 Given everything that's happened over the past few years, is it acceptable for everybody to hate on everything Chinese right now? Because that's how it feels. Welcome everybody to the Hop Pop, boys. We got a special episode. We're gonna start with a personal story. And it's going to lead, of course, into a larger macro conversation. But David, start it off. What happened to you over the weekend? Okay, you guys, this is a larger analogy, but a very personal story. This girl on Instagram, Andrew slid into my DMs. Wow. Influencer girl. Very pretty. Does this happen all the time? Tens of thousands of followers. No, it doesn't. I don't know you, I know you guys are shocked. No, it doesn't. And she's, you know, replying to my stories, sending me smiley faces. And I was just like, oh man, she's really feeling me. And then all of a sudden in the conversation, it comes up, oh, by the way, are you Chinese or Taiwanese? Hmm. I say Chinese and boom, the interaction is over. Did she? That was it. No other replies. Well, you know, it was a drawdown from that point. Basically, she lost interest once she found out that I was Chinese and not Taiwanese. Guys, so this is just one little personal story, but it does lead to a larger macro discussion and something that's going on on Reddit right now. There's a viral post about how people feel that there is so much slander against China and how it is seeping into our daily lives as Chinese Americans. And it's even affecting people emotionally. So we want to talk about this on a micro, a mid and a macro level. If you guys are excited about this conversation, please hit that like button and let's get into it. Oh man, on a micro level, let me tell you this, Andrew, by the way, I'm not salty, but I was hurt. Yeah. I mean, it doesn't feel good to get rejected for anything you can't change. It doesn't get, it doesn't feel good to get rejected for your, for your like nationality or your culture or whatever. Especially when she just was really interested in me when she thought I was Taiwanese. Yeah, your Taiwanese for like five days. Clearly you were Taiwanese passing and then all of a sudden boom. Oh wait, you're actually not this thing. And this happened to a lot of people out there. It used to happen to me because a lot of Korean girls think I'm Korean. So I would talk to them at first and I tell them I'm Chinese and then they'd be like, okay, maybe I'm looking for a Korean guy. It happened to our Viet friends that look Filipino growing up. Sometimes Filipino girls, you know, they were looking for a Filipino guy and there's so many hierarchies guys. Sometimes East Asian girls think Southeast Asian guys are not proper enough. Southeast Asian girls think Asian guys are not swaggy enough. You know, there's just all these like things that you can't control. It's like you work on your body, you go to the gym, you try to be charismatic, you try to have a cool life, you try to go to dinners, you try to have an active, you know, thing and travel and post it. And then at the end of the day, Andrew, the thing that nixes you right at the finish line is you're not the right type of Asian. And first of all, I want to say that when it comes down to dating preferences, anybody can have a dating preference, especially when it comes to marriage. I know a lot of people do want to marry someone of a similar tribe. That's very, very common. So I'm not going to be shocked by this, but it's just funny how potentially geopolitics from the motherland can seep into your dating life in America. And that's what we're going to be talking about. This girl was like 27, 28, who probably was, to be honest, if you made me make a guess, more looking towards that like marriage zone. So David, what are people mostly saying in the Reddit thread on a micro scale? All right. So that was my story on the Reddit thread that went super viral. People are just saying, man, I just can't stand looking at anything on social media, sometimes even in mainstream media. There's just like 80 to 90% chance that anything mentioning China, specifically mainland China is negative. Yeah. And we are, like we said, in a cold war with China, meaning that it's essentially a rap battle where the two sides, America and China, in their own respective fields are going to be talking the most trash about the other one. They're not going to want to highlight anything positive and they're going to only want to highlight the negative. And both sides are doing it. Both sides are like going hard like smack DVD. Yeah. I'm sure if you're in China watching Chinese media, they're not going to say too many good things about the West, but since we're here in America, it hurts us being Chinese. The reason this Reddit thread Andrew went crazy is because there were so many theories. Somebody said everything from light as well. You know, we don't like each other right now. And that's just how the Western media is all the way to a crazy theory where it said, yeah, well, white people are just dehumanizing Chinese, getting ready for the cold war to turn into a hot war because it'll be really way easier to do it once you dehumanize your enemy. So though I was like, whoa, yeah, got some crazy stuff. Yeah, got the spectrum. But moving on to kind of the mid section where you zoom out and you're and you're talking about the 50 to 300 people around you taking it out of the personal space. David, I guess like, what is your takeaway from your situation in the mid? Okay, from my situation in the mid, and I know it's kind of like crazy because we're like going between ultra macro Reddit thread and by just like getting dis by a Taiwanese girl. But I mean, guys, these hierarchies, especially in immigrant communities, I noticed even more, I mean, I think in white communities, it's more based on income like nobody from our blue collar hometown was dating like, you know, a Jewish person from Mercer