Here are three key findings from the survey, if you are in a hurry:

• Originality and on-the-ground reporting are widely appreciated.

• Respondents who pay for my newsletter do so to access paywalled content (87.5%) and to support my personal endeavors (75%).

• About 40% of the respondents say that they either find the free preview enough or do not know what value this provides.

And my takeaways (note to self):

• Target audience isn’t necessarily your actual audience.

• Your intention with a product doesn’t always match how users position it and how they use it.

• Some people just don’t pay for content, and that’s okay.

This post covers how it all started, my trial and error, the external factors that matter, as well as the detailed results from the 2026 reader survey.

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How I started it

For the relative newcomers: I first started posting on Substack at the end of 2021, but didn’t feel I could properly post after while working in full-time journalism, as my then-supervisor didn’t like me posting outside of work.

As an opinionated individual, I had been active on then-Twitter for a couple of years, and Substack felt like a natural transition.

What started it was my frustration that the consumer sector was neglected by English-language media. At that time, I also failed to get a job on this beat.

In 2023, I did CUNY’s Entrepreneurial Journalism Creators Program, which was introduced to me by and ’s Beimeng Fu. In the program led by , a successful Substacker himself, one of the first exercises we did was user interview, and I decided to target the finance and business sector after chatting to some of you. (Below is my reflection after finishing the program.)

Trial and error

I’ve put time into some experiments over the last few years, and ended up either not following through or not getting the results I wanted.

And I thought it’s worth noting my aspirations versus reality across the following five domains: 1. short videos; 2. podcasts; 3. perks; 4. contributors; 5. paywall —

Short videos

From late 2023 to mid-2025, I was fixated on the idea of starting a media business, and thought I should definitely do short videos.

That was before GenAI became omnipresent in content production. And I got help from the multi-talented marketer Valerie Mok throughout that time. I would write the scripts, and she would review them and edit the videos. Here’s one of them:

Reality: I don’t think it suits me. I struggled with squeezing nuance into a video under 1 minute — ok, I sucked at it. I’m familiar with the grit theory, and I believe production time would drop as AI becomes more prevalent and helpful. However, short video traffic is nice to have, but also not a must-have if I wanted to convert that to in-depth research projects.

Podcasts

In 2024 and 2025, I explored the idea of doing a podcast. As a media watcher, I definitely see the importance of this format for knowledge management, attracting a larger audience, and landing paid work. I actually don’t read many Substack posts, and mostly listen to Chinese and English podcasts, so it makes sense to me as a user as well.

After some initial exploration, I did a few lightly edited episodes here and there, and I have asked around to see if any friend wants to be my co-host (like Zak of YCG and Carwyn of SOAS). I wanted to do something like Pivot, which sounds like friends chatting but covers a broad base of tech, politics, and general news.

Reality: I haven’t given up on the idea. Judging from experience, I’m very into planning, strategy work, pre-production, and production. My weakness is content operations and post-production. I definitely need a producer to kick my ass and hopefully handle editing and marketing.

Perks

One of the perks Valerie and I spent a lot of time on was the earnings call calendar. I have a few dozen companies that I used to track while reporting on China business, and I assumed the audience, whether institutional or retail investors, might find it useful.

Now it’s something we can design and deploy much more easily with AI, but previously, it just took a lot of manpower, and I didn’t even know if it was actually useful. I am reminded of that when I see in the survey results that only one-third of the respondents find it useful for their jobs, which also implied that my newsletter was nice to have than a must-have.

Contributors

I’ve always wanted to support writers, and in line with my then aspiration of becoming a fully fledged media company, I also want to have a platform for Chinese freelancers and writers like me, and cover wide enough China topics.

Some early commissioned topics included duty-free retail in Hainan and Heytea’s origin story in Jiangmen. I mostly do one-off projects and give them a rate that matches Sixth Tone (1 RMB per word for essays, and 1.5 RMB per word for features), which is an OK rate in China. I pay editors a hourly or day rate.

Reality: This is a hard lesson, because I’ve actually been paying out of my own pocket. At first I was shocked by how low the traffic and conversion rate was. Then I realised that on a larger scale, I don’t have a wide enough reach to justify the spending. Take Hainan duty-free retail as an example, it could be important for retail brands but not important for people with general business interests in China.

On top of that, readers might already be paying for the likes of WSJ and the Financial Times, which I could never compete with. I also noticed that traffic-wise, Substack values personal opinions more than these features and reporting.

Paywall

I turned on the paywall around 2023, so far, I made about $10,000.

After a chat to Robert from Baiguan, who suggested me to have most new stuff for free and have them back up after a few days, I started doing that.

There were some back and forth too, like sometimes when I want my opinion pieces to reach a wider audience, I will keep it open. And for personal essays by contributors I also keep them open.

Reality: It can be confusing to subscribers what’s paywalled and what’s not. After the Subscriber user boom and the spread of AI tools, I’ve also started to think it makes more sense to keep archive open but the most recent content behind a paywall.

Intention-action-capacity gap

Increasingly, the gap between my intention and action brings me back to reality.

I once strived to be as big as a media company, which is why I went into doing some of the things below from short videos to podcasts to commissioning features. All seem to be a bit of a stretch with my capacity.

I don’t have investment and don’t intend to spend much time on financing. I can at most afford to hire one or two freelancers at a time, and paying contributors, which far exceeded the all-time subscription revenue I received, not even including my own time.

2026 reader survey results

Here are the survey results, which are based on responses from 34 subscribers (~70% of them free, 30% paid), almost half of them have been reading FTY for two years.

External context: Substack, China, the newsletter format

A lot of Substackers have noticed a large fall in subscription revenue since last year. That is partially a result of the platform becoming mainstream, which has caused a certain level of newsletter/email fatigue for those who have been here for a while.

Abundant choices lead to increased competition, which actually parallels to patterns in China’s consumer market.

I’ve come to understand that the consumer sector in an emerging market isn’t the most exciting subject for investors now. We’ve long passed the paradigm shift era, namely, the boom years just before COVID when US funds poured hot money into this sector. Even in my research work, there are now plenty of high-tech and manufacturing-focused research gigs, not a lot of consumer-oriented work.

That hasn’t shifted my passion for consumers, so this newsletter has given me another means to stay relevant. After seeing some people pivot, including Taylor Lorenz, from text-first to video-first or podcast-first, I’m pondering the same for myself.

So, yes, five years in, Following the Yuan has not become Morning Brew. I’m still not self-sufficient.

More recently, I have also noticed that across both my research and newsletter work, I can end up micromanaging a lot. This keeps me from doing high-value work.

Knowing what I tend to end up doing, I will try not to announce big goals (and not follow through). One thing I can say for now is that Following the Yuan is here to stay, as I explore ways to delegate and produce more in-depth and longer content.

I’ve met amazing people through Substack, and love to thank each and every one of you, no matter whatever I have to do next.

With special thanks to:

• for the early discussions about the value of newsletters

• Beimeng Fu for introducing me to CUNY’s program

• Splice Beta’s Alan and Rishad for giving me a platform to share my learnings

• Baiguan’s team, including and , for being my sounding board and supporting various collaborations

• and for bringing my (sometimes half-baked) vision to life

• for the unwavering support of the China Substack community, financially, and otherwise

• Fellow Susbtackers and subscribers , , , , , , , , , etc.

📊 BIG STAT

Golden Week: 826 million trips, box office hits a 12-year-low // Chinese travelers took 826 million domestic trips over the seven days, spending 738.4 billion RMB — trips up 6.3% and spending up 4.3% on a daily-average basis, with spending of about 894 RMB per trip, down roughly 2%.

