Why we’re creating Chinese podcasts for a split internet

Welcome to Baihua 百花. Glad to see you here.

Hi, I’m Izzy,

I’m a journalist and visual storyteller. For the past eight years, I’ve also had what might be the ultimate luxury of our times: creating a podcast with three of my best friends to talk about American TV, movies, and the cultural products that have shaped our lives. What started as four friends gathering around a microphone became 疲惫娇娃 CyberPink (formerly Loud Murmurs), a show that now reaches hundreds of thousands of listeners across borders—physical and digital alike.

You’re receiving this email because at some point, you joined us on this journey. Maybe you attended one of our book clubs co-hosted with “American Roulette 美轮美换,” subscribed to the fantastic 美轮美换 newsletter, supported us on Patreon, or simply sent us a message that made our day.

Thank you. Those gestures matter more than you know.

What I didn’t anticipate was how much this show would change my life, and from the letters we’ve received over the years, how it would touch others too. Somewhere along the way, I came to believe that high-quality dialogue by and for the Chinese diaspora is a net good—for the creators, for the listeners, for the world. I wanted more of it. And because my work connects me with some of the most creative, perceptive voices among the Chinese diaspora, I thought: why not build it ourselves?

So two and a half years ago, I gathered a few people in my Brooklyn living room with an idea: a podcast incubator for the Chinese-speaking voices. That meeting became Baihua Media.

Long before “Chinamaxxing” became a thing, demand for quality dialogues about thoughts on and about China had been quietly growing, driven by exodus of intellectuals from a closing China, but also by second-gen kids trying to understand their heritage, and honestly, anyone chronically online enough to notice the internet is split in half. When Clubhouse briefly opened in 2021, hundreds of thousands of Chinese-speaking users flocked to it for conversations impossible within China’s controlled internet. The yearning was palpable. It still is.

When TikTok faced a ban last year and Americans mass-migrated to Xiaohongshu, posting “TikTok refugee” videos and trading memes with their fellow Chinese netizens, something became clear: the world is waking up to the fact that there’s a whole parallel internet, culture, and political reality they’ve been missing.

I’d always been straddling both—someone who moved to the U.S. at fifteen, who’s spent a decade as a China reporter, who can code-switch between explaining American politics to Chinese audiences and translating Chinese internet culture for Western readers. Baihua is an aggregation of people like me, a generation that’s digitally native, globally minded, and tired of choosing between oversimplified narratives.

The party where I announced Baihua to a group of friends in 2024 in Brooklyn

Today, Baihua is a network of six podcasts:

• 疲惫娇娃 CyberPink on pop culture,

• 美轮美换 American Roulette on U.S. politics,

• 新新人类 Pixel Perfect on technology,

• 大波福娃 Dat Beauvoir on queer feminist topics,

• 残言片语 Disabled Talks on disability issues, and

• 选修课 Universus on humanities.

All in Chinese, all unapologetically tackling topics you won’t find elsewhere. We’ve also hosted IRL events – book clubs, documentary screenings, live podcast recordings. We are creating the kind of spaces where you can actually talk about what’s happening without having to dumb it down or worry about being lost in context translations.

This newsletter is part of that. Beyond algorithms, beyond whatever platform drama is happening—just us sharing what we’re building, what we’re reading, and what we’re noticing about the most active public discourse space inside China’s walled internet: the Chinese podcastsphere.

In the following issues, you’ll meet the rest of the Baihua crew—Hua, a habitually online human encyclopedia of American politics; Yang, who opines beautifully on topics from culture to healthcare to tech and is three workaholics rolled into one; Ina, who turns gossip into a serious anthropological subject; and Afra, a brilliant tech writer who inspires me take risks and think bigger. They will be rotating this newsletter with me. We’ll share the latest episodes from Baihua pods, curated recommendations, and observations on everything from Chinese internet culture to diaspora identity to why certain things just hit different when you understand both contexts.

