be able to use properly.

Ideally, I think it’s best to practice everyday. If not that, at least 3-4 times a week. Any less than that, and you would continuously forget what you’re learning. That being said, I don’t think this needs to be particularly intensive. 15 minutes a day is better than nothing. 15 minutes a few times a week is better than 1 hour a month. It all depends on how fluent you want to be and how quickly—if your goal is to be conversational within a year (which is pretty ambitious!), you probably want to devote a few hours a day. If it’s for fun, you can set a more relaxed schedule.

There are a few ways to build daily habits. I like to ladder habits, meaning if I already have a habit (e.g. getting ready for bed, taking a lunch break), I attach a new habit to it. That way, it feels almost automatic. I also like to track my language activities in a color-coded journal to visualize everything. Do whatever habit-building method works for you.

Identify effective and efficient activities at the right level for you

A self-study routine means that you’re creating your own curriculum instead of taking a class. Or maybe your routine includes an official class, but if you’re also learning on your own, it’s important to identify activities that are effective, efficient, and at the right level.

What do I mean by effective? It should employ essential learning techniques - repetition, visualization, pattern recognition - to ensure you’re actually getting something out of this activity. I’m not going to pretend I can explain the science of linguistics, but I definitely experience linguistics in this little brain of mine, and these techniques work.

Examples of effective learning techniques - reading a text out loud and answering questions in the target language. Having a conversation with a native speaker in the target language. Listening to a podcast while reading the transcript and mirroring them. These are all examples of activities that push you to comprehend and produce in the target language.

Examples of ineffective learning techniques - only watching movies/shows with subtitles in your native language. Only doing Duolingo. Only doing flashcards. Focusing on the “perfect textbook” version of the language.

In general, you can divide language proficiency into 2 parts: input and output. Input includes listening and reading. Output includes writing and speaking. Ideally you would practice a little bit of everything, but keep in mind you need more input in order to generate output. As children, we are immersed in our native language and copy the people around us. The more you listen and read, the more you experience the language, and the more you can produce.

What do I mean by efficient? Well, I assume you’re a busy person. Your time is valuable and your headspace is precious. If you have 10 minutes of free time, it’s best to make the most out of it. You don’t need to make flashcards by hand if you can find pre-made sets online. You don’t need to take notes if you never refer back to them. I think sometimes, we have a very rigid idea of what learning entails based on formal academic institutions. To hell with academia. If you learn Spanish best by getting drunk and chatting with your buddies in Spanish, do that.

And what do I mean by at the right level? A lot of what’s out there is either a monumentally slow “Hello, how are you?” or a full-blown telenovela series. These are on the opposite ends of the spectrum, one being too basic and the other far too advanced. In my opinion, you should be listening and reading to materials at a 50-80% comprehension level. Anything less than 50% is too challenging, anything more than 80% is too easy.

If you’re having trouble figuring out what materials are appropriate for your level, here are my recommendations ranging from absolute beginner to high intermediate:

Absolute beginner (no experience)

At this point, you don’t know anything.

• Learn the alphabet/phonetic system - Find a good video/article and learn how to read, write, and pronounce the alphabet. This will be your foundation.

• Watch movies/shows purely for vibes - This is not for listening comprehension, but to experience how the language sounds and the mannerisms of native speakers. It doesn’t matter if you don’t understand them.

• Learn essential phrases and concepts - These will jumpstart your ability to understand and produce simple concepts. Here’s a preliminary list I recommend; find a good video/article for each and commit these to memory:

  • Greetings and basic questions/phrases

  • Numbers (at least 1-20 to start, then 1-100)

  • Express day, date, and time

  • Express age

  • Express the weather

  • Essential verbs - to be, to do, to go, to think, to be able, to want, to have

  • Essential nouns - people, places, food, transportation, daily objects

  • Essential adjectives - describing appearance, emotions, color

  • Adverbs, particles, conjunctions - and, or, but, however, still, maybe, first, then, last, until, sometimes (etc)

Beginner with some experience

At this point, you have some familiarity but likely can’t have a conversation.

• Use a daily app - This will help build a daily habit and teach basic vocab and grammar. I’ve used Mango, HelloChinese, and Duolingo all pretty regularly and I like Mango especially. (Not sponsored!)

• Listen to a beginner level podcast - Beginner podcasts are great to get started listening because they tend to speak very slowly and about simple concepts. Sometimes they have a youtube video version, and watching their gestures and facial expressions can help with comprehension.

• Keep a regular journal - This could be either written or spoken out loud (or you could read out loud what you write). At this level, you should be able to express basic information about the present. I recommend applying the essentials from the last section. A journal entry could look something like this:

  Today is Wednesday, October 15, 2025. Right now it’s 10:30 am. It’s cold and rainy. I feel sad because I have to work and I don’t want to. Tonight, I’m going out to have dinner with a friend. I like my friend. See you later!