The pattern of people traveling but each spending less still rings true, as we wrote about in April.

Meanwhile, the Golden Week box office took in 1.165 billion RMB, a 12-year low and about a quarter of the 2019 peak.

🎭 CONSUMER CULTURE

“Children’s Legoland, parents’ paid gym?” // Some Chinese parents have been complaining that Legoland Shanghai’s signature rides run on human power — a fire truck you pump by hand, a drop tower you haul up by rope, a flying machine that stays airborne only as long as you keep pedaling.

“A cunning gym disguised as an amusement park,” as one post put it.

Some young childless adults are now jokingly asking where to buy the annual pass to work out. The math works: a silver annual card starts at 699 RMB with more than 200 bookable days, cheaper than certain gym chains.

The disposable holiday wardrobe business // Single-wear clothing has become a travel habit for some in China — bright, photogenic pieces bought for 20 to 50 RMB, worn once for photos before throwing away or reselling.

Read more

ByteDance began selling its second-generation Doubao phone on September 16, starting at 5,999 RMB (about $845). Tencent isn’t building devices itself, but it has co-branded eight hardware products with partners, all plugged into its AI workplace platform WorkBuddy. Huawei released its first AI glasses in April, priced from 2,499 RMB (about $350).

Of all of them, Alibaba is placing the most aggressive bet.

In March, Alibaba folded its scattered AI businesses into a single business group, ATH (Alibaba Token Hub), all under the Qwen brand. Qwen now sells AI earbuds, AI glasses, an AI recorder card, an AI desktop companion, and an AI computer. Every one of them runs on Qwen’s large models, with agent services provided by QwenWork. The hardware is the entry point that drives token consumption — and the outline of a full AI consumer ecosystem is starting to take shape.

In late September, Alibaba hosted its three-day Apsara Conference, its flagship annual AI industry event in Hangzhou. Together with more than 1,000 companies, it filled over 50,000 square meters of exhibition space and drew more than 100,000 visitors on day one alone.

There, Following the Yuan mainly experienced two kinds of AI hardware. The first is Qwen’s in-house lineup — earbuds, glasses and more — which captures how Chinese AI hardware is typically conceived. The second comes from other brands at the conference: niche, often playful products like a pet-language translator and an AI “life memory” camera.

We hope they expand your imagination of what AI hardware could be, as they did with ours.

👓 Qwen AI earbuds and glasses (prices: TBA)

Qwen AI earbuds can record and translate; the AI glasses do all that and can also take photos and handle payments. Say “Hi Qwen” to wake the device, then tell it what you need: “record this,” “start simultaneous interpretation,” “what kind of flower is this in front of me?”

The data is uploaded to the cloud for processing, and your interaction history is stored in the companion app, where you can look back through it whenever you need.

The basic logic behind AI hardware becomes clear: things you used to do by tapping through your phone, AI now does in one step. Want to record something, snap a photo, or figure out what song you just heard on the street? Normally you’d pull out your phone and open the right app. Now AI takes care of it on the spot through earbuds or glasses.

“The reason we’re making hardware is to expand where AI can be used,” a staff member at the booth told us. “At first, AI was only for chatting. Now it can get things done on a computer. So the next step is — can it carry out tasks in the physical world?”

🗣️ QwenNote Eva (899 RMB) and QwenNote A2 (1199 RMB)

Next up are QwenNote Eva, a desktop robot, and QwenNote A2, an AI note-taking device, both of which are supposed to shrink the gap between having an idea and acting on it.

QwenNote Eva requires you to dock your phone on it, which will turn it into a little desktop robot or an embodied agent.

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The trick sounds simple: build a super-app gateway, hook users with free products, then monetize through advertising and e-commerce conversion. In the AI era, that means pouring tens of billions of RMB into Lunar New Year red-envelope battles, cash giveaways, and free bubble-tea vouchers — turning China into one of the world’s largest markets for consumer AI adoption. (As the end of 2025, 80% and 77% of Chinese respondents used AI in their personal and work-related scenarios at least once a week, respectively, compared to 54% for both personal and work use in the U.S. according to a Morgan Stanley survey.)

They have done this to “occupy the user’s mindshare,” said tech writer Afra Wang, using a phrase Chinese tech circles love. “Like their American counterparts, a lot of Chinese tech companies see AI as a technological paradigm shift…that is the logic that defines these companies’ evaluations.”

Tencent, Alibaba’s capital expenditure all spent around 50-70 billion RMB in the last quarter, ByteDance plans to spend as high as 70 billion USD in 2026, mostly on compute purchases and data centers. This past week, US research firm Rhodium Group estimated that China’s major AI foundation model companies generate only about 10% of OpenAI and Anthropic’s recently reported combined revenue each year.

This free-to-enter tactic got 22-year-old Jiayi Li into the door with Kimi. When she was doing his master’s program, she consumed more Kimi because Kimi gave him a lot of vouchers for membership and tokens. After trying out various models, Kimi is the only monthly subscription that she currently keeps.

Jian Hu, 24, works in a technical role at ByteDance, often uses Codex, GPT, and Trae. He can use his ByteDance’s own tools for free and have half of his spending on AI tokens outside of that reimbursed.

However, to more mainstream users who do not see AI as a must for their work, the willingness to pay, or pay for what it’s worth, remains low.

Zisheng Li, a 78-year-old retiree based in Beijing, thought a reasonable price for Doubao would be no more than 10 RMB a month. “Even without AI, I could find the information I care about — Chinese history, current affairs, and common sense questions in a book,” he added.

“If I don’t have AI, I can always use Baidu,” said 50-year-old Chunmei Wu based in Hengyang, Hunan province, who downloaded Doubao after seeing its ads. A free version is more than enough for her, she told us.

Since launching in 2023, ByteDance’s Doubao has been known as a replacement of China’s search engine Baidu, and remained free until this June. Its monthly active users (MAU) fell by 6.1 million in May after news broke that the app would introduce a subscription option, according to AI market tracking firm aicpb.com.

This got us thinking: if tech companies haven’t found their answer through this experimentation, all to find a market of customers who are not keen to pay — what does it mean for the society？

“Technology bubbles tend to happen with any technology boom”, said James Wang, a general partner at US-based Creative Ventures and author of the book What You Need To Know About AI, referring to the process of building railroads in the 19th century, and the fiber optic cable laid during the dot-come era. “Over investment is pretty much inevitable. It’s a new technology, and you have no idea how big it can get,” Wang said.

He may be right that it’s too early to know whether this bet ever pays off. But perhaps we’ve been asking the wrong question from the start: by putting our focus on business and making money, we tend to ignore other costs and risks that come with it.

Chinese regulators only started to respond now on the environmental part. As the very first a framework for improving compute infrastructure efficiency, on September 4th, seven Chinese government bodies, including the Cyberspace Administration of China, and the Ministry of Ecology and Environment, jointly issued the “Implementation Plan for Promoting the Coordinated Transformation of Digitalization and Greening (2026–2030).”

The AI safety issue, meanwhile, has not registered much in China. Whether China’s AI giants shift their business model might take years, but it’s never too early to discuss water, electricity, and compute it’s already burning through.

Production:

📊 BIG STAT

The pork indicator turns upward, kind of // China’s CPI swung from −0.1% to +0.4% month-on-month in August, the National Bureau of Statistics reported on September 9, with the year-on-year gain reaching 0.8% and core CPI at 1.0%. Most of the move came from petrol, up 7.2%.

