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tl;dr: Where should the line of going too far in chinaboo behavior be? When is it gatekeeping? The particular example I've chosen to illustrate is sajiao WWX.
I want to be careful and say upfront that this isn't directed at anyone in particular and that fandom is ultimately everyone's own experience. I also have complicated feelings on this topic and haven't fully worked through everything, so I would actually love to discuss this further to develop ideas etc. Or if anyone has relevant meta/essays to link, I would enjoy reading those.
MDZS/CQL has attracted a lot of people for whom this is their first Chinese source fandom. This is cool! It's nice to be able to share something with so many people. I love the community feeling of fandom, where you can squee over fun things and throw around headcanons. There's also a big contingent of English speaking Chinese diaspora folks, which is also nice! It's fun to learn about culture and tease out the differences in everyone's experiences.
I'm going to use the trope of WWX being cute / pouty / xianxian is three! here, bc it's the one that caused me to start thinking of this topic and for a concrete example.
This behavior is called "sajiao" in China; it is analogous to "aegyo" in Korea or "aikyou" in Japan. The most direct translation IMO is "to act coquettish," but despite what a google search will have you believe, is NOT exclusively girls flirting with their boyfriends. It's used by both genders as an affectionate gesture towards family or friends. Lest I overcorrect against the Orientalist articles, it is most definitely also used to flirt.
I love sajiao, and do adore when WWX sajiaos. It's an aspect of flirtation is totally natural to the character! And accordingly, I love when it's incorporated into fic.
What makes me a little uncomfortable is how this occasionally ventures into fetishizing territory. I'm trying to be careful here to not cast judgement, but rather analyze my own impulses and feelings. A lot of this stems from growing up in the US, where yellow fever is definitely a thing and how as a result, I will always be hesitant and wary of people fetishizing Asians. So when I see sajiao used in ways that are tonally wrong, I have the impulse to recoil and (in my head) chalk it up to them being a chinaboo.
(An interlude: the diaspora, grew up as the minority perspective here is key. Asians-in-Asia, especially East Asians, grew up as the dominant culture, and so their baseline concept of racism and fetishization is very different. I'm explicitly calling this out bc it's an important distinction. Someone Chinese from China would probably view the same thing that bothers me and go "oh it's nice that they're trying" or similar.)
At the same time, there's the competing thought of: is it gatekeeping to say something like that? Why must everything be precise to my personal boundaries of chinaboo behavior? If someone in a non-Chinese fandom went around pouting all the time and acting cute, would I just consider it OOC instead of going to the "fetishizing!" place? There is also obviously considerable variation in how people behave, when is it just exaggerated for effect or the joke, am I being humorless by feeling uncomfortable?
I'm extremely unlikely to start calling out specific examples, by the by, and I picked sajiao as an example bc there isn't IMO a black and white answer on it. I am more interested in thinking about how fandom, as a social group, navigates the line between "this is a thing that I find cute/hot/compelling" to "this is fetishizing but in a way that doesn't harm anyone" to "as a dominant view in fandom, it distorts our perspectives on the culture." Additionally, how we navigate this without lurching from wank to flamewar. (Are those terms outdated now? I'm old.) I don't think it's useful to gatekeep, or to say "thou must not xyz," especially since it rarely results in shifting opinions.
I want to be careful and say upfront that this isn't directed at anyone in particular and that fandom is ultimately everyone's own experience. I also have complicated feelings on this topic and haven't fully worked through everything, so I would actually love to discuss this further to develop ideas etc. Or if anyone has relevant meta/essays to link, I would enjoy reading those.
MDZS/CQL has attracted a lot of people for whom this is their first Chinese source fandom. This is cool! It's nice to be able to share something with so many people. I love the community feeling of fandom, where you can squee over fun things and throw around headcanons. There's also a big contingent of English speaking Chinese diaspora folks, which is also nice! It's fun to learn about culture and tease out the differences in everyone's experiences.
I'm going to use the trope of WWX being cute / pouty / xianxian is three! here, bc it's the one that caused me to start thinking of this topic and for a concrete example.
This behavior is called "sajiao" in China; it is analogous to "aegyo" in Korea or "aikyou" in Japan. The most direct translation IMO is "to act coquettish," but despite what a google search will have you believe, is NOT exclusively girls flirting with their boyfriends. It's used by both genders as an affectionate gesture towards family or friends. Lest I overcorrect against the Orientalist articles, it is most definitely also used to flirt.
I love sajiao, and do adore when WWX sajiaos. It's an aspect of flirtation is totally natural to the character! And accordingly, I love when it's incorporated into fic.
What makes me a little uncomfortable is how this occasionally ventures into fetishizing territory. I'm trying to be careful here to not cast judgement, but rather analyze my own impulses and feelings. A lot of this stems from growing up in the US, where yellow fever is definitely a thing and how as a result, I will always be hesitant and wary of people fetishizing Asians. So when I see sajiao used in ways that are tonally wrong, I have the impulse to recoil and (in my head) chalk it up to them being a chinaboo.
(An interlude: the diaspora, grew up as the minority perspective here is key. Asians-in-Asia, especially East Asians, grew up as the dominant culture, and so their baseline concept of racism and fetishization is very different. I'm explicitly calling this out bc it's an important distinction. Someone Chinese from China would probably view the same thing that bothers me and go "oh it's nice that they're trying" or similar.)
At the same time, there's the competing thought of: is it gatekeeping to say something like that? Why must everything be precise to my personal boundaries of chinaboo behavior? If someone in a non-Chinese fandom went around pouting all the time and acting cute, would I just consider it OOC instead of going to the "fetishizing!" place? There is also obviously considerable variation in how people behave, when is it just exaggerated for effect or the joke, am I being humorless by feeling uncomfortable?
I'm extremely unlikely to start calling out specific examples, by the by, and I picked sajiao as an example bc there isn't IMO a black and white answer on it. I am more interested in thinking about how fandom, as a social group, navigates the line between "this is a thing that I find cute/hot/compelling" to "this is fetishizing but in a way that doesn't harm anyone" to "as a dominant view in fandom, it distorts our perspectives on the culture." Additionally, how we navigate this without lurching from wank to flamewar. (Are those terms outdated now? I'm old.) I don't think it's useful to gatekeep, or to say "thou must not xyz," especially since it rarely results in shifting opinions.