Advanced beginner/early intermediate

At this point, you probably have a basic understanding of the language and can have simple conversations. (If you grew up with the language in your family household but never had much formal training, my guess is this is likely where you are.)

• Continue using a daily app and listening to beginner podcasts

• Have conversations with a native speaker - I use Italki to speak with tutors in Mandarin and Portuguese (also not sponsored lol). You could also practice with family and friends, but make sure to only speak in the target language.

• Practice “active listening” - This is a learning method I employ where I listen to the podcast and read the transcript at the same time. I annotate the transcript for new vocab, and after 10 min I read the transcript out loud. This way, I’m practicing listening, reading, and speaking, all while building a vocab bank.

• Read beginner-level stories and books - Find graded readers and books and read the same story over and over again. This is incredibly helpful for learning how to construct a sentence without having to study grammar.

• Continue the journaling practice - Continue journaling, but add more detail. For example - what did you do yesterday? What will you do today and tomorrow? Describe where you live, the food you’re eating, the activities you’re doing. Describe what you look like, how you’re feeling, and what you like and dislike. Describe your family, friends, and coworkers.

Intermediate/advanced intermediate

At this point, you should be able to express more complex concepts with detail and nuance.

• Continue the daily apps, conversation practice, graded readers - These activities won’t change, your abilities are just improving.

• Listen to intermediate podcasts - Ideally at this point, you should be able to listen to content where the speakers aren’t intentionally slowing down their speech.

• Watch reality TV - Reality TV, especially dating shows, is perfect for language learning because they’re native speakers who talk about a variety of relatively simple concepts. What do you like to do? What are your future plans? At this point, you should be able to watch this solely in the target language subtitles.

• Continue the journaling practice - Try to add more complexity to your journaling. At this point, you should be able to express thoughts, ideas, and abstract concepts. What is something you did that you can learn a lesson from? What is a conflict you’re experiencing and why is it difficult? What types of relationships are important to you at this stage in life, and why?

Early advanced

To be honest, my Portuguese hasn’t reached this level yet and my Mandarin is slowly transitioning from intermediate to advanced as we speak, so I’m still acclimating to this level. It’s a challenge. Watching Nezha 2 in theaters in Shanghai was…humbling. But while I can’t exactly impart wisdom on this level, I can tell you what mindsets I’m trying to embrace:

• Think directly in the target language

• Apply more vocab into speaking practice

• Pay more attention to context clues

• Dramatically increase the amount of input I’m receiving

• Interact more on Chinese social media

Plan, do, reflect

In my opinion, the best way to build any sort of self-guided learning routine is by following these three steps:

1. Plan - Decide what activities to do and what materials to use. Get the book, save the podcast, bookmark the video - make sure these materials are easy to find and come back to. Get a notebook dedicated to this language. Create a weekly schedule. Whatever you need to do to set yourself up for success.

2. Do - Execute on the plan that you created. If that means reading a chapter once a week, do that. If that means listening to a podcast during your morning commute or evening routine, do that. Don’t worry too much about how quickly or well you’re learning. The most important thing here is to build a routine.

3. Reflect - Take some time to reflect on your progress and how well this routine is working for you. I like to do reflections every month or every few months. This has helped me pivot certain activities—for example I set a goal to record an audio journal twice a week when I realized I wasn’t speaking enough. Make sure your activities and materials are working for you. And if something isn’t working—stop, figure out why, and do something else.

As an example, here’s my current weekly schedule for Portuguese:

• Everyday - use Duolingo and Mango

• Every Mon and Wed - read a book on the bus

• Every Tues and Thurs - listen to a podcast

• Every Fri - Italki lesson

• When I have spare time - write a journal entry

This schedule means I usually spend about 15-30 min a day on Portuguese. That may seem small, but after about 6 months of this routine, I was able to speak very basic Portuguese to some capoeira friends I was hosting at my house for an event. Yes they were patiently speaking slowly to me and I was stumbling and struggling, but we were still able to communicate. I’m in the process of making a few adjustments—I need to speak more and find more reading materials—but I am proud to report that this routine actually works.

A few more random tips just for fun

If you ever have a reason to count numbers—whether that be cooking, working out, playing cards—do it in your target language.

Listen to and sing along to music. In my opinion, this doesn’t actually help much with conversation but it is very fun and helps you really immerse yourself in the culture.

If you’re learning multiple languages at once, choose a language to focus on. Better to do one thing really well then several things poorly.