Island, you know, from Ken or anything like that. But you know, even the Indians in our hometown or South Seattle, it's mattered so much whether you were seek seek Muslim or Hindu. And then even then there was like income levels. So it was like nine separate boxes. And that was just for Indians, you know, like, I was always looking at their situation. My Indian friends like, man, that's hyper complicated. So I mean, these things, I'm used to it. Andrew, I used to date a Korean girl, like five, six years ago, and it was kind of like a big deal within her family that she was dating a Chinese guy. Now, I'm not not every family's like that. No, I mean, I think it really depends on your sensitivity and how close you are to the culture. The more traditional and closer you are to your culture. And depending on what your parents tell you, you are going to care more about these cultural differences and geopolitics from the motherland. I think some people when they're like, Hey guys, listen, we're just in America. I know I want to live an American life. Nothing matters. It's cool. We're all here. We're all Asian. However, some other people, you know, who are very deep within their own culture are going to care more that you're from a slightly different Asian culture. For sure. I mean, some people were in the Reddit thread, Andrew, to bring it back to the Reddit thread. We're even talking about how some Chinese, especially Chinese girls from China, when they come to America, almost try to push the Chinese identity away too. I mean, I've seen that last year, I dated a girl from China from Chengdu, and she was only post on Instagram when we went to go eat Japanese or Korean food. She would never even I we went to like nice Chinese restaurant. She just did not want to be associated with it. I mean, people like that, they can still acknowledge who they are and where they come from. But as far as like in a social media type of branding or how they want to be perceived, they don't want to be any more of that one thing. Right. There was a story in the Reddit thread of this guy whose sister didn't like being like, I guess that like a villager, Cantonese background, right? You know, from like some city, I guess three hours out of Guangzhou. And she married a Japanese guy and changed her middle name. So this girl was really trying to get away from it because she had the Canton middle name and she changed that and changed her last name. So is that right or wrong? You let me know in the comments down below. It's hard to judge. I don't want to judge it because because there's the personal aspect of it where you just want to make your life better and be like you to be considered like a clean, civilized, organized on time Asian versus like Chinatown, which has a reputation for being dirty and is disorganized Asian. Yeah. Like, I mean, that's just, I guess like an elevation and identity, right? I mean, at the end of the day, a lot of people are going to choose the path of least resistance, the path that gives them the highest bump up, you know, the path that is going to give them the highest ranking. And listen, if you have multiple identities, like let's say this Southern Chinese girl from this family that, you know, the sister of this brother who made this post where she's like, she was always into Japanese culture like legitimately, maybe she learned Japanese already. So of course she's going to be wanting to look for a Japanese guy because that's the culture that she looks up to. And I see a lot of that to be honest from like, especially Chinese people. Andrew, I was at a ramen shop in Toronto this past weekend. I'll shout it out. Kinton ramen. Everybody there is Chinese speaking Japanese to each other poorly because they're trying to give you that otaku vibe. But they're actually Chinese. But that's how much they adore Japanese culture that, you know, they're trying to say, I would say most of the cooking words, even to each other in Japanese. I mean, like cosplaying Japanese, I don't think I would ever see Japanese do that in reverse. Dude, in a media and pop culture way, for sure, for many, many decades, Japan would have been considered the America of Asia as in they had the strongest pop culture. Everybody wanted to speak the language. Everybody liked the style, the look. Let's just say this. Japan was a first world country way before any other place in Asia was. Andrew, I guess for me, how legitimately wacky is it to be Chinese? Because obviously this girl, and I'm not going to say her name blank blank, she thought that maybe she had this extrapolation that even me and whatever position I have, I was going to bring down her family. Well, maybe she's even thinking about it because her family has put it into her head for so long. Hey, marry a good Taiwanese boy, marry a good Taiwanese boy, so that when you bring them to dinner, we know that he's, we know what his political views are going to be or something like that. But I guess, I guess, I guess to acknowledge the real, like let's just say, for example, China is coming out of third world. It's in the second world. I don't know where it's at right now, depending on where you're in the country. It's like 1.75 to 1.5 world. And then obviously Taiwan, you know, Korea, Japan, Singapore, at least Hong Kong, island side, first world. Are they like legitimately able to like judge people with the identity from, you know, like, I guess a lesser developed place that's just not as high on the development timeline yet? I don't actually, I think the hate on China is actually not about fully it being developed or not. I think it's very, very political right now. And especially the fact that all those other countries when we're talking about South Korea, Japan, even Singapore, their problem, their pro America and China is a rival to America right now and also not to mention the whole HK stuff, the Taiwan