‘TikTok Refugees’ study Mandarin Chinese on Duolingo for RedNote


In a few days, TikTok may be banned in the US, making the app unavailable and removing it from app stores. Instead of doing Instagram Reels, people are looking for a closer alternative and found the Chinese social media app “RedNote” or Xiaohongshu, which translates to “little red book.” It shot to the top of the Apple App Store download list, and according to Reutersover 700,000 users joined the service in just a few days. Apparently, though, RedNote isn’t the only app to benefit from TikTok’s impending ban. Language learning app Duolingo revealed that it has seen a “216 percent increase in new Chinese (Mandarin) students in the US compared to this time last year.”

While RedNote has an English interface, most of its content is in Chinese, and American users probably expect to be able to interact with more videos. as TechCrunch notes, the graph posted by Duolingo clearly shows a large increase in new students at the same time RedNote increased in popularity. On TikTok, Duolingo posts videos with the hashtags #rednote and #tiktokban. In one video, someone wearing a mask of the app’s green owl mascot teaches Mandarin Chinese for beginners, starting with “Welcome, TikTok refugee.”

Meanwhile, RedNote’s original Chinese users are getting language lessons from the app’s American imports. Apparently they’ve been schooled in gen Alpha American slang and TikTok trends, like “my shayla” and “Raw. Next question.” Chinese users also poke fun at new users, telling them they are their “Chinese spies” and jokingly asking for their data to be handed over to the Chinese government.

TikTok’s owner, ByteDance, has until January 19 to sell the app’s US assets to prevent the shutdown.



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