Prioritize your time. You might need to put other responsibilities and hobbies on pause, depending on how much time you plan to devote to language learning. I gave up freelance work and reading books in English so I could memorize the hundreds of characters required to read Chinese. This might sound scandalous, but it freed up a lot of needed headspace and I don’t regret it.

And lastly, perhaps the most annoying piece of advice, you have to want it. Learning a language isn’t easy. I’ve wanted to give up on my Mandarin journey several times. Sometimes, you need to be your own personal Barbie dream-girl fitness trainer. If you would prefer to wave a magic wand and wake up fluent in the language, it will never happen, because you don’t want it enough. Desire, not entitlement, is the motivation for you to return to it again, and again, and again.

We haven’t even talked about trauma and shame

I didn’t want to scare anyone in the beginning with the shame train right out the gate. But the shame of not being able to speak a language is an inescapable part of the learning process. I mentioned that I wasn’t able to form complete sentences in Mandarin until a few years ago. Well, since most of my extended family lives in China and doesn’t speak English, that also means I was unable to talk to them for most of my life. The first full conversation I had with my only living grandparent was in 2024, unfortunately my other grandparents passed away before I had that experience.

Most language learning articles recommend keeping your goal in mind when you’re learning. This makes complete sense, and I’m not necessarily saying ignore it. But…maybe you should ignore it? If your goal feels like it’s running into an insurmountable barrier built by western imperialism, maybe just say fuck it?

In 2021, it was too stressful for me to say I was learning Chinese for my family. I didn’t have the emotional capacity to process a full-blown identity crisis every time I did my little flashcards. So I decided, who cares? I finally got serious about Mandarin when I got really into a BL Drama (The Untamed) and a Chinese hip hop dance competition (Street Dance of China). Learning for my sense of identity in this world? Yeah right. I’m learning Mandarin to watch these pretty Chinese idols dance to a 50 Cent cover. If life is too traumatic, be silly, be trashy. To be cringe is to be free.

I believe it was Uncle Iroh who once said, “Pride is not the opposite of shame, but the source of it.” At a certain point, I needed to confront the shame of not being able to speak Mandarin. There was too much of, “I should know this already, I shouldn’t have to learn these toddler grammar rules, I’m Chinese, why don’t I know this?”

This was my pride speaking for me, I was dragging myself down. The reality was that I didn’t know it, everything I was saying was wrong, and I was basically a toddler. It was time to let go of my pride and be ready to sound stupid. And pro tip, if you’re not afraid of sounding stupid, you learn better.

I recognize that shame and trauma come in all sorts, and I don’t want to presume how you experience it. These were some examples of how I experience it. And it’s still coming back to me. I recently found myself stressed about not knowing Spanish despite living my entire life in the US while migrants are currently being kidnapped off the streets by “eyes” agents. And I have no family relation to Spain or Latin America. So of course I’m processing this differently than Mandarin, but there is shame nonetheless. “I’m not doing enough, I’m unable to help, I can’t communicate with my neighbors.” I’m in the process of evolving out of this self-deprecating thinking. We must show up for each other however we can right now.

Perhaps the biggest thing that I want to emphasize when it comes to the more emotional aspect of language learning is just that—it’s emotional. This is not just about professional development2, or some pursuit of intellectual arrogance. As corny as it sounds, I think it’s about falling in love with the language.

There’s a language youtuber ‘Norwegian with Ilys’ who made a video about how she learned Norwegian on her own and became fluent in only about 2 years. I’m not planning to learn Norwegian, but I was looking around for inspiration and found her videos. I thought she was passionate, earnest, and humble. She said something profound that has stuck with me for a long time:

This really encapsulates the love that I have learned to embrace for Mandarin, and the love I continued to pour into Portuguese and now Spanish. I want to become a part of China, and China to become a part of me. If you think about falling in love—whether that’s a friend, family member, partner, or yourself—think about the pure devotion and attention you give. I really do think the best thing you can do to learn a language is to fall in love with it. And in the process, heal all the shame in your heart.

I watch nearly every season of Love is Blind in nearly every region it airs. USA, Japan, Sweden, France, Dubai, most of Brazil, and parts of Mexico, Argentina, UK, and Germany. Not because I’m paid to, not even because I particularly enjoy it. But because it is my obsessive hobby.

Okay to be clear, about 70% of the show is so mind-numbingly boring, I usually just have it playing in the background while I go about my day. It makes for a great multi-tasking soundtrack. But because it’s reality TV and that industry relies on shocking moments that go viral, the remaining 30% is filled with heinous conflict.

My journey with Love is Blind started in 2020, when I was fairly early into Covid lockdown with my housemates at the time. Having nothing else to do but lounge around in the living room, we marathoned the entire first season of Love is Blind USA in one weekend. I was a casual viewer until the moment our favorite white woman Jessica absent-mindedly fed red wine to her dog. And then I became a connoisseur.

