Chinese internet reacts to Bad Bunny
On Xiaohongshu, users decode the Puerto Rican superstar’s appeal, joining a global conversation about Latin music's themes of free expression, nostalgia, and resistance to colonial legacies.
I’ve been meaning to write this issue since right after the Super Bowl, when I woke up to a flooded Xiaohongshu feed filled with who-is-Bad-Bunny breakdowns.
To Latino communities around the world, his halftime show was largely celebrated as a definitive moment, in which Latin culture occupied one of the most visible entertainment stages in the world, in front of more than 100 million viewers, at a time of immigration enforcement harassments and violence in the US.
While watching the livestream on a Chinese-language platform, I noticed some confused and even dismissive comments: “I can’t understand a single word,” some wrote. “Is this even singing?”
This initial confusion surprisingly propelled him into mainstream Chinese conversation in a way that Grammy wins and Spotify dominance didn’t. On Xiaohongshu, users explained the political undertones of the show to one another; made memes about “activating Latin DNA;” translated lyrics into Mandarin and got shocked at how explicit they sound; shared his near-nude photos to debate his sexual appeal, partly because many have had limited exposure to Latino singers. (Ricky Martin’s most famous World Cup appearance was in 1998.)
For the average Chinese culture consumer, Latin culture can feel passionate but distant, and reggaeton’s raw, coarse lyrics are a 180-degree contrast to the traditionally applauded aesthetic of subtlety in Chinese culture. But the Bad Bunny crash course gave them something concrete and visual to grasp: everyday life, urban scenes, natural landscapes.
One self-identified Mexican user (yes, there is a small but visible Hispanic corner of Xiaohongshu) adapted “Tití Me Preguntó (My Aunt Asked Me)” into Chinese and got almost 10,000 likes.
Honestly, the result was brilliant. Slangs like “马子 (girlfriend),” “白月光 (first love),” and “聊骚 (flirty texting)” captured the ghetto swagger of the original, while “牛子很不错” is a censorship-evading way to say “your dick is badass.”
The show aired just days before Lunar New Year, coincidentally equipping young Chinese returning home for the holiday with fresh clap-backs for nosy relatives.
When asked if they have a girlfriend, they suggest each other to just say, “today I have one, tomorrow I’ll have another, but no wedding,” like how it goes in the song.
Some users imitated the show’s reggaeton moves, noting that even in Shanghai they hadn’t seen dance schools like this — though that may soon change.
And the trend that I like the most is people recreating DtMF album cover ft. hometown symbols, with the orally translated Cantonese title “应该影多d相 (“should have taken more photos”) representing the abbreviated nature of the original title “DeBÍ TiRAR MáS FOToS.”
The cover shows two empty plastic chairs in front of banana trees, a common scene in the Caribbeans.
Someone from Wan’an Village in Shunde posted a version with two red plastic chairs under a mango tree.
Someone from Hunan uploaded two bamboo chairs in a village house front yard:
Two plastic chairs from Guangxi by the country road:
The plastic chair — cheap, ubiquitous, slightly ugly — triggered something immediate and intimate, evoking endearing images from childhood, ancestral houses, and street food stalls. It isn’t just an object but a scene frozen in time from the era of upward mobility: cement ground, mahjong tables, rice bowls, elders bringing food. It symbolically and visually linked the two regions.
Bad Bunny asserts that the most powerful message to hate is love. The message feels personal to me.
Despite the heavy history of colonization, inequality, violence and poverty, the people have taught me to deal with hardship and trauma with grace and humor. In Mexico City, a city where the traumatic memories of the 1985 and 2017 earthquakes linger, we often have earthquake drills. As we live on a higher floor, my roommate would joke: “Run to the rooftop. You won’t die, you’ll just break a few bones.”
I love seeing a cultural moment between China and Latin America, and am curious about what exchanges like this might do in terms of introducing new elements to fashion, music, dance and other forms of art, as well as when it comes to the matter of “relating” — humanizing distant cultures, sparking curiosity, and finding more similarities than differences in our shared human experience.
I feel like Bad Bunny would love this. The different chairs from various parts of China imitating the cover art is so wholesome and a ubiquitous moment of connection from two seemingly opposite cultures and ways of life.
Wow loved this article 💚