Bridging the Cultural Divide: How Empowering Media Amplifies Eastern Brands in the West

While the distant world is rife with conflict, the world close to home is integrating through collaboration. In this first official blog post for Empowering Media, I want to step away from the business metrics and trace back five moments from the past ten years. These moments form the underlying driving force of our company—in a cross-cultural context, we are not just "doing marketing"; we are seeking solutions for convergence and balance for brands amidst a constantly shifting global landscape.

[1] My First Trip to the US

Ten years ago, in 2016, I visited the US for the first time, landing first in Philadelphia. Philly's Chinatown surprised me—it didn't look like any "China" I knew. The milk tea flavors were long obsolete back home; the grocery store layouts felt dated, stocking spices and snacks I had never even seen in China; every ingredient in the Chinese restaurants was chopped into massive chunks, and the flavors didn't belong to any recognizable regional cuisine.

My biggest question then was: Is this what China looks like in the eyes of Philadelphians?

[2] Applying for Grad School

In 2017, I started applying for grad schools in the US. In every application, the personal statement prompts invited applicants to write about experiences related to "minority," "race," or "equality." In the English I had learned, "minority" referred to ethnic minorities, but I am Han Chinese. What exactly did they want me to write?

I looked up countless resources on the US and asked seniors who had gone through the process, only to end up more confused: I had no lived experience relevant to this American context. How was I supposed to write this?

[3] My Master's Thesis

From 2018 to 2020, I pursued my Master’s in Bilingual/Bicultural Education at Teachers College, Columbia University. My thesis was based on observations at an English-Chinese bilingual school in Queens. I noticed that out of 31 Chinese-American students, 7 didn't have a Chinese name. When I interviewed their parents, the answers were almost identical: A Chinese name isn't useful.

My confusion was: these parents identified themselves and their children as Americans, yet they spoke Chinese at home, sent their kids to a bilingual school, and consumed Chinese news and social media daily. How do these families navigate their Chinese identity, and how do they communicate it to their children?

But then I realized, I only took the name "Dora" because it was useful here. If it wasn't, perhaps I wouldn't have an English name either. Identity isn't a black-and-white, multiple-choice question; it's a fluid spectrum. Who was I to judge them?

[4] Starting as a Content Creator

In January 2020, I finished my grad coursework at Columbia early and decided to stay in the Bay Area for a few months to experience California. In February, the pandemic unexpectedly broke out; in March, the Bay Area went into lockdown. It was during this lockdown that I started sharing various aspects of my life on RedNote, eventually building a solid local following. When I visited local shops, different business owners kept asking me similar questions: "How can our store do well on RedNote?" or "How should I promote myself on Instagram?" My business sense kicked in: Maybe there's something I can do here.

[5] Founding Empowering Media

In 2023, I founded Empowering Media. I chose the word "empower" because I knew this was exactly what businesses needed. Bridging languages is easy; bridging cultural divides is the real challenge. The essence of marketing isn't just translating one language into another—it's accurately translating the warmth of one community into the frequency of another. The question was: how do we do it?

In the three years since the company's inception, I took Bushido, a restaurant in downtown Mountain View with a team that doesn't speak a word of Chinese, and successfully launched them on RedNote. I guided a local Bay Area fresh food brand, Xiaolongren, to gain over 5,000 local followers on RedNote within a year, and then created viral traffic among non-Chinese demographics on Facebook using their oysters.

Two of my longest-standing clients, Wonder Medical Spa and Duncan Peak Vineyards, have grown with us from various online platforms to joint offline events. Just this month, we partnered with the global massage chair brand OSIM for a three-brand Mother's Day pop-up event at Westfield Valley Fair, the busiest mall in the Bay Area.

From the confusion in Philly's Chinatown, to the questioning in Columbia's classrooms, to orchestrating a three-brand collaboration in Silicon Valley's largest mall. For the past ten years, I have been searching for that balance: how to make Eastern brands no longer a "minority" in the West, but a true "influence."

Looking back at these five moments over the past decade, the common thread is that I've always had questions. What changed is that I went from having doubts but staying silent, to asking, to digging deeper, and finally, to trying to provide solutions.

Today, ten years later, I can drink Heytea, Molinai, and Shuxia in Silicon Valley. I participated in the Chinese-language Civic Leadership Academy specially organized by the City of Mountain View for Chinese immigrants. I see California State Treasurer Fiona Ma actively updating her RedNote page. I watch Alan Macfarlane, a social anthropologist at Cambridge University, start every video with a Chinese "Ni Hao," answering life's questions for netizens, and surpassing 1.6 million followers in a year. I also have a personal favorite Chinese-American Gen Z creator, Grace (Zhiyi Zhang)—her native language is English, but she makes a concerted effort to use Chinese, often mixing the two, in her videos, garnering hundreds of thousands of followers on both RedNote and Instagram.

In this world, there are people and brands like them, and there is me and Empowering Media—willing to continuously find convergence and balance amidst conflict.

This is what I want to achieve with Empowering Media.

Oh, and by the way, my daughter is 2 years old this year. She has a Chinese name. Her name is 毛倾一.