About 15 seasons later, I will admit there are practical reasons for watching the show as well. I’m currently learning Portuguese and Spanish and trying to upkeep my French, so sometimes I watch the show for listening practice. Reality TV is perfect for learning languages because it depicts native speakers talking about a variety of different everyday topics in relatively simple language.

I am also trying to improve my communication and conflict skills—as a friend, a lover, a family member, a community member—and the show is a great example of what not to do. What to avoid at all costs. And yes of course it’s contrived, everyone is being directed and playing a caricature of themselves even if it’s portrayed as “reality.” But it’s still surprisingly insightful to be able to observe conflict and reflect on how that could apply to me.

But the main reason I watch the show these days is to fuel my rigorous study of the heterosexual agenda. Because the heterosexual agenda is about capitalism. And capitalism is about ethnic supremacy, typically white supremacy. And white supremacy is about patriarchy. And patriarchy is about the heterosexual agenda. And so on, and so forth.

And being the unwilling but relentless connoisseur that I am, I have concluded that everything about Love is Blind is about the heterosexual agenda, from the people themselves to the archetypes they become to the environments and settings of filming to the labor rights issues to the actual ownership of the franchise itself. Every single thing about Love is Blind is spelling out the recipe for how to build and maintain a capitalist society. And that’s why it’s a horror story I am unable to look away from.

The only option is the nuclear family

Let’s talk about the premise of the show. A group of men and a group of women live in separate quarters and date each other for 10 days in the pods. They are not allowed to see each other until they make a marriage proposal, after which there is a reveal, a honeymoon in a tropical region of production’s choosing, a few weeks of living together in a “modern luxury” suite, and finally a Christian-style wedding ceremony and/or public humiliation.

Okay first of all, no gay feelings?

The show literally can’t exist in a queer way, which is fascinating to me. Granted, there have been documented accounts of cast members coming out as queer, to my knowledge mostly bisexual women, but the entire premise of the show is relying on a heterosexual union as end game. No gay stuff. And definitely no trans stuff.

It wouldn’t quite work with queer dating, would it? Part of the drama that the show creates is shrouding the love interest in mystery while being surrounded by potential rivals. The same-gender living quarters create an environment where other cast members are structurally set up to be your friends and enemies. And we wonder why women so often tear each other down in real life? The pods are like a contained, psychological experiment for how stop women from supporting women.

(Imagine the drama of cast members falling in love/hooking up with others in the same-gender living quarters! That would ruin the show, and be completely hilarious.)

I am a strong believer that most of the show’s conflict can be boiled down to the fact that cast members are conditioned to place all their bets on their monogamous partner. Jealousy, insecurity, finances, health conditions, family pressure - it all hinges on the belief that you should be a self-sufficient unit as a nuclear family. And if your partner can’t provide you with everything you need and vice versa, why that’s not a structural problem. That’s your problem.

Now, compare that to cultures that are not as individualistic but more centered on community as the fabric of society. Many of them Indigenous and non-western cultures. Inter-generational homes, communal living, structures where we can rely on each other to meet our needs. While polyamory has its own issues, it does (ideally) champion the belief that your partner shouldn’t be expected to meet all your needs and marriage is a construct that is not meant to last forever—but to LIB, this is blasphemy.

And because only heterosexual dating is allowed, the criteria that many contestants focus on is how successful their potential partners are at performing their gender. Is he man enough? Does he earn enough? Will he fight off other men? Is he tall enough? Can he score a touchdown? I remember the drama when a contestant was revealed to be a bisexual man. To be fair, most of the drama was fueled by his own insecurities, but still, why is that an issue in the first place? Why does someone need to be “enough” of a man or woman to be deemed a suitable partner?

If you’ve never experienced queer/trans dating, it’s probably confusing to you why this is so confusing to me. If you have, then you can probably relate to the feeling of findings someone attractive for whatever mix of feminine and masculine characteristics they have. You might relate to the masc4masc or fem4fem vibes of seeking someone who is similar to you, or the T4T vibes of throwing any preconceived notions of gender roles out the window. Compulsory heterosexual dating is largely about enforcing gender roles more than anything else.

Also, let’s be real. The motivation to marry a partner, move away from your parents, buy a piece of land, have babies. These are all tenants of Manifest Destiny, the white supremacist idea that the US was meant to expand across North America. These are the strategies that create the foundation of a dominating settler colony and enable the horrific violence against this land’s Indigenous peoples. Get married. Buy land. Have babies. Those babies will also grow up. Become laborers and consumers. Get married. Buy land. Have more babies.

