Performing Girlhood and Sisterhood in China: Chinese International Student Influencers’ Everyday Self-Presentation on RedNote

Abstract

As young people begin to enact their agency and autonomy to share moments of everyday adolescence online, it can be challenging for them to strategically navigate the complicated digital sphere and maintain their digital fame and persona. This study investigates how adolescent Chinese international student lifestyle bloggers/vloggers become conspicuous influencers on the Chinese social media platform RedNote, through the performance of desirable girlhood and authentic sisterhood. The performance of girlhood is grounded in presentations of family love and care, an accomplishment of youth autonomy and competence, and a nuanced mixture of Chineseness and cosmopolitanism. The performed sisterhood is polished to be authentic thanks to well-curated amateur aesthetics, an approachable persona, and reciprocal female sistership. Their careful performances help them negotiate the tensions concerning age, class, gender, and nationhood in China’s social media entertainment ecosystem.

Introduction

Driven by the dream of becoming influencers with the potential to monetize their contents via brand advertorials (Abidin, 2016; Townsend, 2019), young people in the Gen Z and Gen Alpha cohorts are passionate about sharing photos and videos about their everyday life (Marôpo et al., 2020). Through sharing, they express their feelings and ideas about adolescence while building an authentic persona in digital spheres (Márquez et al., 2023). A group of teens are becoming popular by sharing content about everyday school life on Chinese social media platforms (Wang & Picone, 2023). Among them, those who produce photo and video diaries about “study life” in overseas educational institutions become especially remarkable (Chen & Jiang, 2025). They form a special niche known as Chinese international student lifestyle vloggers or bloggers, and a dedicated audience surrounds them.

In 2022, I conducted a study on how Chinese international students perform as online microcelebrities (Senft, 2008) through semi-structured interviews with 25 females aged 17 to 30. All interview participants were informed about the study’s design and purpose and signed a consent form. They were given pseudonyms to protect their privacy. This article focuses on four of them who started their journey as bloggers/vloggers during adolescence and who became influencers (Abidin, 2016), amassing followings ranging from 16,000 to 158,000 by late-April in 2025. Interviews with the four influencers and analysis of their content facilitate an explanation of how the presentation of adolescence, especially in the tone of middle-class styles and consumptions, becomes a profitable niche genre in China. This article examines how international students who are Chinese diaspora influencers navigate the complex intersections of age, class, gender, and nationhood through their performances of girlhood and sisterhood. It contributes to scholarly discussion on Chinese international student negotiations of self-presentation in China’s digital sphere (Chen & Jiang, 2025; Xu & Zhao, 2022).

RedNote as the “perfect place”

It is necessary to contextualize Chinese international student influencers’ self-presentation practices at the outset. My study pondered why these Chinese international student bloggers/vloggers tended to broadcast their content on Chinese local social media platforms instead of internationally prominent platforms, like YouTube and Instagram. But according to my participants, they maintained a dual social media presence in both platform ecologies: using international platforms like Instagram for personal updates and for connecting with non-Chinese friends, and using domestic platforms RedNote for cultivating a public persona targeting domestic audiences through carefully curated photo and video diaries.

RedNote is the “perfect place” for young Chinese international students to monetize the considerable amount of online visibility they get. One important premise lies in the fact that as international social media apps have been banned by the state’s censorship system (Dou, 2015), so netizens living in China use Chinese-launched social media as alternatives (e.g., Sina Weibo is seen as China’s Twitter and RedNote as Instagram). This leads to China’s self-sustained social media entertainment ecosystem where users and creators are dominated by local Chinese residents and users living outside of China make up a relatively small fraction. While local creators tend to produce very similar lifestyle-based content in China, the “outsiders”—including Chinese international students—distinguish themselves by showcasing diverse topics beyond life in China or Chinese culture.

