I think we all need to be paying much more attention to the years’ worth of cultural exchanges taking place in a matter of days because of “TikTok refugees” moving over to the RedNote app (or Xiou Hong Shu) due to the TikTok ban. Many of these “refugees” are ordinary Mainers.

More than a million users migrated to Xiou Hong Shu in response to the TikTok blackout. What has happened inadvertently is an amazing, warm and eye-opening cultural exchange that truly is a first of its kind — and could potentially be a mass awakening similar to the “Russians love their children, too” kind of moment of the 1980s.

Ordinary Americans from all over the country are talking directly to Chinese citizens, paying the so-called “cat tax,” learning Mandarin and learning that the Chinese are funny, kind and accepting people. The new users have been largely welcomed by the Chinese, who are teaching folks both Mandarin and RedNote etiquette.

There have been exchanges about how people live over there (spoiler, it’s better than over here); the cost of living (spoiler, it’s lower than over here); school kids exchanging details about how their days proceed; and a general awakening that all the stereotypes that we have been fed about the Chinese people are wrong.

Some Americans are astonished to learn that many Chinese people regard Americans to be living in a Third World country, and others are surprised by the degree of sympathy that many Chinese express toward Americans in general. People are amazed by the services that are available to Chinese citizens: the parks, the recreation areas, the sophistication of the transportation system, the free ambulances, etc. In fact, there may also be an awakening of class consciousness happening, especially regarding the difficulties of living through late-stage capitalism.

Of course, RedNote is heavily censored by the Chinese government, so only the happy and bright side of China is on display. Still, the exchanges are bursting stereotypes on both sides of the world.

Many U.S. users realize that they are not as free as they have been indoctrinated to believe, that the Chinese people are normal and unconcerned with America, that the Chinese quality of life seems to be better than we have been led to believe, and that the people are warm and accepting.

With immigration raids likely to take place in cities across the U.S., an unprecedented thing may occur: Americans posting about this display of tyranny on a Chinese app will freely give the Chinese people a taste of the terror and chaos unfolding in the U.S. It could be a reversal of Tiananmen Square.

If RedNote is banned, people are promising to migrate to another Chinese app. People are not migrating to Meta as Mark Zuckerberg had hoped. Instead, some are deleting Meta apps.

People seem unconcerned with privacy issues, most likely because an entire generation of people has come to believe that privacy is a total illusion. They are asking, “So what does it matter if China sees my data versus Mark Zuckerberg, who just uses it for his own financial gain — and probably sells it to China anyway?”

I am not suggesting we should all endorse RedNote, and I understand the potential security risks may be even more pronounced on RedNote. I am also aware that the content is heavily censored and that the Chinese government is guilty of heinous human rights violations.

What I am suggesting is that there has never been a moment in history where millions of regular American folk are interacting with regular Chinese folk in a warm and friendly way. It is also unprecedented that Americans for the first time are experiencing what it is like to be a digital “refugee.” It is all interesting, at the very least.