We wonder why conservatives are so obsessed over individual freedoms but are so adamantly against abortion? Any control that women and people with uteruses have over their bodies is a threat to patriarchy. We wonder why conservatives are more freaked out by queer and trans people than they are about global warming? Any expression of love and bodily autonomy outside of the heterosexual agenda is a threat to the nuclear family.

To be clear, this isn’t a blanket critique of getting married and having kids. This is a critique of compulsory heterosexuality, toxic monogamy, the nuclear family, and treating land like capital. And these are all things that LIB props up as the ultimate keys to success.

Competition for the world’s worst man

^ A valid alternate title for LIB.

I genuinely love watching the show across different regions and cultures. I loved seeing the different wedding customs from various Arabic nations. I loved watching how some Brazilian cast members retain their Indigenous and/or African heritage through food and music. Even if it was probably manufactured for TV, the peek into their cultures was beautiful. But no matter what culture, there was one thing they had in common—the men were always the worst.

I remember reflecting after a particularly horrible USA season that I don’t even align with the values of the women. And no I don’t mean questioning if they are “high value women” (barf), I mean their political values. These women want to become millionaires, they openly vote conservative, their liberal values are a performance, they’re proud of their military service during a genocide that the US is happily funding—LIB women are proud imperialists through and through. They are not my comrades, dare I say they are not even my friends. And yet, I still feel sorry for them, because what the men put them through is so shockingly bad.

I’m talking Japanese men who expect a traditional housewife, no compromise. I’m talking Brazilian men who collectively agree to howl at the moon to notify the other men they just scored in bed. I’m talking Mexican and Argentinian men who pout like children when their fiancées don’t want to have sex with them. I’m talking Arab men who forbid their future wife from dancing claiming “no Arab man would accept this.” I’m talking American men who lie about everything from secret children to Instagram DM’s to what location they were sharing.

This is not to say that the women didn’t have issues. There were plenty of women who, from my perspective, were dishonest, overly critical, controlling, and manipulative. But time and time again, the men managed to out-do them. Multiple Brazilian men rejected their fiancée right out the gate purely based on looks and weight after claiming in the pods she was the love of their lives. Multiple American men cheated, or tried to cheat, on their fiancée with another cast member. Do you remember the American guy who would constantly neg his pod dates thinking that was a form of flirting? That’s a trick question, because there wasn’t just one.

There are a few LIB couples that are still married today. And I’ve observed the one thing they have in common is: the man is not a complete piece of shit. He’s a good listener. He doesn’t interrupt or speak over his partner. He cares about her opinion and validates her feelings. You know, just basic human decency. Obviously there’s a lot in their private lives that we probably aren’t seeing, and I’m definitely not assuming their marriages are perfect, but…wow, the bar is low.

Congratulations on your new colony! Would you like to make it a military base, mining operation, labor camp, or vacation destination?

Why not all the above?

Something that has always fascinated me about settler colonialism is that some of the world’s largest imperial invaders (Great Britain, Spain, Japan) are relatively smaller nations with limited resources and some of the areas that have been colonized over and over again (Philippines, Puerto Rico, Hawaii) are abundant with resources and natural beauty.

Not that it’s a definitive binary—for example China, Russia, India, and Brazil expanded outward into one large land mass. The US is both a huge land mass and a collection of island colonies (and an even larger collection of nations they’ve infiltrated and orchestrated coups). But even so, as environmental feminists have pointed out for years, I believe this highlights the undeniable link between exploitation the land and that of the people.

That’s why I always like to keep track of what the LIB honeymoon location is, because it indicates something about its relationship to the show’s home country. For Japan it was Okinawa. For one season of Brazil, it was the Amazon rainforest. For the USA, it’s usually Mexico. For one season of UK, it was Greece. For Dubai, it was Lebanon.

Just speaking for the USA, since that’s where I live, there’s plenty of beautiful places you could travel within the country. Plenty of national parks, plenty of beaches, plenty of mountains. But it’s not enough to go to a beautiful place, you need to go to a beautiful place where you can escape your everyday life to soak in a romantic paradise. It needs to be a beautiful place that elevates the feeling of fantasy, and that you have transcended your previous sadly single state to a new and improved married state. Some place worthy of a honeymoon.

Like a colony, perhaps?

There is something very “Eat, Pray, Love” about honeymoon destinations. The idea that these beautiful places exist for the purpose of your own benefit and self-discovery. Never mind that they are the homes of Indigenous peoples with centuries of tradition and custom that pay respect to and work with the land. Nah. Those customs don’t matter unless they can be re-purposed into fun souvenirs. Those people don’t matter unless they make your experience feel more “authentic.”