Pork rose 1.3% month-on-month, the first uptick after wholesale prices hit a 16-year low in June — and it came from reduced hog slaughter rather than anyone eating more.

Hermès executive chairman Axel Dumas told analysts in July he was watching exactly this number: “Pork is particularly consumed during banquets and restaurants, and it’s a good indicator for celebrations.”

🎭 CONSUMER CULTURE

Emerging consumer advocacy for better worker’s rights // A WeChat mini-program launched in July let users log, rate and search whether companies give employees a two-day weekend, with links to buy from the ones that do. It was taken down on September 12 by Tencent, and relevant terms have become unsearchable on Chinese social media.

China officially implemented a 40-hour workweek starting May 1, 1995, however, it has been the employers’ prerogative to implement the rule.

Read more

🎬 Dear You opens in North American theaters on September 4, in Teochew with English and Chinese subtitles. If the episode below makes you curious, this is the week to see it on a big screen.

A 14-million-yuan film shot in a dialect most Chinese people can’t understand, starring people who had never acted before, has made 150 times its budget.

Dear You (《给阿嬷的情书》) opened in mainland China in late April with neither big celebrities nor an established IP franchise.

Word of mouth did the job: 2.1 billion yuan ($312.5 million) worldwide by late July, and a Douban score that opened at 9.0 and kept climbing to 9.3 — the highest a Chinese drama has managed in years.

After hitting cinemas in Malaysia, Singapore and Australia, it reaches US and Canadian audiences this Friday.

The story turns on qiaopi (侨批), the letters accompanied by remittances that Chinese migrants in Southeast Asia sent home for over a century. An elderly Chaoshan grandmother had spent decades writing to the husband who left for Thailand to work. Her grandson, buried in debt, goes to Bangkok to find his grandfather, whom the family believes got rich there — and brings back a truth that disrupts everyone’s understanding of the last fifty years.

In July, I recorded an episode of filmmaker Aladin Farré’s Middle Earth Podcast, the podcast on China’s cultural industries, with musician Sam Debell and Chaozhou filmmaker Lam Can-zhao.

We went from Chaoshan cinema to Yunnan folk bands, asking how dialects clawed its way back into popular culture — and whether it can stay there. Show notes below.

Episode: Middle Earth #112 — How Chinese Dialects Are Finding a New Voice (episode summary and transcript below by Aladin Farré and Yang Tingting for The World of Chinese)

Guests

• Sam Debell — a British musician based in Kunming, where he runs a label working with bands from Yunnan’s ethnic communities, most of whom record in their own languages rather than Putonghua

• Lam Can-zhao — a director from Chaozhou who casts family and neighbors and shoots in Teochew. His 2023 short A Bright Sunny Day went to Cannes’ La Cinef; A Summer’s End Poem took Best Short at Berlinale Generation Kplus the following year

• Yaling Jiang — consumer research and strategy, and the author of this newsletter

Timeline

The following are excerpts from the transcript of the episode (edited for clarity):

04:03

Aladin Farré: How did your use of language differ between private spaces, like family and community, and public spaces, like school and work, while you were growing up?

Jiang Yaling: For people of my generation, we spoke dialect at home with our families, but always used Putonghua in school. I think this was quite common across Jiangsu, Zhejiang, and Shanghai. I’ve seen local policies introduced in places like Suzhou and Shanghai to promote Putonghua in schools.

Lam Can-zhao: In my hometown, Chaoshan, we speak Teochew at home, at the local market, and in everyday life. The main language stays the same whether you’re in private or public spaces. You don’t switch languages just because the place changes.

I’ve lived in Guangzhou for 11 years now, and it’s quite different. While Cantonese is the main local language, the city’s huge migrant population means people often switch to Putonghua in public spaces, such as at work or on the subway. How people use dialect really depends on the community you’re in.

08:57

Aladin: Could you share some examples of cultural products, such as TV programs, that used local dialects in the 1990s and 2000s, and what happened to them over time?

Lam: When I was a kid, Teochew comedy skits were hugely popular. Everyone watched them, and kids would imitate them at school performances. But now, as the internet took off, the skits gradually faded from the mainstream. People shifted toward Putonghua content, foreign movies, and variety shows.

11:36

Aladin: Sam, since most of the artists you work with don’t sing in Putonghua, could you tell us more about these artists, the languages they perform in, and how their music has been received both in China and abroad?

Sam: We have bands from various ethnic communities, including Manhu from the Yi culture, Bagedai from the Va culture, and Wild Mushrooms from the Hani culture. Manhu, for example, sings in a local Yi dialect spoken by around 60,000 people. That makes it difficult to build a large audience in China. Whereas overseas, they’re doing better. It’s difficult to say exactly why; perhaps it’s simply the appeal of the music itself.

15:42

Aladin: Have you watched the film Dear You? What did you think of it?

Yaling: I really liked the film because it sheds light on individual stories, which are often missing from mainstream Chinese cinema, especially films by major directors who tend to explore broader narratives. This movie offers a different perspective. It’s about how personal lives are shaped by generations, history, and the Chinese diaspora.

19:48

Aladin: Lam, why did you choose to make films in fangyan?

Lam: About four or five years ago, I suddenly felt this pull to go back home and tell stories there. I made a short film with my relatives and friends as non-professional actors. I felt that having them perform in our native language was the most natural way to tell those stories.

The film, A Bright Sunny Day, became the first Teochow-language film selected for Cannes. Riding on that momentum, we quickly made a second short, A Summer’s End Poem, which won Best Short at the Berlin International Film Festival. Since then, I’ve continued making dialect films.

21:38

Aladin: Since Dear You became a huge success, have more producers shown interest in making dialect films?

Lam: Yeah, a lot of investors started getting interested in Chaoshan stories. The film made Chaoshan-themed projects feel less risky and turned the region into a new hotspot for filmmaking. People started paying more attention to local stories and local filmmakers.

23:04

Aladin: Yaling, you’ve written about the rise of influencers using their hometown dialects on social media. Could you tell us more about this trend and why fangyan content is becoming popular online?

Yaling: These creators are bringing more attention to diminishing dialects. I agree with the idea in the 2022 TWOC article that social media could help save Chinese dialects. Language survives through both input and output, and these platforms offer new spaces for people to hear and use dialects. One influencer I’m especially excited about is a Cantonese account. It’s called “A Corgi Who Sells Herbal Tea.” It doesn’t just tell the story of a dog living in a herbal tea shop. The entire story is narrated in Cantonese.

28:41

Aladin: Sam, do any of your bands incorporate dialect learning, skits, or other cultural elements into their work? Or do they mainly focus on music?

Sam: I’d say some of the bands do explain the meanings behind their songs, so people can understand what they’re singing. But it’s not really about teaching the dialect or creating a participatory learning experience. It’s more about providing the context.

29:30

Aladin: What do you think the future of dialect will be like?

Yaling: I have quite a pessimistic view on this. I think fangyan may increasingly resemble regional operas, as in, people may consume them in certain scenarios, while fewer people use them in everyday life. As more people move between cities and regions, younger generations may not be able to pick up local dialects as easily.

But at the policy level, I think there are still ways to support dialect preservation, such as connecting dialects with cultural and commercial activities. For example, local tourism can incorporate dialects into the visitor experience, while films and shows like Dear You can continue to bring regional languages into the spotlight.

Sam: I agree with Yaling. I think fangyan will probably still exist in the next 50 years, but there will be far fewer of them. A dialect needs a minimum population to survive, so many smaller local varieties may eventually disappear. I’ve seen this with ethnic languages in Yunnan; it can take only a few generations for a language to be lost. In Kunming, many kids no longer speak the Kunming dialect. If they don’t speak it, then their children won’t understand it either.