Since its inception as a platform for user-generated overseas shopping tips (Zhou, 2023), RedNote has promoted the sharing of expatriate experiences (Hau, 2025), which distinguishes itself from other Chinese platforms. This has attracted Chinese diaspora, especially Chinese international students and Chinese audiences who are interested in living or studying abroad to RedNote, and enabled the platform to become popular among such communities (Hau, 2025). It is thus understandable that aspirational international student influencers would start the journey of being a blogger or vlogger on RedNote.

Participants in my study have observed that the genre of “middle-class student life abroad” has become increasingly popular among young viewers who are drawn to the glamorous lifestyle and among parents who envision similar opportunities for their children. One participant Joyce noted: “If you want to be a blogger or vlogger with thousands or tens of thousands of followers like me, I think you need to be ‘special’.” She affirmed that her most distinctive characteristic is her identity as a Chinese teenager enrolled in high school in the United States. She said so because Chinese international students represent a small fraction of the total student population. In 2020, domestic institutions enrolled 28.9 million students (Ministry of Education of the People’s Republic of China, 2021), while only 450,900 (1.5%) studied abroad (Statista, 2024).

Performing desirable girlhood

Another participant Ginger tells me that her viewers enjoy her RedNote posts detailing her experiences of navigating adolescence in an intercultural setting, particularly those that highlight her connections with her “host family.” For her and her target audience, the notion of living with a host family is a unique family structure primarily found in the United States, and largely unfamiliar to the average person in China. In our interview, she says that audiences admire the cozy and lively scenes where Ginger appears to be “adopted” as a “daughter,” hangs out with her host family parents and siblings, and celebrates festivals together; this is all the more special despite their different cultural backgrounds and the strained United States–China relations. Viewers perceive Ginger to be enjoying a rare experience as a daughter, as she receives an abundance of love and care from the parents and siblings of both her biological and host families. This is felt by peer audiences to be especially impressive as most of them are the only children in their families because of China’s one-child policy (Mullen, 2023). While these young people value their individuality, they also yearn for peer companionship at times (Sima & Pugsley, 2010), and Ginger’s lifestyle vlogs as a “daughter” of a host family offer them this vicarious experience.

Audiences appreciate Chinese international students who portray themselves as household-savvy female family members through the presentations of organizing their rooms, cooking routines, and assisting their younger host siblings with homework and guitar practice. Viewers’ enthusiastic consumption of the caring domestic atmosphere and the femininity of teenage girls illustrates that such performances of domestic labor can seamlessly integrate into a desirable and profitable presentation of the female lifestyle (Guo, 2024). This challenges the long-standing inside–outside dichotomy regarding gendered work and spaces in China. Household management is no longer exclusively the private domain of “inside” female individuals (Fan, 2002); rather, it can now be performed by female public figures in an open online space. Nevertheless, domestic management remains entrenched as a feminine domain (Chen, 2005; Hershatter, 2000).

Besides academic excellence, Chinese international student influencers demonstrate versatility, competence, and confidence through impressive everyday self-presentations. These include narrating self-produced videos in proficient spoken English as expected by audiences, being the only Chinese participant in the school chorus, and curating an independent photographic exhibition. Also, influencers present a persona as a young emerging female adult with agency and independent thinking abilities. They openly share their feelings and experiences as transnational adolescents, while acknowledging that their developing perspectives are a natural part of their personal growth journey.

For instance, Joyce’s contents feature her talking about various issues, from the everyday racism she had encountered to her feminist perspectives. Her video explaining her decision to study abroad gained over 6000 likes, drawing both support and criticism. When critics claimed that she was too young to compare Chinese and American societies, she responded with a video defending teenagers’ rights to engage in social discourse. Joyce was proud of maintaining her stance on producing meaningful social commentary rather than just eye-catching images. She ended the video with a guffaw and a line: “I am very special, please follow me.” The video reflects Joyce’s pursuit of neoliberal female subjectivity—a young girl can embody eloquence and intellect apart from beauty, aligning with the female empowerment narrative popular on social media that emphasizes young women’s individual success (Banet-Weiser, 2018). Nevertheless, such feminist expressions serve the purpose of self-branding and promotional activities (Sun & Ding, 2024; Wang, 2025), and they are strategically crafted to align with both the state’s patriarchal values (Peng, 2020) and the commercial agendas of the platforms they use (Sun & Ding, 2024).