Obviously, there’s nothing wrong with going to Italy to eat pasta. If Julia Roberts wants to travel the world to figure out how to be a good person, good for her. Hell, if Scarlett Johansson wants to discover herself by having a threesome with a toxic couple in Spain, go for it. That sounds like fun to me! It’s not about condemning travel, it’s about the systemic exploitation of land in multiple ways, all while assuming innocence and avoiding accountability the way white women do best. Puerto Rico has been colonized multiple times, has been ravaged as a US military base and testing ground, where Americans get all the benefits of tax breaks and vacation homes while Puerto Ricans live with a crumbling infrastructure and regularly lose power. But sure, take your cruise trip to Puerto Rico. To some, it really is nothing more than an island getaway.

And Brits can go to Greece without ever speaking Greek. Americans can go to Mexico without ever speaking Spanish or any of its Indigenous languages. Japanese people can go to Okinawa without ever speaking Okinawan. (Unfortunately, most Okinawans have lost their native language due to colonization and now mostly speak Japanese. Interestingly, Okinawans who migrated to Brazil generations ago were able to better retain their language). None of the cast members need to speak the language or interact with the people of the land at all because the whole point of the honeymoon trip was to extract, extract, extract.

This starts to get at what I like to call “the arrogance of English” (or in some cases of Japanese, of Portuguese, of Spanish, you get the idea). Since English is the de facto lingua franca of the world, despite only being the native language of a small fraction of the world, it enables English speakers to travel without any regard to a genuine relationship with the land and its people. Because English is the language of imperialism power.

And nobody exemplifies this more than the entitlement of Americans. Americans are also unique in that we, as a people, expect an abnormally high amount of customer service at every bend and turn. This all leads to the Disney-fication of the vacation destination, where the local tourism industry creates a parody version of its own culture in order to drive up tourism.

All of this with no mention of the violence it took and continues to take in order to colonize those lands. I was shocked when there was no mention of the ongoing genocide against Pal_ez-tine in the Dubai season. I guess I shouldn’t be surprised, but it was still very disappointing. The cognitive dissonance I felt watching the cast, including multiple Lebanese cast members, honeymoon in Lebanon while the occupation was actively bombing Lebanon was jarring.

Love is Blind is capitalism which is patriarchy which is white supremacy which is imperialism.

Love is narcissism

My family background is Chinese. Something my therapist and I often discuss is the difference between American/western and Chinese/eastern values, since we both live in the space between them.

Something my therapist pointed out that I thought was particularly astute is that American romance favors taking initiative, being forward, acting on your feelings, and words of affirmation. East Asian romance by contrast favors action over words, spending quality time with someone, sitting with your feelings, and an eventual love confession.

(Not saying one is inherently better than the other, just pointing out the contrast. There’s pros and cons to both.)

If the concept of a love confession is new to you, just look up, “Senpai notice me.” I’m sure everyone has their own take on it, but to me this exemplifies the idea of romantic feelings growing over time as you slowly discover who someone is, and then when it’s almost too much to keep your feelings inside, it bursts out of you in the form of a confession. That’s the vibe of many “Terrace House”-style dating shows that I sometimes watch—Heart Signal, Relationship, and The Boyfriend to name a few (more listening practice!).

The premise of these shows is like a breath of fresh air compared to the constant booze and tears of American reality TV. A group of people live in a house together, often cooking and running errands together, while going on cute trips and dates. Often at the end of the day, they write a letter to someone who caught their eye. There’s still drama, jealousy, insecurities—but because they are expected to have family meals together it creates an incentive for them to work through their conflicts. The Boyfriend, a gay Japanese dating show, even had a coffee truck that the boys were running together, so it gave them a common goal to work toward. Communalism vs. individualism.

And in this setting, you can’t lie about what kind of spouse you’d be. You can’t lie about being a good cook or always doing the dishes. You can’t lie about how you would sweep someone off their feet with flowers and then never buy flowers. These shows are all about understanding the domestic side to someone early on, helping you picture married life with them before you even commit to a kiss.

Of course, you might still put your best foot forward on the dating show, but who doesn’t do that when first meeting somebody cute? In that sense, Terrace House shows are more like the “real” dating world, and LIB is more like emotional catfishing.

I am constantly, just constantly shocked by the amount of narcissism and manipulation in these pods. It makes me question whether LIB contestants know they’re lying, or if the pods create such a convenient void of accountability that they just naturally fall into the pits of deception. The pods were supposedly created to take the “superficial” factors out of dating by preventing them from physically seeing each other. But really, they revealed something much darker—the tension between who people thought they were and who they really were.