Lam: I feel like dialect films are increasingly being seen as cultural assets for a region. Local governments are stepping in to support them. So even if there’s no market for it, there are still ways to preserve it. And honestly, I think dialect films are also finding their own lane—niche, but international.

Listen

• 🎧 The World of Chinese episode page — full audio, plus TWOC’s edited transcript of the conversation

• 🎧 Buzzsprout · Spotify

Go further

• Following the Yuan: Navigating mainland China’s regional archetypes

• TWOC’s review of Dear You: “Dear You”: A Dark Horse’s Quiet Revolution Against Movie Formula

• TWOC on the uncertain future of grassroots Chinese opera

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Welcome back! “China color” is a column that records Chinese people’s unfiltered voices, as well as field trips by our contributors. Here are some of our previous pieces as examples: how do Chinese graduates feel about the job market, a trip to Mixue’s hometown, both of which you can read for free without subscribing.

In less than three weeks, an anxiety-ridden new regulation those whom go through China’s borders will take effect.

On the surface, many other countries are also stepping up measures at the border (Europe’s Entry/Exit System comes to mind). So, what’s so special about the 19-article Regulations of the State Council on the Administration of Exit and Entry?

While including a clause punishing unlawful foreign nationals, this regulation mainly holds up the threshold that governs the mobility of Chinese nationals.

Previously, it has become common knowledge that Chinese civil servants, as well as those at certain schools, banks, and CSOEs, having to hand in their passports and giving the ultimate deciding power to employers for any outbound trip plans. Passport confiscations have reportedly happened to ethnic minorities (including those in Xinjiang and Tibet), as well as high-tech AI talent from DeepSeek and Alibaba.

As we see in our social media sentiment analysis later, the announcement, dropped on July 31, caused widespread anxiety especially among people with foreign residency permits, public sector staff, and people who are planning to travel after Sep 15.

Having garnered wide attention from Western media, from BBC to France24 and DW, Chinese edition of Global Times published a commentary in early August, aiming to make a matter-of-fact case that was cast under a negative light by the West.

“In recent years, more and more foreign friends have, through on-the-ground visits and firsthand experience, seen a China that is starkly different from the image long vilified by Western media.

This kind of grassroots exchange based on ‘seeing is believing’ has broken the narrative monopoly that certain forces have carefully cultivated. When some Western public opinion is stirring up ‘panic,’ we would like to ask: who exactly is panicking, and about what?”

To answer this (rhetorical) question, we analyzed popular posts and comments under the keywords “exit-entry new rules / Regulations on Exit and Entry Administration / Sept 15 exit-entry rules / exit restrictions” with the help of open-source tool MediaCrawler and Claude.

Our sample size are 816 Rednote comments, collected 7 days after the regulation was announced on July 31, and 2,335 comments 20 days after the announcement, respectively. (The second dataset only includes part of the first one as Rednote shifts search results based on popularity, and some comments were quickly deleted by the user/platform.)

“Who exactly is panicking, and about what?”

There are three groups of people who have demonstrated more fears than others:

• Green-card and permanent-residency holders

• Public-sector staff, especially teachers

• Travellers holding tickets for late September

Four Typical Attitudes (based on data collected July 31-August 7)

Five Typical Attitudes ((based on data collected July 31-August 20)

Read more

📊 BIG STAT

China AI’s to-consumer business dilemma // In recent months, one question has been hanging over China's booming AI space: who actually pays for AI?

Tencent’s Q2 results (released on Aug 12) show that its capital expenditure jumped to 52.8 billion RMB — nearly triple a year earlier — pushing free cash flow to negative 13.8 billion RMB, though it noted strong willingness among WorkBuddy users to pay via subscriptions and token top-ups.

ByteDance’s Doubao, meanwhile, hit 382 million monthly active users in June, up 172% year-on-year, but pulls in under 1 million RMB a day, according to QuestMobile and Chinese tech publication LatePost, respectively, against compute costs in the tens of millions.

Consumer subscription conversion in China has been marginal but the cost has been skyrocketing. We are reporting on this topic for a deep dive now; more to come.

🎭 CONSUMER CULTURE

Move bricks by day, raise bricks by night // Some young Chinese workers started keep bricks and stones as pets — picking them up off the street, putting them in leftover takeout containers with water, and waiting for moss to grow. It is another unconventional pet hobby, after the mango-pit-raising trend sprouted in the summer of 2023 among a small group of people.

What’s the appeal? Perhaps an emotional feedback that costs nothing and asks for nothing, and a joke that writes itself, since “moving bricks” is Chinese internet slang for grinding away at a job.

💄 FASHION & BEAUTY

Fields Medal Prize winner makes “intellectual style” the new luxury // On July 23, 35-year-old Wang Hong became the first Chinese woman to win the Fields Medal, the most prestigious prize in mathematics, in its 90-year history.

Within days, Chinese consumers had catalogued her entire wardrobe — the Alexander McQueen suit, the Lindberg glasses, an Oura ring stacked beside her Cartier one, a red Canada Goose parka and a The Row tote.

Her Cartier Clash pieces sold out in multiple sizes; even her stationery ran short. What drew netizens wasn’t the labels, but a sensibility shaped by intellect, expertise, and years of accumulated work. [ Zheng wrote about this more in-depth for Jing Daily."]

A&F is said to seek buyers for China business // According to Bloomberg, Abercrombie & Fitch is working with an adviser on a review of its Chinese assets, considering bringing in local partners or selling a stake in a business that could be valued at several hundred million dollars.

The group announced a strategic review of its broader Asia-Pacific business in March, noting that while APAC sales grew 5% last year, returns had not matched its investment. Discussions remain at an early stage.

🍽️ FOOD & BEVERAGE

Chef Fei drops the “Stir-Fried Pork King” crown amid China’s culinary cleanup // Popular restaurant chain Chef Fei, which is due to open its first U.S. store, has quietly dropped its iconic “National Stir-Fried Pork King” claim in China. Instead, its signature greeting is now “cooked by professional chefs.”

The sudden shift follows a massive industry cleanup by the China Cuisine Association, which voided all historical “master chef” and title designations to comply with strict new regulations on official awards.

Yum China becomes Pizza Hut China’s new owner // The $1.2 billion-deal completed on August 7 turned Yum China from Pizza Hut’s exclusive licensee into the brand’s owner in mainland China.

As of March 31, Pizza Hut had 4,375 restaurants across China, and the company is targeting the expansion of Pizza Hut's footprint to over 6,000 stores by 2028. Yum China also operates KFC and Taco Bell in mainland China.

China’s tea chains pour into the alcohol market // From Luckin to Heytea, China’s major tea chains are rapidly embracing alcohol to capture young consumers.

Heytea is experimenting with whisky and custom cocktails at flagship stores, while Luckin continues to expand its spirit-infused lines. Other players—including ChaPanda, No Yeye No Tea, and Mixue—are joining the trend with baijiu infusions, rice-wine teas, or direct craft beer acquisitions. Driven by shifting consumer tastes, China’s low-alcohol market is projected to reach 74 billion RMB by 2025 with a 25% annual growth rate.

🛍️ RETAIL

JD’s food delivery arm launches an AI smart helmet // Announced August 3, the helmet combines a voice assistant, “top-rider routing,” one-touch SOS, and merchant environment verification. It will be given free to JD’s full-time riders first, then rolled out to all riders. The routing feature loads veteran couriers’ accumulated knowledge of navigating residential compounds into voice prompts; riders can accept orders and make calls hands-free in the rain, and the AI helps verify restaurant conditions at pickup, automatically flagging problem merchants.

