In fact, the app doesn’t even have a good English translation of its own name: Xiaohongshu is the just the phonetic translation of its Chinese name. 小红书. While the literal translation “little red book” may remind English-speaking users of former Chinese leader Mao Zedong’s collection of speeches and propaganda slogans by the same name, it has a different connotation in China, where users interpret it as a source of reliable user-generated recommendations for mundane things, like which restaurant to go to or which cosmetic product to buy. The recent influx of American users has certainly caught the attention of Xiaohongshu’s existing user base. David Yang, a recent master’s program graduate from China currently living in Paris, suddenly found his Xiaohongshu feed full of American users on Sunday. He had previously seen some non-Chinese creators intentionally coming to the platform to attract Chinese followers, but nothing at this scale. Now, when he scrolls his Xiaohongshu home page, about one quarter of the content is from so-called TikTok refugees, according to a screen recording he shared. “Some …