Chinese New Year might soon be concluding, but that doesn’t mean you cannot continue this “very Chinese time” of your life.
After all, we are in the thick of a social media trend of “becoming Chinese”, popularised by Gen Z, in which the norms and traditions typically associated with Chinese culture are embraced, particularly by non-Chinese in the West: sipping hot water, wearing house slippers, consuming traditional Chinese medicine, acquiring “made in China” products, practising tai chi …
Such “Chinamaxxing” has come to global attention in recent times. It was sparked by X user @girl__virus’ post in April 2025, stating, “you met me at a very chinese time in my life” – a parody of Fight Club’s “You met me at a very strange time in my life” – and Chinese-American TikTok content creator Sherry Zhu’s tongue-in-cheek instructions on becoming a “Chinese baddie” a few months ago.
A still from a social media video shows how Westerners are embracing aspects of Chinese culture by adopting habits such as drinking warm water. Photo: shobserver.com
The practice of “maxxing” itself, however, has been around for a while.
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First, before maxxing, there was max. As a clipping of the noun or adjective maximum, in use from the mid-1800s, you could spend US$200 max, or push yourself to the max. Clipping the verb maximise, you could, by the 1870s, max it. Later, from the 1970s onwards, as a phrasal verb, your car engine could max out at 7,000rpm, or you could max out at the gym or max out all your credit cards.
Fast-forward to the new millennium’s virtual world, “-maxxing” – the doubled “x” possibly modelled after “doxxing” for an internet slang aesthetic – describes the practice of optimising a specific aspect of one’s life, often to an extreme degree.
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It has roots in gaming slang “max” – similarly clipped from maximise – and the term “min-maxing”, used particularly in role-playing games, which is the character-building strategy of maximising a specific desired ability, skill or other power of a character, and minimising all other traits considered undesirable.
From there, it developed into a suffix, attached to a noun, or sometimes an adjective. This usage originated in niche online communities, in particular online incel forums, that is, the “manosphere”, dating back to the early 2010s, starting with “looksmaxxing” – referring to methods of maximising one’s physical appearance, and thus romantic and sexual appeal, through various methods.