🧠 TECH

Retail investors fight over Unitree stock as Meituan and HSG bag big wins // China’s humanoid robot darling Unitree Robotics hasn’t even listed on the Nasdaq-like STAR Market yet, but its IPO is already the hottest ticket of the year. 9.78 million accounts have subscribed, pushing the allotment rate down to 0.0181%, an all-time low for the board.

The frenzy has spilled into a grey market: Securities Times learned that intermediaries are buying up new shares through various channels at 410 to 520 RMB apiece, well above the 150.8 RMB issue price, while lucky allotment winners are going online to hunt for buyers themselves.

The listing also mints big wins for early institutional backers: Meituan holds 9.65% as the largest institutional owner, and HSG (formerly Sequoia China)’s 7.11% stake grew out of a 2019 seed investment.

🏃‍♂️ SPORTS

Alo breaks Tmall record in China retail debut // LA athletic apparel brand Alo launched its first official Chinese online stores on August 12, pulling in 10 million RMB in under a minute on Tmall. Despite complaints of prices higher than its overseas channels, the line’s exclusive e-commerce launch broke a record debut for Tmall’s sports and outdoor category.

CPE acquires Swiss outdoor brand Mammut // Chinese PE firm CPE has signed an agreement to acquire Mammut Sports Group AG from Jacobs Capital, marking the brand’s second ownership change in five years. While financial details were undisclosed, market estimates value the deal over 500 million euros. CPE, which manages over 150 billion RMB, has also invested in Pop Mart, Laopu Gold, Mixue, and Burger King China.

🌍 TRAVEL & TOURISM

China to roll out updated exit-entry rules in September // Effective September 15 under State Council Order No. 841, a new 19-article exit-entry regulation standardizes travel management while protecting national security and citizen safety abroad. Under the rule, foreign affairs and tourism bodies must provide real-time destination risk alerts and safety warnings for Chinese travelers overseas. [We are doing a China color piece on what the people really think.]

Chinese travel agencies are diminishing // More than 2,400 travel agency business licenses were cancelled, revoked, or withdrawn during a first-half crackdown, many of them dormant shells or loss-making storefronts that had already stopped operating. In a survey of 5,000 industry workers, over 90% reported summer bookings down 30–50% year-on-year — with casualties ranging from franchise platforms to a state-backed CTS subsidiary that went into bankruptcy liquidation.

🏥HEALTH

China’s pharma reps might disappear from hospitals // New national rules for pharmaceutical representatives took effect August 1, jointly issued by seven agencies — up from one under the previous system, with the Ministry of Public Security’s inclusion marking a clear escalation. The rules spell out nine prohibited practices, including carrying sales quotas, tracking prescription volumes, and commercial bribery, and for the first time bring contract sales organizations under supervision. Roughly 116,000 representatives are currently registered nationwide.

🗓️ UPCOMING – PICK & CHOOSE YOUR CHINA ITINERARY IN AUG/SEP 2026

• Our friend released its schedule for Autumn 2026 China tour this week. It’s hosting 2 info sessions on Aug 19 & 20, sign up here.

• Aug 19-Aug 23, Pet Fair Asia, Shanghai

• Aug 28-Aug 30, Cafe Show China 2026, Beijing

Following our issue in April about regional archetypes (e.g. Only Daughter in Jiangsu, Zhejiang & Shanghai, Northeast Homie, etc.), we're back, this time focusing on China's socioeconomic stereotypes including:

• 小镇做题家 Small-Town Exam Whiz

• 凤凰男 Phoenix Man

• 富二代/厂二代/官二代 Rich/Factory/Official Second-Gen

• 打工人/牛马 Laborer / Corporate Cattle

• 当代孔乙己 Modern-Day Kong Yiji

• 碳水脸/蛋白脸 Carb Face / Protein Face

For each term, we explain the definition, the origin, and provide links to reading more in media/social media.

Before diving in, I want to reiterate why we gather these together:

From the outside, China has still largely been seen as a monolith: people on this vast land think and act in unison under the one Party rule. Inside of China, however, people from different parts of the country take genuine pleasure in learning about and debating these archetypes and stereotypes. They can be the start of a deeper understanding.

There are practices where people introduce stereotypes and archetypes without context, and I'm personally strongly opposed to that. Instead, I hope these terms open conversations and spark curiosity, and serve a practical purpose too, for Chinese-language learners who might otherwise blank out when they run into these terms.

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小镇做题家 Small-Town Exam Whiz

Definition: People from rural areas or small towns who study relentlessly to test their way into elite universities—only to find, upon entering big cities, an unbridgeable gap in social capital that no amount of correct answers can close.

Origin: The term originated in May 2020 from the Douban group “985 废物引进计划” (985 Loser Recruitment Plan), a support group for graduates from China’s elite universities who felt left behind. It entered broad public view a month later, quickly went viral, capturing a widespread structural anxiety over diminishing upward mobility despite high academic achievements. In July 2022, it surged again amid controversy over singer and actor Jackson Yee securing a coveted, stable job at the state-funded National Theatre of China.

Read about it in media: 真实故事计划 (Real Story Project) 2020/06/03 小镇做题家：一个211高校学生的命运陷阱 (”Small-town exam whiz: the fate trap of a 211-university student”)

光明日报《青年说》(Guangming Daily, “Youth Talk”) 2020/08/09 把自信紧握在手上，”小镇做题家” (”Holding tight to confidence in hand: the ‘small-town exam whiz’”)

小红书 (RedNote) 2022/08/19 小镇做题家，我只做到了前四个字 (”Small-town exam whiz, I only made it as the ‘small-town exam taker’”)

Read more

I have to say, I have been slightly out of the loop in emerging tech since leaving my full-time role as a tech reporter at SCMP a few years ago. But you’ll definitely see more coverage about the intersection of AI and consumer over here as AI starts feeling more tangible in the Chinese consumer psyche and in everyday consumer culture.

Also, if you haven’t, this is the last day of the reader survey. I really hope you can take a few minutes to complete this, which would mean a great deal to us.

Until next time.

03 Entertainment & Companionship

🤖 Bionic Humanoid Robots

Liaode Technology E1 “Yiyi”

Liaode Technology, a Shanghai-based robotics startup, has introduced a full-sized ultra-bionic walking companion with an anthropomorphic aesthetic. Anchored by an intelligent high-fidelity head and integrated AI large language models, the robot is capable of empathetic, multilingual dialogue spanning diverse regional dialects.

• Price: Quoted at WAIC for: ¥248,000

Yaling’s verdict: The buzz of humanoid robots started with Unitree at the beginning of 2025. After almost two years of an arms race, in China, it can be foreseen that the first mainstream user scenario of bionic humanoid robots may be sex companionship.

In the Chinese market — where systems and rules are conventionally built to support the male — sex companionship is respected as a genuine user need. (When the Economist put it to introduce their recent podcast about China’s manosphere, it says: “China is also home to a large number of traditionally minded men whose views on gender are supported by the Chinese government.”)

Read more

I really didn’t think I would be the perfect ambassador for the Chinese voice-to-text app, Typeless, until this week.

As some of you might have seen on Substack Notes — my left collarbone is broken and my left hand is in a sling, which limits my ability to do any chores or type on a laptop.