Let’s talk about white supremacy again. There’s a list of characteristics that are commonly linked to white supremacist culture. If you’ve never heard of them, just watch a season of LIB, you’ll become very familiar with them. Perfectionism. Sense of urgency. Defensiveness. Only one right way. Progress is bigger and more. Trust me, they have it all.

Time and time again, LIB contestants go into these pods demanding that their future spouse is absolutely 100% certain about them. 110%. 120%. 1,000%. These people love to add more numbers to their damn percentages. They constantly demand devotion and hate “playing second fiddle” even though they are all dating multiple people. They constantly get defensive and cry about not being “good enough.” White supremacist characteristics create the unrealistic expectations that they have of their partners, and continues to drive conflict when they realize what they want is impossible.

Now to be fair, when I’m talking about LIB exhibiting white supremacist characteristics I am referring more to the USA and European seasons. Every culture has a slightly different way of approaching conflict, but the non-western cultures seem much more comfortable with conflict in general. From my limited perspective as an outsider, I noticed that Japanese contestants tended to quietly discuss their disappointment with each other across the dinner table. Brazilian contestants tended to shout their rage straight into the crowd (and talk shit directly into podcast mics). Arab contestants openly disdained their enemies and defended their loved ones with all the flair of a theatrical production.

By contrast, French contestants tended to disappear off into small groups to whisper their grievances and then cry to the camera. German contestants tended to discuss events like cheating and breakups as if they were events that passively happened to them instead of things they did. American contestants tended to lie to their partners’ faces about their confidence in the relationship right up until they met at the altar (or until they got caught cheating). Fear of open conflict is a white supremacist characteristic. Of course—Japan, Brazil, and Dubai are all highly exploitative and oppressive societies as well. Make no mistake. But they don’t hide from a fight, I have to give them that.

Of course, we have to keep in mind that reality TV is by far not a holistic or accurate portrayal of an entire culture. But if your main takeaway after watching LIB USA is that Americans are all deeply unwell…you’d be correct.

Maybe these people do dream of labor

It’s time to cast a light of truth on this whole industry.

First, we should call being on reality TV what it is—working. They’re not just having fun or goofing off, they’re doing a job. We as viewers make fun of them for their weird personalities and petty conflicts, but we are also being entertained by them. We judge them for putting their lives on blast for the entire internet to see, but we’re the ones watching. Meanwhile they are able to quit their day jobs to become social media influencers and earn twice sometimes three times their previous salary. Reality TV contestants are laborers. And where there is labor, there is exploitation.

Love is Blind USA has been sued by previous contestants for poor working conditions. Not enough food. Far too much alcohol. Long days of filming. Being manipulated into stressful situations by production. Why do you think in later seasons of LIB USA, they intentionally showed several shots of the contestants eating decadent meals? It was like production was shouting, “Don’t worry, we’re feeding them! Please don’t sue us, it fucks with our margins.”

I don’t even like any of these people, but I do hope their working conditions have improved. I hope they’re staying hydrated. Because we should keep in mind that while the contestants are doing the labor, the production companies are reaping the profit. And when has Netflix ever actually paid taxes?

Let’s also take an honest look at the motivation behind entering the show. Many viewers have remarked how wildly unhinged it is to find your spouse through a reality TV show, especially one that you only date for 10 days and know for a total of a couple months. (Acknowledging, of course, that this is actually very normal if you’re in a culture of matchmaking.) My theory is that for many LIB cast members, getting a spouse is really just a potential added benefit to launching their new career as an internet personality.

These people are getting sponsored products. They’re getting interviews. They’re starting their own podcasts. Hell, they’re even getting book deals. All things considered, it is actually a pretty lucrative opportunity. Get thousands of followers just for being your plain, vanilla, corporate self? Bonus points if you’re kind of weird and toxic? Why wouldn’t you take it?

And the market for reality TV, wow. Let’s make another thing clear. Capitalism preys off our insecurities. For example, a lot of us feel insecure about how we look. The cosmetics industry, the health and fitness industry, the fashion industry, the plastic surgery industry—they all prey and profit off these insecurities. The auto industry, jewelry industry, food and beverage industry, even higher education—these all prey off our class and social standing insecurities.

Following a similar line of thought, I believe LIB-style reality TV preys off our personality insecurities. They answer the question, “Am I a good person?”

We don’t want to feel like we’re bad people, but we all have shown up in ways that we are not proud of. We all have done things we regret. So what do we do? Watch explosive arguments on TV and feel grateful that at least we’re not as unhinged, toxic, and unwell as these people. How do you think the LIB franchise has expanded so much? Look at how much they’re profiting off our own need to feel okay about ourselves. We love making fun of people!

