The Art of Pretending to Be Chinese

Editor’s note: In the course of researching this story, one of the authors met Lao Xie Xie for a three-hour face-to-face interview. In order to present certain aspects of this story, we felt it necessary to include his quotes, however these were given under the condition that we do not use the photographer’s real name in this piece. We have therefore used a pseudonym.

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Through his inflammatory photography, Lao Xie Xie aims to use Chinese clichés to unapologetically break new ground in the discourse on Chinese working-class artists. 

Growing up in an impoverished family in Sichuan province, the photographer harbored big ideas. But it wasn’t until 2019, when he gave up his job selling steamed buns and picked up a camera, that he began to visualize them. Photography opened new worlds for the image maker and birthed his provocative style, leading to him being noticed on social media, getting multilingual press coverage and being included in international exhibitions.

Just a matter of months after he began taking photographs, his arresting images of China’s rising subcultures have enchanted overseas audiences, landing him features in international magazines, and culminating in a Paris exhibition through September alongside works by the late photography luminary Ren Hang, among others. His rise from the backwaters of western China to the Parisian avant-garde is a triumph, not just for Lao Xie Xie himself, but for all Chinese artists.

Except Lao Xie Xie is not actually a working-class artist from Sichuan. He’s not even Chinese.

“Lao Xie Xie” (or “Mr Thank You” in English) is the fabricated identity of a white, Italian male working in the creative industries, who we will refer to as “M” in this article.

After moving to Shanghai five years ago, he turned to photography as a new mode of artistic expression. But what started as a way to showcase his creative prowess, turned into a guise that fooled media outlets into thinking he was Chinese.

We were also fooled — initially. It was only after the photographer agreed to a profile about his work that we discovered his real identity. In our first (email) interview, the artist fed into his purported Chinese identity by answering direct questions about Lao Xie Xie’s personal experience growing up in China with indirect responses about the country’s youth. Only after understanding we knew he wasn’t Chinese did he suggest meeting face-to-face. In a three-hour interview at a coffee shop in August, the open, yet highly contradictory figure, explained the genesis of Lao Xie Xie.

His inspiration to take photographs originated from a combination of frustration at creating client-centric work and a strong belief he could do better than the work displayed in the exhibitions he attended in China. While it’s not clear what being better than other people means to him, it’s clear his competitiveness drove him to pursue success.

He soon found it. Media outlets around the world were captivated by his quasi-documentary images of China’s Generation Z, images that juxtapose clichéd Chinese symbolism with explicit nudity and erotica. Unable to speak Mandarin Chinese, Lao Xie Xie mostly uses Instagram and English to recruit young Chinese Gen Zs to be his models.

By using Chinese clichés familiar to foreign audiences he aims to “to use something everybody knows to teach them something they don’t get [about China].” What exactly he hopes the audience realizes they don’t understand about China is, according to the artist, up for the audience to discern: “I don’t give you answers, I [only] give you questions.” 

Maintaining his artwork is merely entertainment and doesn’t depict a real China, M contends that he feels uncomfortable that media outlets have mistakenly given him a Chinese identity. Eager to clear-up this misunderstanding, he asserts: “I didn’t pretend to be [Chinese], people think I am […] because I’m using a Chinese name”.

However, M’s role in this was not as passive as he seems keen to suggest.

The story gets even crazier – click "Read More" at the bottom of this message for the full article.

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