Thankfully, Typeless is helping me transcribe and format the messages I want to say and the emails I want to write back. I was already a free user before my injury, and the day after it happened, I paid for the £150/year subscription without hesitation. (Here’s a referral link in case you want to try it 🫣)

But Chinese AI products are not just limit to what people can use on their devices. Along with part 2, this guide walks through three categories — smart wearables, home products, entertainment & companionship — many of them shown at the recently concluded WAIC in Shanghai that was addressed by President Xi Jinping, and on mainstream e-commerce platforms. (You can read more about WAIC from AI Proem’s coverage, written by our friends and Zheng.)

I do not have immediate access to these products as I’m currently back in the UK, however, under each description, I will give you a few simple reasons why I want to try them or not.

Imagine a life where you’re wearing glasses that translate for you, a pendant that notices when your mood dips, exoskeletons that carry you further, lamps that tutor your kid… and now let’s jump in.

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01 Smart Wearables

🕶️AI Glasses

Alibaba Qwen AI Glasses

Qwen AI Glasses are AI hardware terminals launched by Alibaba based on its Tongyi Qwen large language model, featuring series such as the S1 (equipped with a binocular display) and the G1 (focused on audio and photography). It offers features including real-time object recognition, simultaneous translation, first-person navigation, and voice meeting transcription.

• Price: S1 ¥3,499; G1 ¥1,869

Yaling’s verdict: As a contacts-over-glasses person, AI glasses never appealed to me.

I also don’t think they’re headed for mass adoption in China. Aside from the privacy concerns well-discussed in the West, here are two recent policies/events that add to the hurdles: On June 2, the Ministry of Education issued a clear warning ahead of the national entry exam: regardless of the reason, and regardless of whether it is actually used, bringing a mobile phone, smartwatch/smart band, smart glasses, or similar device into the exam hall constitutes cheating.

Outside the exam hall, AI glasses have also sparked social and ethical controversy. The Rokid glasses community was reported for a user uploading secretly filmed content of a flight attendant, triggering intense public backlash.

Read more

It will take around 7 minutes to complete thoughtfully, and it will shape what Following the Yuan publishes, and how, to a great extent. As a thank-you, I'll be giving one respondent a year-long membership. 🙏

Brands mentioned in this issue: Heytea, Luckin (OTCMKTS: LKNCY), Duolingo (NASDAQ: DUOL), Chef Fei, Louis Vuitton (parent’s ticker EPA: MC), Molly Tea, Shein, Chanel, Taobao Flash Shopping (parent’s ticker HKG: 9988, NASDAQ: BABA), Tencent (HKG: 0700; OTCMKTS: TCEHY), UBTech, Salomon (NYSE: AS), H World Group (HKG: 1179), Grand Ji Hotel, Gambol Pet (SHE: 301498), Pure & Natural

🎭 CONSUMER CULTURE

Real names take over actor credits // Chinese actors typically use their stage names, which helps with building their larger-than-life persona, but that will change this month.

After disputes over actor credit rankings stalled productions and fueled wars among different fan groups, three entertainment industry associations issued a joint notice to demand actor credits to be in their legal names and ranked by surname stroke count. The rule took effect July 10 for all newly premiered dramas.

💄 FASHION & BEAUTY

How did Molly Tea’s 10 million RMB fine turns Chinese consumers against LV // A Suzhou court ruled that the tea chain’s four-petal flower logo infringed LV’s registered trademarks, ordering 10 million RMB ($1.4 million) in damages plus 300,000 RMB in legal costs — among the highest awards ever in a new-tea-drinks trademark case. Molly Tea’s founder says he will appeal.

The ruling sparked heated debate online, with many arguing LV’s monogram itself resembles traditional Chinese motifs, including People’s Daily’s official commentary. Netizens piled on by unearthing other luxury logos that resemble ancient Chinese patterns — from Van Cleef & Arpels’ four-leaf clover to Gucci’s double-G.

SHEIN’s Hong Kong IPO enters the final countdown // China’s securities regulator has issued a filing notice allowing Shein to issue up to 342 million shares on the HKEX. The company is reportedly targeting a September–October listing at a $40–50 billion valuation — a steep discount from its $100 billion peak in 2022, but hopefully, the end of a years-long saga after failed attempts in New York and London.

Cosplay wigs enter the 3D-printing era // Cosplay wig makers are adopting 3D printing to produce gravity-defying anime hairstyles in a more accessible manner.

Conventional wigs for cosplayers take a long time to build, and are difficult to transport and heavy to wear. The guzi economy (from the English “goods”) — China’s booming anime and game merchandise market — seems to be reshaping upstream production techniques.

Chanel eyes Wuxi for its first prefecture-level city store // Chanel is reportedly in talks with Hang Lung Properties to open a store in Wuxi, Jiangsu province — which would be its first in a prefecture-level Chinese city. The brand currently operates in 12 mainland cities. A signal that luxury’s China playbook is shifting: from defending tier-one flagship locations to betting directly on the spending power of wealthy secondary cities.

🍽️ FOOD & BEVERAGE

Heytea launches DIY drinks // Customers can now build their own drinks when ordering HeyTea — choosing tea base, juice, toppings, and even naming their creation, with over 10,000 possible combinations. Pun-laden drink names went viral, hitting Gen Z’s appetite for personalization and emotional consumption squarely on the nose.

Luckin × Duolingo turn their co-brand into a soap opera // A year after the “wedding of the century” between Duolingo’s owl and Luckin’s deer mascot, the pair announced they’ve “laid 11 eggs in their first year together” (1 co-branded drink + 4 packaging designs + 6 merch items), complete with a scripted mini-drama sequel. While netizens begged the bit to stop, other brands from Alipay to Midea happily joined in the comments.

Chef Fei’s first U.S. store set to open // Hunan-cuisine chain Chef Fei is landing in San Diego’s Westfield UTC, pivoting its hero dish from the beloved “stir-fried pork with chili” to the more America-friendly “Broccoli Beef,” and offering U.S. store managers $110K–150K a year. The franchise has around 200 restaurants across China.

🛍️ RETAIL

Taobao Flash Shopping quietly tests social app “LitCircle” // Alibaba’s on-demand instant delivery Taobao Flash Shopping recently launched a new standalone app LitCircle,” has no chat function and no endless feed.

Instead, users share what they just ordered and join local interest groups — think finding concert buddies, then splitting a late-night delivery order together. It’s Alibaba’s entry into the local “activity-buddy” race, where Meituan, Douyin and JD.com have all launched similar apps.

🧠 TECH

Tencent launches “Toast” on iOS // On July 7, Tencent launched Toast, a vibe-coding app that lets users generate and tweak their own applications. Developer-facing features — one-stop app publishing and monetization tools will arrive in August.

Companion robots are selling out // On June 30th, UBTech unveiled its ultra-humanlike U1 series in Shenzhen, priced from 119,800 RMB (half-body) up to 880,000 RMB (female) and 990,000 RMB (male), racking up 13,361 orders on launch day.

Positioned for emotional companionship, the robots also drew criticism over 2–4 hour battery life and controversy over its potential role as intimate companions.

🏃‍♂️ SPORTS

Salomon launches “China Next Gen Project” // Salomon officially announces its China Next Gen Project, signing an initial cohort of six young athletes aged 18 to 24 and bringing them into the brand’s global Next Gen athlete development program. It marks a shift among international outdoor labels from selling products to cultivating athlete assets and local communities — a bid to lock in China’s trail-running boom.

🌍 TRAVEL & TOURISM

The first Chinese hotel brand at Paris Design Week // H World Group’s premium brand Grand Ji Hotel will exhibit at the 16th Paris Design Week this September as an official annual partner, showing at a permanent exhibition hall inside the event’s main venue. The hotel concept debuted at the 2025 H World Partner Conference, and opened its first location in Hangzhou in 2026.