There are youtubers and podcasters making their entire careers off reacting to shows like LIB and other similar shows in the franchise like The Ultimatum and Perfect Match. I’ll name two of my favorites actually—The Atomic Twins and Aaron and Jo—both very funny and enjoyable channels. Reality TV has created multiple streams of content, multiple career options. “Oh, that’s not a real job,” you might say, “they’re just filming themselves watching TV.” What the hell is a real job under the hellscape of capitalism? Jobs are dumb. If you’re able to make money without hurting anyone and keep yourself from being thrown out to the streets, that’s a job to me. Hell, I might monetize this Substack if I manage to find more things to write about after this unnecessarily long LIB essay.

Social media is the age of judgment. Everyone is naming a toxic trait and then claiming, “couldn’t be me.” Well, I have news for you, it probably could. I don’t actually think I’m better than (most) LIB contestants. Hell, if you got me drunk and threw me in a room with my partner who I’m fighting with and their ex who’s looking hot and my ex who’s looking hot, would I behave any better than anyone on LIB? Probably not.

But I can watch the mess unfold from the comfort of my living room, and believe that I’m better than them.

They are all in the pursuit of whiteness

The race politics of LIB. Wowzers. Boom.

I will never forget a specific Black couple from the 1st season of Brazil LIB where they bonded over wanting an end to racism, only to discover later that they meant slightly different things. The woman was anti-racist. The man just wanted to pretend that racism and race didn’t exist.

I will never forget how in an ‘After the Altar’ episode (these are basically casual reunion mixers) the man from that couple brushed it off as “just not working out” because she was “constantly only focusing on problems.” Meanwhile, the woman exposed him for dumping her right after they got married and pointed out his criticism for her and her family was internalized racism. “One day, that man is going to wake up and realize he’s a Black man,” she said.

The diversity of LIB cast is a mixed bag. Most USA seasons are majority white, with a varying amount of people of color mixed in depending on the season. The Mexico and Dubai seasons both had a blindingly white light-skinned cast. The Japan, France, UK, and Brazil seasons were actually very diverse (though Brazil’s population is about 50% Black and brown, so it would be disingenuous to have otherwise). I guess what I’m saying is sometimes the casting reflected the actual diversity of the region, and sometimes it was a very white-washed look. But regardless of the cast members’ actual ethnicities, their aspirations to whiteness and westernness was very apparent.

Exhibit A. The amount of English I heard from the non-English speaking countries as a status symbol. Essentially bragging about how worldly and sophisticated they were. (Granted, the Arab contestants in the Dubai season all spoke different dialects of Arabic, so their use of English and French had a more functional purpose). Maybe I’m biased, but the people who spoke a lot of English almost always proved to be pretentious and self-righteous.

Exhibit B. The way white people often had the benefit of anonymity since their race was assumed the default, and people of color often gave themselves away from the way they spoke, or they awkwardly had to navigate around their race when talking about their family and upbringing. Sometimes they admitted their race to their date with all the awkwardness of coming out to a conservative Mormon grandpa. “Race blindness” didn’t actually benefit anyone but white people, because for people of color it actually put an uncomfortable spotlight on it.

Exhibit C. The people of color seeking white approval. Remember the Indian couple in LIB USA? They broke up because the man wouldn’t stop talking shit about his fiancée behind her back, complaining she reminded him of “his aunt.” Or the Black guy who was secretly thrilled by two blonde white women fighting over him. Or the Chinese-Cambodian guy in the most recent USA season who claimed he was just a “regular Colorado bro” despite being Asian. Ah, so by regular he means white. Got it.

Exhibit D. The Christian wedding ceremony. Granted, most of the LIB seasons took place in Christian or majority Christian nations. And there were some opportunities for showing non-Christian ceremonies. But it was rather sad to witness the Indian woman having to do her dress shopping separately and without official cameras because she wanted a more traditional Indian dress. Or the Candomblé Brazilian man having to participate in the Christian ceremony despite being vocally devoted to his religion of African roots. The Dubai season even staged a Christian ceremony to amp up the drama of yes/no, though they performed a traditional Islamic ceremony later if there was a yes. Even the act of wearing a white dress. How many of these people are actually Christian? I miss when color symbolism actually meant something. If you’re going to engage in a ritual, I hope it actually means something to you. Alas, the influence of the church is inescapable.

I don’t think the solution that I’m dreaming of is to make LIB more diverse. I don’t do boba tea liberalism. I don’t want to see more people of color climbing the corporate ladder to whiteness, even if the mostly white casts are such a headache. If it were up to me, a show like LIB wouldn’t even exist.

LIB is a reflection of our society. It persists because of the world we live in, and highlights these persistent values of white supremacy, patriarchy, capitalism, and imperialism because they are our reality.

It’s horrifying, isn’t it? But it’s the truth. Maybe that’s why I can’t look away.