Singaporean pair behind YouTube channel TiffWithMi, seeing that speaking Chinese is considered not ‘cool’, make videos in the language to counter the stigma
- On a channel with 645,000 subscribers, Singaporean sisters host beauty tutorials, review their shopping hauls, and create other content – all of it in Chinese
- They know their videos may get fewer views than if they posted in English, but say helping young Singaporeans connect with the language is worth more than money
Although the national language of Singapore is Malay, you’re just as likely to hear its three other official languages – English, Mandarin Chinese and Tamil – on the streets of the multicultural nation. Many street signs are in all four languages.
Despite this, the city state’s diverse make-up isn’t reflected in its list of top YouTubers – most of Singapore’s popular content creators cater to an English-speaking audience.
Sisters Tiffanie and Michy Lim do not, though. They run TiffwithMi, a YouTube channel where they upload beauty tutorials, shopping hauls, and other slice-of-life content to their audience of 645,000 subscribers – and they do it all in Mandarin.
“Singapore is a multiracial country,” the pair tell the Post. “We should have even more variety when it comes to YouTubers, but why do we only have English-speaking content creators? That struck a chord with us and inspired us to switch to Chinese.”
The concept initially seemed like it would be hard to sell to their audience, given the city state’s increasingly Westernised millennials and Gen Z-ers.
“The general idea is that Chinese is not a ‘cool’ language,” says Michy, 20. “Younger people also think in general that Chinese is difficult to learn – which is why they don’t make much effort to master the language.”
The sisters, who launched their channel in 2015, produced content almost exclusively in English at first. At the start of 2018, they published a video in Mandarin, which got 154,000 views – more than double their usual average. By the end of the year, TiffwithMi’s lighthearted videos were made exclusively in Mandarin.
The change didn’t come without its detractors, though. Some called them “bananas” for creating content in Mandarin, and around the time the sisters were starting to look into YouTube as a meaningful career, a well-meaning acquaintance told them: “If you want to do YouTube in Singapore, you guys need to be less ‘cheena’ [Chinese].”
Predictably, the comment didn’t sit well with the Lims.
“We think that the statement itself raises the exact problem that we’re hoping to correct – the stigma surrounding the Chinese language,” says Tiffanie, 19.
And in the featured video on their channel Michy says: “When he said that to us, I was thinking: ‘Am I not Chinese? If I’m not ‘cheena’, how else should I be?’”
The pair say they aren’t trying to call out the younger generation for their poor Mandarin skills – the sisters have also acknowledged that their Mandarin “isn’t as good as the Chinese from other countries”. Instead, they want to help viewers embrace the language as they’ve done.
“Being bad at Chinese is not a problem – but not being willing to learn it is,” says Michy.
This is why the sisters provide English subtitles on all of their videos, even for the funny skits and Mandarin memes that appear on screen. The sisters hope their videos will inspire young people to take up Mandarin – or at least, that they will lend some “coolness” to the language.
They spend a lot more time producing a Mandarin video than one in English, because they know a lot of people watch their videos to learn Chinese. Subtitling every part of their videos is a tedious process, especially for younger sister Tiffanie, who confesses that she is “much weaker in the language”.
“We spend a lot of time and effort to ensure that both languages are accurate,” she stresses.
The pair, who say that their YouTube earnings are “rather unstable” – some months see them raking in a sum “much higher than average graduate income” while other months “can be on the other end” – say that they’re not in it for the money, but rather for the sense that they’re doing something worthwhile.
“We’ve had mothers come up to us and tell us they watch our videos together as a family, and even students telling us that their teachers are showing our videos in class,” they say.
While the sisters acknowledge that Mandarin-language videos might draw fewer clicks than English content in Singapore, they wouldn’t have it any other way.
“Why does Singapore not have popular Chinese YouTubers, Indian YouTubers, Malay YouTubers – or even bilingual YouTubers?” Michy asks in their channel’s featured video, which has been watched more than 1 million times. “We just want to say that we’re proud to be Singaporean Chinese. What about you?”