🐾 PET

Premium cat food faces safety scares // Pet owners in China reported over 5,000 cases of cats developing hind-leg weakness or paralysis, with suspicion pointing to cat food from Pure & Natural (backed by LVMH’s private equity fund L Catterton) and Gambol’s premium brand Fregate. Both companies claimed that multiple rounds of testing have found no safety issues. 🔚

🗓️ UPCOMING – PICK & CHOOSE YOUR CHINA ITINERARY IN JULY/AUG 2026

• Jul 23-25, China Daily-use Articles Trade Fair, Shanghai

• Jul 31-Aug 3, 2026 China Joy, Shanghai

• Aug 19-23, 2026 World Robot Exhibition, Beijing

News gathering & writing: Rongrong Zhuge

Editor: Yaling Jiang

All posts in this group called “Shanghai Happy Planet Part-Time 2” are for either ‘blowing up venues’ as paid attendees or part-time retail jobs.

I lurked for days until this popped up:

“Task: visiting a renowned luxury watch exhibition

Time: any 10 minutes between 10:00-18:30

Requirement: no restriction, clean appearance

Compensation: 50 yuan the next day (including 10 yuan deposit)”

The gig in description is Swiss watchmaker Rolex’s landmark exhibition in Shanghai, which was run from June 10 to until June 28.

The glitzy exhibition was attended by Chinese celebrities including tennis player Li Na and Director Jia Zhangke, and executives from the HQ to celebrate the centenary of the brand’s first waterproof wristwatch. And alongside them, an unknown number of paid attendees.

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Edited by: &

Production:

For decades, selling cigarettes was one of the surest ways to make money in China.

As long as shop owners continued to buy whatever the country’s sole cigarette maker, China Tobacco (HKG: 6055), assigned to them, their license would be upgraded. The higher the tier, the more cigarettes they would be assigned — including premium brands, the most lucrative cigarettes.

With many Chinese customers being heavy smokers, and China Tobacco being the same entity as its regulator, State Tobacco Monopoly Administration, there was virtually no threat to this steady source of income. Licensed retailers were in such a desirable position that they were considered prime marriage material. China Tobacco, meanwhile, provided the government with a good chunk of revenue.

All that changed in 2025.

Read more

📊 BIG STAT

China’s “him economy” gains real traction this 618 // Men’s products emerged as a standout growth category in this year’s 618 shopping festival — in Austin Li’s livestream, male shoppers’ average order value and repurchase rates both rose year-on-year, with Gen Z men becoming the main contributor. The numbers point to a real structural shift: China’s men’s skincare market grew from 9.9 billion yuan in 2021 to 15.6 billion yuan in 2024 and is projected to top 20 billion yuan by 2026.

💄 FASHION & BEAUTY

Lululemon China’s events flop // Two of Lululemon China's biggest recent events have drawn controversy as the company grapples with slowing sales growth.

At the end of May, the company held a yoga festival on the Great Wall attended by around 1,000 people, where brand ambassador Zhu Yilong struck a ceremonial drum. The controversy centered on the drum itself: it was not a traditional Chinese drum, but a Japanese taiko drum. The brand issued a public apology on June 16.

Two weeks later, Lululemon's large-scale event in Shanghai's North Bund, attended by around 1,000 people, was hit by a torrential downpour. Without any plan B, some attendees left while others pushed through and finished the session in the rain.

The timing could hardly have been worse for the company. Lululemon is already grappling with slowing growth, and mainland China has been one of its few bright spots in recent years.

Comparable sales in mainland China grew 13% in Q1 2026 on a constant-currency basis, down from 19% in Q4 2025.

These costly major events were supposed to make Lululemon closer to its communities, however, it may have done more hard than good.

🍽️ FOOD & BEVERAGE

Beijing’s “Goose Leg Auntie” falls from grace // A Beijing street vendor known as “Goose Leg Auntie” — beloved by students at Peking, Tsinghua, and Renmin universities who famously crossed campuses to queue for her grilled “goose” legs — has been exposed by a white-collar professional for selling duck the whole time. This seemingly small incident stirred up the internet because of her wide influence based on these universities’ prestige.

Some past customers also posted photos of their greenish meat — which she attributed to a “secret recipe” of vegetable juice when asked — and inspired a wave of bloggers doing experiments themselves.

Häagen-Dazs shops sold to a Ningji-led investor group in China // General Mills announced on June 2 that it will sell its mainland China Häagen-Dazs store network to an investor group led by Ningji, a Hunan-born lemon tea chain.

The buyer will receive an exclusive license to operate Häagen-Dazs-branded ice cream shops and gifting businesses in mainland China, while General Mills retains ownership of the brand’s retail and foodservice operations in the market. The deal is expected to close in 2026, with financial terms undisclosed.

China’s OG specialty coffee brand Seesaw files for bankruptcy // Seesaw Coffee, founded in 2012 as one of China’s first homegrown specialty coffee chains, has been hit with bankruptcy review filings. Predating Luckin by five years, it was once a darling of the premium coffee scene and was priced above Starbucks. It raised three rounds of funding from investors including HEYTEA and Black Ant Capital. As of mid-May, only 34 stores remain open nationwide.

🛍️ RETAIL

Some China’s ride-hail drivers are turning their cars into “mobile malls” // As ride-hailing income shrinks amid driver oversupply, a number of drivers across China are reinventing their cars as roving storefronts.

A Jiangmen driver installed a coffee machine in the passenger seat, branding it “Red Light Coffee” and charging up to 29 yuan a cup; a Shanghai driver covered his car in jade pendants and raw stones, turning it into a mobile jewelry shop; a Suzhou cabbie set up an “8-yuan haircut” sign in his parking lot.

🧠 TECH

Doubao loses 6.1 million monthly users after paid tier leaks // ByteDance’s AI chatbot Doubao saw its monthly active users drop by 6.1 million in May — a rare decline since its 2023 launch — after introducing a paid subscription option.

“China’s free AI era is far from over, so Doubao’s monetization may indeed be premature,” said Li Bangzhu, founder of global AI tracker aicpb.com.

OPPO launches a digital badge prized at 499 yuan // Chinese consumer electronics brand OPPO unveiled OPPO Bubble, a 499-yuan magnetic circular mini-screen that works as a customizable “electronic badge” on a bag or being worn as a wearable display. When snapped onto the back of OPPO phones, it also doubles as a remote selfie viewfinder. The launch taps directly into China’s booming “guzi economy” — fan merchandise sales reached 202.1 billion yuan in 2025.

🏃‍♂️ SPORTS

FILA builds a tennis court made from recycled tennis balls // Sportswear brand FILA has constructed China’s first sustainable tennis court entirely from recycled tennis balls in Qingdao. Over two months, the brand collected 20,600 discarded balls from more than 40 tennis clubs across 16 cities before turning them into granules for the court surface. The project claimed to have cut carbon emissions by an equivalent of 12.36 tons compared to using petrochemical products.

🏠 REAL ESTATE

Centaline pushes into student housing, eyeing 6,000 beds in 3 years // Centaline, the Hong Kong-founded real estate agency group, began moving into Hong Kong’s student housing sector in 2024 and has been expanding aggressively. Its student-housing brand Yi She launched two new properties for lease on June 1, offering over 750 beds. A single bed at the Mid-Levels West area starts at around HK$13,500/month, while beds at the Kowloon City start at HK$6,128/month.