Besides demonstrating their agency to embrace cosmopolitanism, these influencers strategically perform their Chinese identity to display their devotion and bond to the motherland through fashion and festival celebrations. Some of Janet’s posts featuring her showcasing Chinese femininity and elegance in Ma Mian Skirt and Qipao and gaining considerable praise from passersby. She explained her Chinese-style clothing wearing practice in one sponsored note: “I feel like I help bring traditional Chinese fashion into the spotlight. So proud of myself!” Janet’s claim denotes her performance of Chineseness and sense of national pride (Chen & Jiang, 2025). It resonates with audiences’ nationalist sentiments (Jiang, 2024) and serves as an endorsement of the burgeoning traditional Chinese fashion industry (Wang, 2022; Wang et al., 2020) and the state’s efforts to promote traditional Chinese sartorial aesthetics (Fu, 2023). Chinese international student influencers’ presentations of celebrations for traditional Chinese festivals help them express their Chinese ethnic identity in a transnational context (Ong et al., 2017; Wang, 2023). The presentations attract audiences to leave favorable comments on the lively atmosphere, highlighting participants’ nurturing roles through gendered labor, like preparing festive foods for host family and friends.

Performing authentic sisterhood

Chinese international student influencers create photo and video diaries with minimal refinement to capture the raw aesthetic of an amateur (cf. Abidin, 2017). Ginger shared that she aims to present herself as a friendly girl-next-door by posting unpolished snapshots of her life and actively engaging with her audience. While the participants try to appear approachable, their dazzling middle-class lifestyles reflected by expensive overseas education and global travel suggest a relatively higher socioeconomic status. They consciously avoid the conspicuous consumption shown by their peers (Smith, 2019) and emphasize their identity as young students reliant on parental support for living expenses. They showcase their enthusiasm for budget-friendly products to resonate with followers appreciating a thrifty yet stylish lifestyle.

Hersha’s videos recommend affordable makeup products that are available for schoolgirls through Taobao, a Chinese online shopping platform. These videos are welcomed by young girls who affectionately address her as “big sister” and seek her makeup recommendations. They comment: “Sis, drop your outfits of the day (OOTD)!” and claim that Hersha’s OOTD posts sold them on fast fashion brands like Brandy Melville because she looks so slim and stunning in them. However, this perpetuates a “pale, young, and slim” female body image as the ideal standard of beauty (Liu & Li, 2024).

Chinese international student influencers update key milestones in their personal development including academic accomplishments like admissions to prestigious universities. They offer thorough replies when followers request suggestions on self-improvement, which contributes to the rising imagined “academic sisterhood” community in RedNote (Liu, 2023). Joyce told me she had received messages from her followers expressing admiration for her confidence and competence. They see her as a big sister-like role model from whom they can learn. Self-disclosure of personal life and reciprocal interactions with audiences help these influencers build intimacies with audiences (Abidin, 2015; Marwick & Boyd, 2011), as audiences feel that these sister-like influencers care how they feel (Berryman & Kavka, 2017). This creates collaboration opportunities between these influencers and brands, such as international education agencies and language learning apps, as the intimate interactions (Abidin, 2015; Berryman & Kavka, 2017) with peers significantly shape teenagers’ consumption practices (Wang et al., 2012).

Conclusion

In sum, Chinese international student influencers carefully perform girlhood and sisterhood to maintain visibility and connect with audiences while negotiating tensions concerning age, class, gender, and nationhood in Chinese social media. Their performance of girlhood is based on presentations of family love and care, an accomplishment of youth autonomy and competence, and a nuanced mixture of Chineseness and cosmopolitanism. The performed sisterhood is polished to be authentic thanks to well-curated amateur aesthetics, an approachable persona, and reciprocal female sistership.