I posted a video on Xiaohongshu about the fact that I’m learning Mandarin and was flooded with, among other things, requests to become my teacher and for me to sign up for courses. In that process, I did end up talking to someone who’s picking their English education back up. We’ve essentially agreed to be pen pals.

No mention of courses or anything like that. Green flag. She’s also been on the app since mid-2024, so well before the influx of Americans could have been anticipated. Green flag. But she asked to exchange contact info so I gave her my email address and hers is a {a bunch of random numbers}@qq.com.

That immediately set off alarm bells for me, as the random number email addresses I’ve seen have been anonymous throwaways. But I don’t want this to be me being culturally insensitive and just ignorant about something. Maybe it’s more common in China due to Unicode compatibility?

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[–] Mardoniush@hexbear.net 50 points 2 weeks ago* (last edited 2 weeks ago) (1 children)

This is extremely common in China and the Chinese diaspora as a primary email address. Chinese email addresses generally require proof of a Chinese phone number or residency so they are significantly more reliable than "notascam@proton.mail.com"

[–] CloutAtlas@hexbear.net 45 points 2 weeks ago (2 children)

QQ email addresses are normally a bunch of numbers because a lot of older people are bad with pinyin and you can't have {汉字|hàn zì} in email names apparently.

You need a government ID to get a phone number, and you need a phone number to get an email address with QQ, being a scammer with a QQ email is probably the least efficient way of going about it when you can just make an email on a western service without having to require a phone number.

[–] RNAi@hexbear.net 12 points 2 weeks ago* (last edited 2 weeks ago) (1 children)

Quick question, how do you type 汉子 hanzi with the pinyin on top? I donwloaded a keyboard where I type in pinyin and it suggests me hanzi options

我爱猫 (>^ω^<) （it also suggests me ascii emotes)

[–] KuroXppi@hexbear.net 8 points 2 weeks ago* (last edited 2 weeks ago) (3 children)

It's called Rubi, and you can input it with the markdown {bottom text | top text} and you can put the floating text over anything {basically|kitties are cute}

[–] RNAi@hexbear.net 11 points 2 weeks ago* (last edited 2 weeks ago)

Aah splendid, it opens up a whole new level of posting

"{Antisemitism is out of control!!!| The browns are getting uppitty again}"

[–] NewAcctWhoDis@hexbear.net 9 points 2 weeks ago

{ bottom-speak | top-use-words }

No luck with emojis

[–] bennieandthez@lemmygrad.ml 3 points 2 weeks ago

ty for this tip

[–] Comrade_Mushroom@hexbear.net 4 points 2 weeks ago

I just started learning Chinese and seeing the pinyin over the hanzi is super cool.

[–] xiaohongshu@hexbear.net 37 points 2 weeks ago

I can assure you that this is normal. Very normal lol.

[–] SuperZutsuki@hexbear.net 30 points 2 weeks ago (2 children)

All qq accounts are just a bunch of numbers

[–] anarchrist@lemmy.dbzer0.com 15 points 2 weeks ago (1 children)

Aren't their websites also frequently numbers because Unicode wasn't supported in URIs until fairly recently?

[–] crime@hexbear.net 13 points 2 weeks ago

I'm not sure about domain names being primarily numbers, but a lot of non-ASCII domain names (including Chinese characters) use Punycode, which looks like a bunch of random letters if they're rendered in ASCII. Those typically look like xn-- followed by other characters, e.g., xn--fsq.com which is equivalent to 例.com (which is itself equivalent to example.com)