thing. All right. All right. First of all, Andrew, I will agree with you, but where I will add on and I will sort of disagree with you is that they're still pointing out the details from the not advancement. Right. But what have you said from the third worldness that still there's a lot of traces of it, whatever happened in Hubei and stuff like that, they're like using those details. I agree with you that that macro political environment sets the attitude and the desire, but they still have to have the stories because you would say for sure we know that China is a much better place and it's produced way better products in the past 12 years. Even since it got much better, even since we started YouTube, it's become a better and more powerful place. But the image has become more scary and negative and potentially dangerous and more supportive of America's enemies. And of course, Taiwan is pro America and all this other stuff. But David, what if you had said instead of Chinese, you had, let's just say you had said Shanghai needs. Like I'm not, I'm Shanghai needs because Shanghai is right across the water from Taiwan. Shanghai is a more developed westernized part of China. It really would depend on how they like perceive that. Like, yeah, right. Do they perceive Shanghai is that different of a place? Shanghai needs people do to be honest. But listen, no, no, no, I'm just tough to say. Listen, I think for certain people, and I'll just focus on this lady that you were talking to, it's like maybe if she was a very, very like go get a person and knew exactly what she wanted out of a potential mate. And she was very, very picky and she drew the hard lines. Then yeah, unfortunately, I could see how this conversation I've never been that hard filtered that early because I very rarely do people think that I'm Taiwanese for like five days. Exactly. Because a lot of people who already know we're not Taiwanese would not even message us if they're looking for a Taiwanese guy. Yeah. Well, I guess she was looking for a Taiwanese husband made a shark line for and then I hit her with the shark repellent, which was being Chinese. And I guess that, you know, we're using dating as just a relatable proxy to talk about much larger macro things because sometimes those macro things are just you watch like 500 other channels if you want to talk about it. David, the Western media is messing with your dating life, man. But it depends. You know, some people don't live in macro narratives. Some people literally live in the mid in the micro. No, some people are going to leave a comment and be like, wait, why is she even thinking about it? That's not even that big of a deal. I'm a Taiwanese person who married a Chinese person or blah, blah, blah, blah, blah. Listen, I get it. But some families are just more political than others. Don't make that internet mistake of thinking that everybody's tapped into the mid micro and macro the same levels you are. Everybody out of 100% pie distribution distributes their perspective differently across macro narratives, just middle tier community lifestyle and the micro at home 1v1 lifestyle. As far as macro takeaways go for me personally, I'm just like so over feeling bad about something I can't control. You know, I don't know what African Americans feel when they see, you know, gang stuff on TV. I don't know what Latino Americans feel when they see cartel stuff on TV. I don't know what white people feel when they see like KKK or like mass shooters on TV. I don't know what Arabs feel when they see terrorism on TV where it's like, but I know what it's like to be Chinese and look on the TV right now and see that everything with the word China in it where my parents are from is bad. You know, I don't know what it was like to be like a Jewish person once the tides turn around against Israel. You know, I just know that these are things and I think it's unfortunate that this redditor is really struggling with it because for me, I know that I'm I could feel the same thing, but I just have been going through it my whole life to the point where it doesn't really like impact me like it affects the people on Reddit. Yeah. I mean, again, I do think that given everything that happened in the past few years that there has been an uptick in the negative image being portrayed of China. So of course, I think some people who maybe didn't think about it as much throughout their life are getting hit with it now. And basically what you're seeing is people trying to figure it out and they don't know how to feel. My final piece of advice to close out the video for people who are struggling with this is just to separate it out. I mean, listen, you're in America, you have access all the different cultures and countries and content. Find the things that you like about it. I mean, there's a lot of great Chinese content coming out right now, whether it's the funny Douyin's or the food or whatever it is, you can dive into that and focus on the positive. And I think definitely don't compare yourself to like a Japan or Korea, because they're pretty much going to have like 90% positive coverage and China's going to have 90% negative coverage. So, you know, or just go to K-pop shows and just, you know, do the fighting thing. I don't know. I mean, I guess you could just see it however you want. You know, I think everybody handles it differently. I don't know. We don't control anything. We can just talk about it. And remember guys, Internet comments is one thing, but you still got a real life to live. All right, everybody, let us know in the comments below what you thought about this discussion or how you even feel about some of these geopolitical motherland beefs. How close to it do you feel? What's your sensitivity level? Let us know in the comments down below. Thank you so much for watching this episode of the Hot Pop Boys. And until next time, we out. Peace.