What the rise of ‘Wasians’ like Alysa Liu and Hudson Williams means for part-Asian identity

What do athletes Alysa Liu and Eileen Gu, actors Lola Tung and Hudson Williams, and singer Megan Skiendiel of Katseye all have in common? They have all been the focus of heavy media attention this year – and all are biracial. Beyond their talents, online discourse has frequently fixated on their racial identity. Specifically, they are all part-Asian and part-white – or “Wasian” in Gen Z language, a contemporary term for “Eurasian” that has been popularised by American internet culture. This has in turn birthed “The Republic of Wasia”, a humorous, self-identified “country” on social media platforms like TikTok and X. View this post on Instagram A post shared by Jackson Yukio Van Horn (@jacksonvanhorn) When Liu took to Instagram to promote Icelandic-Chinese singer Laufey’s music video for her new song “Madwoman”, in which Liu featured alongside a star-studded mixed-race cast, the skater specifically gave a shoutout to “Wasia” in the caption. But while the “Republic” serves as a digital space to celebrate the cultural in-betweenness of biracial identity, detractors argue it risks stereotyping the very community it claims to represent. It is a paradox that is all too familiar to the Eurasian community in Hong Kong, a city that has long been an international “East meets West” hub due to its British colonial history. In the early colonial period, Eurasian families often occupied a complex social position and were frequently marginalised by both the British colonial establishment and the local Chinese population. Today, many Eurasians conversely benefit from and are celebrated by both communities. “I think people view Wasians as a bridge between cultures,” says Sophie Marrie, a part-French, part-Chinese Hongkonger who co-owns a landscaping business with her sister Charlene and creates online content on the side. The two sisters feel a sense of pride when they see Eurasians spotlighted in the media and often identify with them. “I think it’s a very positive thing to have more of that … it’s really nice to see the world coming together,” Charlene says. For the sisters, the shift in Eurasian celebration is palpable. “Before, when I went back to France, I also had to try and ‘be’ French – remind them that I speak French and went to a French school,” Sophie says. “But now, I love to show off my Chinese side. And I think it’s true that Asians are much more represented now. “We feel more proud and open.” There is also a shift among the French population, Sophie notes. Before, local French people would simply write the sisters off as “Chinese immigrants”, but now they have more of an understanding about mixed-race francophones. The persistent feeling of disorientation and series of identity crises that can come with being mixed-race is likely why the humorous geographic underpinning of The Republic of Wasia has resonated with so many Eurasians in Hong Kong and around the world. Patrick Kho believes that the current fixation on Eurasian celebrities can be attributed to people’s fascination with their embodiment of multiculturalism. Kho is a Filipino based in Hong Kong who writes The Chow, a newsletter on “the business of subculture”. He recently published a hotly discussed article about the internet’s fixation on the mixed-race background of Olympic champions Liu and Gu. “My theory is that it’s downstream from the US-China conflict – these two rising, ascendant superpowers, sort of reflecting one another, and each of them having their own strengths and their own weaknesses,” he says, adding that this gives Eurasians such as Liu and Gu a perceived “dual-market value”. Kho notes a possible connection between the Republic of Wasia and the viral “China-maxxing” trend. Both phenomena, perhaps, seem to stem from the same underlying impulse: the American tendency to admire – or fantasise about – distant Asian cultures and assign aesthetic value to Eastern characteristics. Shifting perspectives The current fascination of mixed-race heritage stands almost in opposition to how Eurasians were once viewed in the media, especially in popular entertainment. “In the past, Eurasian celebrities were read as mono-racial” says LeiLani Nishime, a professor of communication at the University of Washington with expertise in mixed-race Asian representation in the media. Earlier Eurasian celebrities simply “assimilated” whatever race the audience assumed they were, either fully white or fully Asian, she says. Only recently have more characters been written to be canonically mixed race. To exemplify this shift, Nishime compares the television show To All the Boys I Loved Before and its spin-off, XO, Kitty. While the American characters’ mixed-race heritages were acknowledged in the former, they remained largely ignored in the narrative until the subsequent spin-off show moved the entire story to South Korea to focus directly on the main character’s reconnection to their Asian culture. Nishime attributes the heightened media interest in mixed-race Asians to the economic rise of Asia. Increased media production from South Korea, Japan