‘Chinamaxxing’ your health: America’s obsession with Chinese medicine is taking over TikTok | Health & wellbeing

Ddid you drink ice water today? If you did, it was “not very Chinese of you,” according to Sherry Zhu, a 23-year-old Chinese-American designer based in New Jersey. If you really wanted to “become Chinese,” you would sip hot water every day, she warned in a TikTok video with millions of views. “I definitely feel much better about my digestion when I drink hot water,” she later told GQ.

Zhu’s advice is drawn from traditional Chinese medicine (TCM), a health system that dates back 5,000 years and offers a holistic approach to treating symptoms – physical, emotional and spiritual. Other Chinese creators have their own TCM tips: keep your feet warm and your period will be more bearable. Drink tea made from goji berries, jujubes and ginger as a panacea. Move your body every day to promote circulation qior internal energy. “Do my evil Chinese routine with me,” they caption their videos in a half-authoritative, half-joking tone. “Advice from your Chinese big sister.”

Non-Asian creators are eager to prove they can follow directions. “First day of being Chinese,” they post, showing pots of boiled apples or savory breakfasts (both better for digestion, according to TCM). “I noticed we’re all suddenly Chinese,” a white health influencer said while browsing her first congee recipe.

Why are Americans attracted to Chinese wellness advice – and expressing interest in “becoming Chinese” or “living a very Chinese time” in their lives? This is linked to what some have dubbed “Chinamaxxing,” a recent trend started by Americans involving the sharing of memes and videos praising Chinese culture.

Ironically, Chinamaxxing was a response to Donald Trump’s economic targeting of the country in 2025. Between a failed trade war, fluttering restrictions on Chinese technology, and a rigged ban on TikTok, the United States began to look weak in comparison to its geopolitical rival. With a sense of subversiveness, young Americans began to declare their fascination with Chinese culture. Influencers such as iShowSpeed ​​and Hasan Piker have traveled to China to produce content, while the US market has adopted Chinese cultural goods, such as Labubus, the video game Black Myth: Wukong, and Adidas’ athleisure take on the Tang suit.

“When Americans do not trust their own institutions, media or political class, they are more likely to seek alternative reference points,” Shaoyu Yuan, an international relations scholar and professor at New York University, said by email. “Public debates on TikTok, sanctions, export controls and ‘decoupling’ are signaling to many young people that China is at the heart of the future, whether they like it or not.”

Chinamaxxing also comes as Americans’ confidence in the U.S. healthcare system is plummeting. RFK Jr has consistently questioned vaccines and other conventional medicine while promoting “alternative” remedies, thereby stimulating a wellness market that repackages the holistic care of other cultures into luxury treatments. Chinese medicine may seem less “woo-woo” than it once was, now that the U.S. health secretary is bragging about drinking cod liver oil.

Lulu Ge, the founder of Elix, a wellness brand that uses traditional Chinese herbs, makes videos on “avoiding iced drinks and eating hot foods” to promote her brand. For years, its content has provoked mostly skeptical reactions. But when the Chinamaxxing trend exploded in January, she was surprised by a sudden surge in engagement: Elix’s social channels saw a 250% increase in organic impressions, and her site traffic increased by 40% week over week.

Ge believes Americans have become skeptical of the U.S. healthcare system’s emphasis on physician “specialization,” which can frustrate people seeking treatment for multi-symptom illnesses such as long Covid and autoimmune diseases. “Chinese medicine really works best for chronic illnesses when it touches several different health systems,” she said. (Many studies have shown that TCM therapies can play an important role in the prevention and treatment of chronic diseases – but they cannot be considered a cure for all diseases.)

Promoting TCM is part of China’s soft power strategy. In 2016, Xi Jinping’s administration issued a directive calling on China to “actively introduce TCM to the rest of the world.” In 2020, China’s National Health Commission advised the use of TCM in its recommended treatment for Covid-19 and drafted a plan to punish anyone who “slanders” the medical system (which it later abandoned). The government has also sent doctors and TCM equipment to countries particularly affected by the spread of the virus, such as Uzbekistan and Italy. In 2022, the global TCM market was valued at $400 billion.

TCM took hold in America in 2021, when beauty creators started scratching their faces with guasha stones to promote lymphatic drainage, and Covid long-haulers have sought acupuncture to manage their most mysterious and persistent symptoms. Last year, TikTokers spearheaded a niche “Chinese face mapping” trend, asking ChatGPT to act as a TCM doctor and offer unreliable assessments of their health based on swollen eyes or a pale tongue. When cold and flu season hit this year, many were eager to receive and share health tips, leading to a broader call for Chinamaxx wellness routines. This helped that practices from TCM – like going to bed before 11 p.m. – fit seamlessly into the “get ready with me” and “bedtime routine” formats so popular on social media.

“When someone adopts qigongacupuncture, cupping therapy, medicinal plants [or] guasha …they do not consume a one-off cultural export. Instead, they build a habit, and the habits quietly change the feeling of strangeness,” Yuan said. “This doesn’t mean they’re ‘changing sides’… People may be skeptical of Chinese state policies and still find Chinese welfare practices useful or interesting.”

Some Asian American creators and writers have found this online obsession with China shocking, especially because people of Asian descent in the United States have been harassed, assaulted and even killed in the time of Covid. Others criticized white creators for assuming authority over Chinese practices — such as non-Asians claiming to offer the wisdom of a “Chinese grandmother” through waterless chicken soup recipes. “What a privilege it is to be able to test someone else’s identity for a day without inheriting the consequences,” wrote Faith Xue, Coveteur’s editor-in-chief.

A Chinese-American designer has questioned her decision to post a “bad Chinese tips” video to promote her tea business. After seeing how “saturated” the trend had become, she questioned whether the content on TCM was an “appreciation or extraction” of Chinese culture.

Dr Felice Chan, an acupuncturist, Chinese medicine doctor and co-founder of skincare brand Moonbow, said she loves the visibility around TCM. “If it gives work to acupuncturists, if it gives light to other brands of Chinese medicine, why not? she said. But she is aware of the “shallow” content that flattens or oversimplifies the health benefits of TCM, which is shared wisdom better passed down by families than by algorithms.

“There’s a reason your mother told you to wear slippers at home… If our feet are cold, our stomach is cold, we have bad menstrual cramps, right? Chan said. “There’s a drug linked to it, but there’s almost a lack of communication or understanding of why our parents told us that.”

Other creators adopt the family framework. “I spend my nights and weekends on TikTok telling people that they are part of my Chinese family, that they are adopted by my Chinese mother,” Ge said. “We get people asking, ‘Can I get adopted?’ We do this together, sister. We are basically like a family. For Ge, this type of response “testifies to this broader desire for community, for belonging.”

The Chinamaxxing trend continued through February, spurred by the Lunar New Year and an influx of content about bringing good fortune in the Year of the Fire Horse. The spiritual nature of this advice highlights another explanation for TCM’s current popularity: the system itself can be poetic and mystical, defying the intrusion of AI and automated systems into Western healthcare. For example, according to TCM practitioners, the herbal blend intended to treat a persistent blocked throat, or “plum pit qi,” can also help soothe emotions brought on by “a situation that is figuratively too difficult to swallow.”

“[TCM] is very rich in heritage, lineage, tradition [and] extremely rich in symbology,” said TCM student and content creator Minjung Hwangbo. “This medicine is so personalized to humans, and with the emergence of AI, I think people are craving meaning and a return to humanity.”

The Lunar New Year occurred on the same day as the start of Ramadan, during Black History Month, and shortly after a Super Bowl halftime performance by Bad Bunny that briefly “made everyone Puerto Rican.” As one