This post was updated May 1 at 10:52 p.m.
While most students share gossip in their native languages and with their dearest friends, Leo Kitaen has a different approach.
Instead, Kitaen, a first-year Chinese and global studies student who grew up in an English-speaking household in Orange County, California, shares the drama in his life in Mandarin to his 166,000 TikTok followers.
As Kitaen expected, his first video did not do very well, initially only receiving a comparably low 10,000 views. However, he said he decided to make another video for fun – and this time added the extra touch of gossip.
“I was like, ‘Get ready with me while I talk about this guy who played me and wasted my time, yong zhong wen (using Mandarin),’ and then that blew up for some reason,” he added.
From that video alone, which now has 3.9 million views, Kitaen gained 30,000 followers, he said. With a larger following came the pressure to make more content, he added.
Kitaen said he took a two-week hiatus from posting and almost considered stopping. However, he said following his break, he discovered that his love of reaching people and bringing them joy was deeper than any pressure or insecurity he felt about having such a public platform.
“I’ll get messages from people telling me, ‘You motivate me to keep learning Chinese,’ ‘You motivated me to pick it up again’ or ‘My grandma loves your videos,’” he said.
Kitaen’s videos caught on – so much so that what began as a fun project to practice Mandarin began receiving likes and comments from celebrities such as Taylor Swift, Lil Tay and Nina Lu, as well as TikTok creators including StinkyAsher and Cassandra Bowman, he said. A video of him doing the “very mindful, very demure” trend in Mandarin now has over 7.6 million views.
Kitaen said he first began to learn Mandarin because his middle school friends back home in Ladera Ranch were predominantly Chinese. He added that he then stumbled upon an advertisement for Yoyo Chinese – a Mandarin language learning website that he began poring over – and he eventually asked his parents to enroll him in a Chinese immersion school.
Kitaen continued his Mandarin journey throughout high school and now studies Chinese at UCLA, he said. He also has a private tutor – who, he added, knows more about his life than many of his closest friends due to the amount they practice together.
“I tell her all of my lore, every little detail, and she asks me too. She’ll be like, ‘Oh my God, what’s the update with that date that you went on?’” he said. “And I’ll be like, ‘Girl, sit down. I have a lot to tell you,’ and I just yap. And it honestly helps so much.”
Kitaen said learning a foreign language does not have to be a chore or feel like studying but can instead be something fun – it’s all about the framing.
“I practice through gossiping and talking to people and filming TikToks,” he added. “That’s not studying to me – that’s fun to me. So I think that that’s a perspective people can have.”
Kitaen said he hopes to travel to Beijing for the first time this summer to immerse himself in Chinese culture.
Kaylynn Yang, a first-year political science and psychology student who has known Kitaen since middle school, said that throughout high school, Kitaen would consistently go above and beyond for each assignment in Chinese class because of his passion for the language.
“He’s really passionate and really hardworking, and he’s even majoring in it here, so obviously he likes it,” she added.
Yang said she has enjoyed participating in some of his videos. She added that she sometimes forgets how popular his platform is – and that it feels surreal when she is with him and someone asks for a photo.
Though Kitaen has reached a high level of fluency, he said that he feels he still has a lot of room to grow.
“Even though some people might consider me fluent, I think that you can always learn more,” he said. “Until you understand the intricacies and the slang and the nuances of the language, you can’t really say that you’re at native level.”
Michelle Smith, a senior lecturer of Asian languages and cultures at UCLA, said she has had Kitaen in three of her Chinese language classes. Smith added that though Kitaen sometimes forgets specific words, she has been impressed with his ability to express complicated concepts in Mandarin.
“I love having him in my class because I want him to set an example. If he can do it from scratch, anyone can do it,” she said. “All you have to do is maintain interest and never give up.”
Kitaen added that his content has also brought him new friendships. Gloria Qu, a first-year environmental science student, said she reached out to Kitaen because she found his content relatable as someone who uses both Chinese and English on a regular basis.
Qu said she also finds Kitaen’s videos interesting, as he uses the Chinese language to touch on queer topics, which are often seen as socially unacceptable in Chinese culture.
With or without his platform, Kitaen said he loves to learn Mandarin and hopes others can find an outlet in learning a foreign language as well. He added that learning Mandarin, engaging with Chinese media and communicating with people who have moved to the U.S. from China has helped him learn more about Chinese culture.
“If you live in America, you’re the product of language exchange, and you’re the product of immigration,” Kitaen said. “You’re the product of communication between people who aren’t from here.”
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