and China has likely sparked greater international interest in Asian narratives. But she warns that it can be a slippery slope from this interest in Eurasians to the exoticisation of them. Commenting on the white-dominated media, she wonders if Eurasians represent a certain type of “palatability” or a “safe exoticism” – an acceptable middle ground where Eurasians are “unique” and “exotic” while still being “palatable” enough to fit into white narratives. Nishime also emphasises that there is a distinction to be made between a member of the Eurasian community who celebrates their identity via the Republic of Wasia, and those outside the community who are looking inward with an Orientalist gaze. She notes that while the media spotlight is new, the general praise of mixed-race Asians is not. She explains that the term “hybrid vigour” was once used, a concept originally applied to plants that purports that when different species of plants cross-pollinate, they produce healthier and stronger offspring. The term had been adopted by many in the conversations surrounding mixed-race children. “There’s always a danger of it becoming this conversation about biological race, and being exoticised and fetishised,” Nishime says. The Marrie sisters have experienced this themselves. “We’ve gotten comments from people who are like, ‘I want to have a Eurasian baby,’” Charlene says. “People always say, ‘Eurasians are always so good-looking,’ but, like, that’s not always the case,” she adds with a laugh. Alienating other mixed-race Asians Besides exoticisation, the Republic of Wasia meme has also been criticised by online commentators for its disproportionate focus on East Asians while excluding those from South or Southeast Asia. Nishime notes that there is also a need to appreciate mixed-race Asians who are not part-white, taking “Blasians” – part-black, part-Asian people – as an example. “I don’t know if they’ll get the same kind of media attention … because there’s just more whiteness in the media. And white people have more production power, so they’re making a lot more decisions about what gets produced, what gets funded, what gets distributed, all those kinds of things.” For those whose identities do not fit the “Wasian” mould, the discourse can feel alienating. Caro Chan is a biracial Hong Kong actress who has a Nigerian mother and Chinese father. She speaks of the united struggles that many mixed-race children with Chinese heritage in Hong Kong face, whether they are half-white or half-black, including being teased at school. “What does it take for me to prove that I’m Asian without the extra labels?” was a question that often haunted her when others had difficulty accepting her as a Hongkonger due to her appearance. But Chan also notes the existence of colourism that affects “Blasians” differently. “The media portrays what the beauty standard is – not even just in Hong Kong, but around the world … Occasionally you get people saying stuff like, ‘Oh, I love your skin colour’ … but it’s still not the majority – the beauty standard is still white skin or whiter complexion.” For Chan, the hyper-fixation on race in media often feels performative rather than authentic. “What are we talking about when we talk about representation in the media?” she asks, critiquing the industry’s tendency to use identity as a marketing tool, whether regarding black actors in America or, in her case, Eurasian celebrities hitting the spotlight. “If you’re just looking at their race, colour, or background … what are we representing?” She advocates for a move towards humanising the individual rather than relying on the “PR or marketing” of identity politics. “Ultimately, I just want to see talent. At the end of the day, we’re all just human beings,” she says. Chan is about to embark on a six-month-long artist’s fellowship in America. She is open to see how her perspective about race and representation may change after living there, aware that racial politics take on a different form in Hong Kong. Kho, among other online sceptics, remains slightly wary of what the Republic of Wasia meme could mean for the Asian community, fearing that the over-dominance of Eurasian representation may eventually eclipse Asian representation as a whole. “I’m from the Philippines, and that’s a place where every celebrity is half-white or looks like they could be half-white, or is brown with white features,” he says. But for the Marrie sisters, the internet’s current hyper-fixation on Eurasian public figures is a positive phenomenon overall. “I never saw it as a point for just Wasians, to be honest,” Sophie says. “I see it as a point for all Asians.”

What the rise of ‘Wasians’ like Alysa Liu and Hudson Williams means for part-Asian identity

.css-1c6uqr6{color:inherit;font-weight:inherit;font-size:inherit;font-family:inherit;line-height:inherit;overflow-wrap:break-word;}While part-white, part-Asian identity is being celebrated online, some argue these spaces in fact stereotype the communities they represent

While part-white, part-Asian identity is being celebrated online, some argue these spaces in fact stereotype the communities they represent