Spiritual, But Make It Extractive: The Problem with Your “Chinese Era”

Before I had any awareness of this trend of being in a “very Chinese time” of one’s life, of being a "Chinese baddie", I was already feeling the sheer inundation of another kind of messaging. It was the non-stop messaging around this year’s Lunar New Year and everyone’s interpretation of the Yang Fire Horse energy. It hit my system hard, especially as someone who studies BaZi, the metaphysical cosmology that maps the elemental energies of time, the very system that defines 2026 as a Yang Fire Horse year. At first, I wondered if this was simply the algorithm at work. Maybe I had entered an echo chamber. Maybe all of these people had been studying this system all along, engaging it with depth and reverence and I had just never noticed.

But it didn’t take long to realize that wasn’t what was happening. What was happening felt far more familiar: culture becoming trend, flattened into aesthetic and soundbite, circulated for relevance and gain, often with very little understanding of what is actually being engaged.

That sharp impact I felt? That was my internal integrity (or bullshit) alarm going off. And it wasn’t just sensing superficiality but something deeper.

Later, I learned that influencers had begun declaring they were in “a very Chinese time” of their lives, riding a wave of loosely interpreted wellness practices drawn from Traditional Chinese Medicine. The sudden explosion of Yang Fire Horse content made more sense in that context.

And still there is so much to unpack here. Let me begin with this, because it matters:

This is not about gatekeeping.

I believe culture is not meant to be locked away or made inaccessible. Traditions like Chinese metaphysics, tea, and medicine have always evolved through exchange, migration, and relationship. But there is a difference between participating in a living tradition and consuming it as identity enhancement. There is a difference between devotion and display. A difference between true practice and performance. A difference between participation and gain. What I am witnessing is not simply appreciation but rather the commodification of difference. A kind of soft exoticism. Culture being used as a backdrop to feel worldly, spiritual, or progressive. Something to try on, to signal depth, to elevate one’s image but without actually being in relationship to the people, history, or complexity it comes from. Without holding any responsibility for what you are doing.

And that distinction matters. Because appreciation asks something of you. To appreciate is to enter into relationship - with humility, with curiosity, with time. It is to study, to listen, to be shaped by what you are engaging. It is to participate not because it is trending, but because it has called to you in a way that requires your presence and your care. It is love and devotion. Not consumption - to be used and then thrown away when it no longer serves.

It is also responsibility. If you benefit from what you are engaging - socially, financially, spiritually - you ask how that benefit can extend beyond you. You remain aware of your position. You check your privilege. You move with reciprocity. You understand that you are touching something that has lineage, and that lineage deserves respect.

Appropriation, on the other hand, is extractive. It follows trend cycles. It borrows language, symbols, and practices without depth of understanding. It flattens complexity into something digestible and marketable. It often centers the individual experience while erasing the cultural context that made the practice possible in the first place. And perhaps most concerning, it can exist alongside a belief that one is doing something “good,” “healing,” or “progressive,” while unconsciously perpetuating the very patterns of colonialism one might claim to resist.

So yes, I find myself asking certain questions:

Will this same energy be present next year, when it shifts to the Yin Fire Goat - less bold, less “sexy,” less marketable?

Did you know that it would shift at all?

Do you understand why?

Will you still care when there is nothing to be gained?

Have you ever even heard of BaZi or 5 Element Theory or have any basic knowledge of these systems?

Have you ever cracked open a TCM book?

These aren’t questions meant to shame but to reveal the difference between engagement and performance.

I also want to be clear about something else: I do not believe that cultural engagement is reserved for any one race. There are people of many backgrounds (white, Black, brown) who are moving in deep integrity within Chinese medicine, metaphysics, tea, and related practices. Doctors of Traditional Chinese Medicine. Long-term practitioners of Qi Gong. Serious students of BaZi or Feng Shui. Tea practitioners who have committed years to understanding the cultural, ecological, and philosophical roots of their work. This kind of engagement is not casual. It is built over time. It asks something of you. And it is very different from encountering something through an algorithm and immediately positioning yourself as a voice within it. These are people who have entered into real relationship with these systems. People who understand that this work is not something you use but is something that changes you. That kind of engagement is not loud. It doesn’t trend. It doesn’t need to announce itself. And it certainly doesn’t reduce itself to a seasonal identity statement.

I’ll say this plainly, even if it feels sharp:

If your relationship to a culture begins and ends with a trend cycle, it may be worth pausing before speaking as though you are rooted in it. Again this is not gatekeeping. But discernment. Because what is happening here is part of a larger pattern: the consumption of “otherness” as a way to construct identity. To feel expanded, elevated, or more conscious without doing the deeper work of relationship, accountability, and context. And that has consequences. There is something deeply off about declaring oneself to be in “a Chinese time of life” through a collection of aestheticized self-care practices, disconnected from the people and traditions that gave rise to them. This is performance and performance in this context is not neutral.

I share all of this not to position myself as an authority, but to name the kind of relationship I am committed to building. Over the past handful of years, I have been a student of Chinese metaphysics, of tea (Chadao), of Taoism, and of the cultural and spiritual lineages that inform these practices. I am still at the very beginning. I have also made efforts, however small, to show up in ways that feel reciprocal. Participating in my town’s Lunar New Year celebration over the past three years. Offering a Tea Lounge educational experience that highlights the depth and lineage of teas from China, Japan, and other parts of Asia. Donating proceeds to AAPI SLO, a local organization that supports and advocates for Asian American and Pacific Islander communities. It is not a grand gesture. But it is a gesture of relationship. Because ultimately, that is what is missing in so much of what I am seeing: Relationship. I know I am living in integrity with this relationship when I have Asian friends, both Asian-American and those born in Asia, who express gratitude and awe for the way I respect, hold reverence, and share these practices that are a part of their lineage.

And I keep coming back to this:

If you are going to speak as though you are channeling something - whether spiritual, cultural, or ancestral - there is a responsibility to understand what you are holding. To take from a culture, discard what is inconvenient, and deny its living context is not harmless. It is a continuation of a long history of extraction - where cultures, particularly Asian cultures, have been mined for wisdom, aesthetics, and spirituality while the people themselves are ignored, marginalized, or erased. So yes, it matters when someone declares they are in “a very Chinese time of their life” because they’ve started drinking hot water, tracking lunar cycles, or reposting elemental archetypes they don’t fully understand. It matters because it reveals how easily culture becomes costume.

“If you proclaim to be leading in light, you have a responsibility to understand what you are channeling and sharing. And taking from a culture, discarding the rest and worse, denying its heritage, is colonization at best, plundering at worst. For a group of women who professes to champion sovereignty, to end patriarchy, and to walk the priestess path, I strongly believe that we can do better.” -@iam-liying_lim_

So how do we do better? How do we all do better even if we are not women who champion sovereignty, want to end patriarchy and claim to walk the priestess path?

What’s being asked here is not perfection. It’s honesty. If you are engaging something because it is beautiful, say that. If you are learning, be a student. If you don’t understand something, don’t position yourself as a voice within it. And if you are benefiting - socially, spiritually, financially - ask what it means to give back. To move in reciprocity rather than extraction.

Because the truth is you cannot claim depth while bypassing context. You cannot claim reverence while ignoring origin. And you cannot claim integrity while participating in the erasure of the very thing you are drawing from. This is not about doing it “perfectly.” But it is about doing it consciously. Because culture is not a trend. And it is not here for you to become more interesting.