Gen Z Propels Chinese Industrial-Grade Glycine to Viral TikTok Fame

The power of social media virality and Gen Z’s merciless wit have transmuted a boring Chinese chemical product into an overnight internet sensation.

If you’ve never heard of Donghua Jinlong, that makes sense. After all, it’s a nondescript company based in Shijiazhuang, China that sells a chemical compound that most people have never heard of. The company sells various types of industrial-grade glycine, which is a food additive that, in moderation, is alleged to have some positive health benefits. Anyway, despite its poor prospects as a brand, Donghua Jinlong did one thing right recently, which was to try its hand at viral marketing. In October of 2023, the company began releasing TikTok videos advertising its products. Unfortunately (or, maybe, fortunately) for Donghua Jinlong, the company is pretty terrible at making TikTok videos.

Yes, the company’s videos are a study in unintentional hilarity. A robotic voice sells viewers on the benefits of industrial-grade food additives with all the unironic earnestness of a door-to-door religious zealot. Meanwhile, when it comes to video production, little effort is spared on the traditional tropes of advertising—like, say, a story or characters or a catchy jingle. Instead, the viewer is treated to endless stock imagery of the company’s factory interiors and exteriors, as well as video of various test tubes that presumably hold some of the company’s scrumptious glycine.

Then came the TikTokers. Yes, those pesky Gen-Z TikTokers with their unrelenting sarcasm and youthful douchebag-ery. God damn them. Naturally, young people were not going to let this shit slide. They began to mock Donghua Jinlong and mock it hard. So hard, in fact, that the company swiftly became a TikTok meme, which has now garnered “millions of views,” according to The Washington Post. Indeed, the hashtag #donghuajinlong currently brings up over a thousand posts on the social media platform. #glycine, meanwhile, brings up nearly 3,000 posts. Anyway, thank you, Gen Z, for believing in the star potential of Donghua Jinlong and its industrial-grade glycine, even if Donghua Jinlong never truly believed in itself.