Cambridge Professor Becomes Viral Social Media Star in China

Wearing a black mariner’s cap and with a wall-to-wall bookshelf as a backdrop, Cambridge University professor Alan Macfarlane greets his social media audience with a soft ni hao – “Hello” in Chinese.

In his latest video, Macfarlane follows this signature opening by thoughtfully answering a question pulled from the comments: why has making genuine friends become so difficult?

Few would have expected an 84-year-old British anthropologist and historian from Cambridge University to become a social media heartthrob in China – yet Macfarlane has done exactly that.

Young Chinese affectionately call him “Grandpa Cute” or “Dumbledore”, after the beloved Harry Potter character, while his gentle, jargon-free reflections on education, purpose, anxiety, relationships, artificial intelligence (AI) and cultural understanding resonate deeply in a fast-paced, high-pressure society.

Through an intimate Q&A format, Macfarlane has amassed more than 2.4 million followers in roughly one year since launching on the Chinese social media platform RedNote in 2025, with videos often gaining millions of views.

His channels on Douyin – China’s version of TikTok – and Bilibili, another major video-sharing platform, have also attracted about 170,000 and 540,000 followers, respectively.