Tomato and Egg

Context:

The informant is a Chinese woman in her mid-50s who was born and raised in China and currently lives in Beijing. She has primarily taken care of the domestic side of her family. Although she considers herself a poor cook, but the tomato and egg stir-fry is probably the best that I have ever tasted.

Text:

西红柿炒鸡蛋 (tomato and egg stir-fry) is one of the most common home-cooked dishes in China. It is widely considered a “basic” dish that almost everyone learns to make at some point in their life. The informant recalls that it is often associated with everyday family meals, especially during childhood, because it is simple, affordable, and quick to prepare. The dish is usually made with just tomatoes, eggs, sugar, and salt, and is frequently served with rice as a main meal in domestic settings.

Analysis:

This dish reflects more than just domestic cooking practices in China; it is also tied to historical memory and changing social conditions. Its simplicity and low cost are often associated with earlier periods of economic hardship, when families needed to rely on accessible ingredients to sustain daily meals. Over time, however, 西红柿炒鸡蛋 has shifted from a “poverty food” to a cultural symbol of comfort and familiarity, representing home and everyday stability. In contemporary contexts, it is often framed with a sense of national culinary identity, as it is widely recognized, universally accessible, and deeply embedded in shared lived experience across generations.

Fermented Rice (醪糟)

Context:
The informant is a Chinese woman in her mid-50s who was born and raised in China and currently lives in Beijing. She grew up within a traditional cultural environment where home remedies and food-based health practices were commonly passed down between women in the family.

Text:
The informant describes fermented rice (醪糟) as a common traditional food often associated with women’s health, particularly during menstruation. It is typically served warm, sometimes with eggs or sugar, and is believed in popular practice to help “warm the body” and support recovery during a woman’s period. The informant explains that in her experience, it is often recommended within family settings as a comforting food during menstruation.

Analysis:
This shows how fermented rice functions not only as a household food but also as part of a gendered system of folk health knowledge. Its association with menstruation reflects broader cultural ideas about balancing the body, warmth, and recovery through food. Within this context, the dish becomes more than nourishment—it carries symbolic meaning tied to women’s bodily experience and care. At the same time, its continued use in everyday life demonstrates how traditional beliefs about health are preserved and normalized through domestic practice. In this way, fermented rice can also be understood as a form of embodied cultural knowledge that connects food, gender, and wellbeing in everyday life.

Red Note Refugee

Context:

The informant is a 19-year-old undergraduate student at USC. During the spring semester of 2025 she downloaded Red Note (小红书) and used it for a few days as part of a trend where users outside China temporarily joined the platform as so-called “refugees.”

Text:

The informant describes her experience using Red Note after downloading it during a period when many new international users joined the app. She explains that she used the platform for a short time out of curiosity and to observe the content and community style. During this period, she was part of a group of users jokingly referred to as “refugees,” meaning people who temporarily migrated to the app from other social media platforms. She notes that the experience felt both unfamiliar and entertaining, as the platform’s content culture and user interactions differed from what she was used to.

Analysis:

This phenomenon reflects how digital platforms can generate temporary, identity-based user communities through migration trends and internet humor. The term “refugee” is used playfully to describe short-term users who “escape” from one platform to another, turning platform switching into a shared cultural joke. This labeling also highlights how online communities construct group identity even around brief or superficial participation. At the same time, the informant’s short engagement illustrates how users often treat new platforms as exploratory spaces rather than long-term commitments, revealing the fluid and trend-driven nature of contemporary digital folklore.

Language Cosplay (语c)

Context:

The informant is a 20-year-old undergraduate student studying linguistic at Cambridge. She was previously involved in Chinese online youth subcultures and participated in “语C” (language cosplay), a text-based role-playing community that originated from online forums and fandom culture in China. She also have a love in studying online subculture that often involves writing and the use of languages.

Text:

The informant describes 语C as a form of pure text-based role-playing where participants pretends they are a certain fictional characters and interact with others through written dialogue and narrative description. Rather than simply writing stories, participants actively perform as characters by imitating speech styles, emotional reactions, and behavior in real time.

She explains that the experience always felt like more than just writing. It felt like performing, closer to dramatic acting than literature. Within this community, there are also shared vocabularies and conventions that only insiders understand. For example, participants often refer to a piece of writing as “the play” (戏) instead of a “story.”

Analysis:

This practice demonstrates how digital subcultures can transform writing into a performative and collective activity rather than an individual literary act. 语C functions as a form of vernacular performance, where identity is constructed through continuous role-play and interaction rather than fixed authorship. The emphasis on embodying characters highlights the blurred boundary between writing and acting, showing how online communities can create hybrid forms of artistic expression.

Fan-fiction “Tropes”

Context:

The informant is a 20-year-old undergraduate student studying linguistic at Cambridge. She was and still is involved in both Chinese and the English online community for fan-fictions. In the interviewee she shared a interesting characteristic of the Chinese fandom community.

Text:

The informant explains that in traditional Chinese poetry there is a concept called 词牌名 (brand of a tune), which can be understood as the name of a fixed melodic pattern. In classical poetry, lyrics (词) were written to be sung according to set tunes, meaning the 词牌名 functions like a structural template or musical framework, while the actual content of each poem could vary.

She notes that in modern Chinese fan-fiction communities, a similar concept exists. Certain recurring titles and narrative tropes are reused across different fandoms, and users themselves sometimes refer to these as 词牌名.

Examples include phrases such as:

  • “真相是假” (The Truth Is Fake)
  • “五次他……这一次他没有” (Five Times They …, and This Time They Didn’t）
  • “生长痛” (Growing Pains)
  • “花吐症” (Flower-Puking Syndrome – a fictional illness trope in fandom where a person coughs up flowers due to unrequited love)
  • “斯德哥尔摩情人” (Stockholm Lover)

The informant finds this particularly interesting because it represents a blend between traditional Chinese literary structure and contemporary youth creative writing practices.

Analysis:

This phenomenon shows how classical literary frameworks can be reinterpreted within digital fan cultures as reusable narrative templates. Similar to traditional 词牌名, these modern “titles-as-structures” function as pre-existing emotional and thematic molds that guide storytelling while allowing variation in content. Their repetition across different fandoms creates a shared expressive vocabulary, enabling writers to quickly communicate complex emotional narratives through recognizable tropes. At the same time, the adaptation of a classical term to describe internet writing practices reflects how traditional cultural concepts are continuously recontextualized by younger generations, linking historical literary forms to contemporary participatory culture.