“I got the Chinese year of the cat!” Not Chinese. “Eww I got the pig!” Rude.
In Chinese culture, a person is born under one of the twelve animal zodiacs in the Chinese Lunar calendar. When people share which zodiac year they were born in, they should use the words “I am” when addressing their year, not treating it like a collectible, like Pokémon cards or figurines, by saying “I got.” It is not something you get, it is something you are. Each zodiac animal carries symbolic meanings, like how a person as a snake (which is the 2026 animal) would be described as elegant, intuitive, and full of wisdom. The zodiac animal also reflects personality traits, forming an important part of one’s cultural identity.
Recently, however, social media has been filled with posts where people are either unfamiliar with or just do not care about Asian traditions. They treat the Chinese zodiacs as just another trend. From complaining about getting “stuck with the rat” to claiming the “year of the cat” (which is not part of the Chinese zodiac animals, it is Vietnamese and Gurung), these posts might seem harmless, but they often come across as disrespectful to those who grew up with this culture.
This disregard for Chinese culture can be likened to RCTA posts, also known as “Race Change To Another,” which often likely target the “Asian” community, but only mention countries like South Korea, Japan, or China. These TikTokians post videos about how they hate their current race and claim to want to change to another race. They put on what they call Dôu yīn makeup, which is a style of makeup on Dôu yīn (Dôu yīn is TikTok in Chinese) that is trending, wrongly call it Korean, and dye their hair black or paint themselves paler just to appear Asian. Not only is this unnatural, but they are only referring to the part of Asia that everyone knows: the side with straight black hair, aegyo sal (lower eyelid fat that is common in Koreans), pale skin, slim, and elegant.
The RCTA posts also consist of talking about one country and its culture or tradition, but falsely add cultural elements from another country. For example, a RCTA person could be talking about how Japanese kimonos are pretty, and say, “Japanese hanfu is also really pretty!” A kimono is traditional and seen as something close to a formal suit, but hanfu is traditional Chinese clothing from ancient times.
These kinds of posts highlight a larger issue: cultural traditions being simplified or misrepresented for entertainment. What might seem like a small joke to one person can feel like cultural mockery to another. Respecting traditions means taking the time to understand them—not turning them into viral memes. So please, before joining in on what feels like an innocent, cute trend, do some research first to make sure that the posts in the trend are not offending anyone.