Welcome to Baihua. We’re glad you’re here.

大家好，我是小蓝。

我是一名记者，也做视觉叙事。过去八年里，我做了一件可能是我们这个时代最奢侈的事：和三个最好的朋友一起创建了一档播客，聊美剧、电影、还有那些影响我们人生的文化产品。好友朋友围着麦克风的闲聊最后变成了《疲惫娇娃 CyberPink》(曾经的《小声喧哗》)，一档拥有十万听众的流行文化播客。

你收到这封邮件，是因为你在某个时刻与我们同行。可能你来过我们和《美轮美换》一起办的读书会，订阅美轮美换的新闻通讯，在 Patreon 上支持过我们，或者给我们发过让我们开心一整天的消息和评论。

真的很感谢，这些鼓励对我们来说极其重要。

我之前没想到，这档播客会这么深刻地改变我的生活。从这些年收到的留言里，我也看到它影响了很多其他人。这让我逐渐开始相信，全球华语社群之间的有质量的对谈对播客创作者、听众和整个世界，都是一件好事。我想要听到更多这样的对话。而且因为工作关系，我认识一些在美华语群体里最有创造力、最敏锐的人。于是我想：我们为什么不自己做呢？

于是两年半前，我在布鲁克林的客厅里召集了几个朋友，提出了一个想法：做一个属于我们自己社群的播客厂牌，那次会面后来变成了百花。

在”Chinamaxxing”成为一个梗之前，对于高质量的、关于中国和中国思想的对话的需求就已经在悄悄增长——源于知识分子从逐渐封闭的中国出走，也源于二代移民想要理解自己的文化根源，当然也包括大量长期在线、敏锐到足以察觉互联网其实被一分为二的人。2021年 Clubhouse 短暂开放时，成千上万说中文的用户涌向这个平台，进行在中国互联网上无法想象的对话。那种渴望是如此强烈。现在依然如此。去年 TikTok 面临禁令时，大批美国用户涌入小红书，发“洋抖难民”视频，和中国网友互换 meme。全世界都开始意识到，这里有一个他们一直错过的平行互联网、平行文化和平行现实。

我一直横跨在两边，15岁移民美国，做了十年中国报道的记者，既能给中文受众解释美国，也能给英文读者翻译中文互联网。百花是像我这样的人的聚合：数字原住民、全球互联网上长大、厌倦了在过度简化的叙事之间二选一的一代人。

现在，百花旗下有六档播客：

• 聊流行文化的《疲惫娇娃 CyberPink》

• 聊美国政治的《美轮美换 American Roulette》

• 聊科技的《新新人类 Pixel Perfect》

• 聊酷儿女性话题的《大波福娃 Dat Beauvoir》

• 聊残障议题的《残言片语 Disabled Talks》

• 还有聊人文内容的《选修课 Universus》。

所有播客都是中文，用自然的、毫不退让的方式探讨别处找不到的话题。我们还办线下活动——读书会、纪录片放映、播客现场录制。我们想构建一个让你可以不用过度解释自己、不用在意什么才是主流，也不担心在语境中迷失的讨论空间。

这份百花通讯也是其中的一部分。我们希望能用一种超越算法、超越平台圈地的方式直接和你交流，分享各种活动、我们正在读的内容，以及我们对中文播客（目前中国互联网内最活跃的公共讨论空间）的观察、思考和总结。

在接下来的通讯里，你也会认识百花的其他成员——小华，一个长期在线的美国政治百科全书；小杨，从文化到医疗到科技无所不知的观察家和工作狂；一芳，擅长用人类学的方式研究各类严肃八卦；还有 Afra，总能让我打开格局的优秀科技写作者。他们会和我轮流写这份通讯，我们会分享百花播客的最新节目、精选推荐，从中文互联网文化到跨国界文化的身份认同，以及那些需要理解两边的语境时才会有的共鸣。

欢迎来到百花，很高兴在这里见到你。

Izzy/小蓝