🐾 PET

Sinopec opens pet salons at its gas stations // Sinopec, the state oil giant with over 30,000 gas stations nationwide, has opened two pet service centers at stations in Changsha, Hunan. Drivers can now refuel, charge, wash their car, shop, and get their pets groomed or boarded — all at one stop.

Protests erupt over a dog abuse case in Chongqing // A 39-year-old man surnamed Li in Chongqing has been detained after being exposed as an animal abuser. The case triggered hundreds of volunteers and citizens to protest outside his home, and police cleared the crowd amid clashes on June 9. Li had already gained local notoriety as the “Sam’s Club packing guy” for hoarding free samples at the Walmart’s supermarket chain in 2024.

He was detailed by the police on June 10 and has been placed under administrative detention, which usually spans for 5-10 days. China’s legal protection over companion animals remains absent and still a controversial subject.

🗓️ UPCOMING – PICK & CHOOSE YOUR CHINA ITINERARY IN JUN 2026

• Jun 16-18, CPHI & PMEC China 2026, Shanghai

• Jun 24-26, China International Beauty Expo, Shanghai

Text: , with editorial assistance of Claude

Editor:

I thought these may be important to a fan, so instead of throwing it away, I posted on rednote saying that I’m happy to send it to whoever is willing to cover postage. I got swarmed with over a dozen inquiries within minutes: “I’ve been a loyal fan for two years, do you still have it?” “Still there?” “Do you still have goodies from Curel?”

This experience came back to me when I saw singer Cai Xunkun on a giant Saucony poster in Shanghai this summer.

In the eyes of his fans, Cai is perfect and is gifted with both appearance and talent. Born in Wenzhou, Zhejiang province in 1998, Cai grew up in Hunan province and Shenzhen before moving to California for high school, he returned to China at 20 to compete in iQiyi’s ‘Idol Producer’ and won first place.

Almost 3 years ago, Cai was accused of pressuring a one-night stand to have an abortion, what was worse, the woman, named “Ms C,” also accused Cai’s mother of threatening her and hiring a private investigator to follow her. This incident immediately went viral online. A few days after that, state central television cctv.com deleted content related to Cai. Brands including Nestlé China, laundry detergent brand Tide and Yanjing Beer also deleted all of Cai’s social media content.

While in most cases, scandals at this level are usually responded within the day, he released a statement a week later, claiming that their relationship was “consensual throughout, the allegations that she was a minor or that she was coerced into having an abortion are entirely unfounded,” and that “no laws were violated.” It did not deny or mention his mom’s alleged behaviors.

Although the incident was settled, the erasure of his online content indicates that both central television and brands consider him to have crossed the line. It wasn’t outright cancelation like Kris Wu, the former Louis Vuitton ambassador who was sentenced of rape in July 2021, or Zheng Shuang, a former Prada ambassador, who had an illegal surrogacy scandal in January 2021 and was punished for tax evasion in April 2021.

Netizens found it comical that the editors of Keep Running had to work overnight to edit out his presence (see below).

This case interests me exactly because it’s murky and elusive, and he combines the deciding factors brands are considering today as they choose a China ambassador.

What is ‘traffic’ star?

The term ‘traffic’ star first came out around 2010, when it still meant what it should be — mobile broadband traffic. Back then, people had to pay to watch American Idol-like shows including iQiyi’s ‘Idol Producer’, ‘Youth with You,’ and Tencent’s ‘Produce 101,’ which encouraged traffic from both viewers and voters.

Over the years, the backlash against such a mechanism attracted nationwide attention, and most of it has been negative.

One prominent case is the milk pouring incident in April 2021, when fans swarmed to buy the sponsor Mengniu’s milk products in support of their idols during Season 3 of ‘Youth with You’. They hired a bunch of people to work on the odd job — pouring milk down the drain and only keeping the caps — which resulted in mass food waste a few days after China’s Anti-Food Waste Law came into effect.

It touched a nerve of state media first. As on August 11, 2020, Xi Jinping issued a directive calling for an end to food waste.

After being condemned by state media and Cyberspace Administration of China, the traffic star phenomenon, fueled by the fan economy, went quiet for a while.

Around that time, the rise of celebrity scandals has made brands extra cautious, investing in due diligence and adding force majeure clauses to prepare for such events.

The Chinese Association for Performing Arts rolled out its list of moral guidelines for actors and performers in early 2021, which include “other situations that violate ethics or social order and good customs and cause serious adverse social impact.”

However, Cai’s case proves that in an attention economy where conversion overpowers all else, traffic stars become brands’ insurance policies.

A ‘Deadman’’s comeback

Having disappeared in China for almost 3 years, he started laying the foundation last year in the U.S. with his new single Deadman with renowned music agency 88rising.

And this year, he made a dazzling comeback to the mainland market, bagging ambassadorships from Japanese jewelry brand Tasaki, French running brand Saucony, British makeup brand Charlotte Tillbury, and a handful of domestic consumer brands. He attended Met Gala in early May with Charlotte Tillbury herself.

On Weibo, a platform seen as belonging to the past as users move onto more short-video-driven platforms, Cai still yields significant influence.

His posts on average garner over 1mn shares, over 1mn comments and over 1mn likes, the highest calibre that Weibo allows to showcase.

How does a traffic star differ from a regular celebrity, say, someone who’s known for their skills before their appearance? Actor Huang Bo, who has similar followers (~40mn) on Weibo, only gets hundreds in all above categories. Saucony’s other ambassador in China, Eddie Peng, gets thousands for the three categories in related posts.

In 2025, Cai’s law firm announced that he won the case of defamation against 2 bloggers and a girl (Ms. W) who accused him of having sex with the latter when she was a minor. Certain media and online users mistakenly conflate this with the earlier viral scandal, which involves Ms. C. It seems that not many people are bothered to corroborate the evidence and investigate.

And why does this French running brand ad catch my eye in particular? Well, Saucony is considered a serious brand that has sponsored many races around the world including 10Ks in London, Paris and Berlin, and half Marathons in Philly and London. They signed actor Kwon Hwa-woon, one of the top marathon runners in entertainment, to be the face of the brand in South Korea.

Does this new Saucony ambassador even run?

Cai has never been publicly associated with running races, except for his participation in Keep Running, a celebrity game show that has little to do with running.

It’s obvious to me how the information gap can be manipulated: he remains a traffic star with strong influence; he speaks good English; he was a regular cast member in a reality show called Keep Running. It makes perfect sense when HQs can’t be bothered to audit their ambassador’s past, or whether if the marketing campaign targets the right audience.

The Chinese internet environment helps, too, because so much information online is ephemeral — they can go ‘poof’ when the servers get shut down for cost saving, they can be deleted and altered.

High tolerance for male celebrities’ conduct

In February, 2025, viewers noticed that female actor Yao Di, who had been heavily promoted ahead of the variety show Actors Please Take Your Place 3, had been completely edited out of the broadcast.

It was the same treatment that Cai once received. Her offense? She was the other woman in beloved celebrity couple Ma Yili and Wen Zhang’s marriage over a decade ago.

While she remains in the public moral prison for good, male celebrities’ behaviors immoral behavior, including but not limited to cheating. has been largely tolerated.

In 2000, while being accused of having an illegitimate child, Jackie Chan held a press conference and told the world, “I just made a mistake that many men would make.”

In 2021, Wang Leehom’s ex-wife Lee Jinglei wrote an essay on Weibo detailing how he cheated and lied throughout their marriage. Five years later, he came back into the public eye as BYD’s global ambassador for its Denza series.

Even for Wen, who cheated on his wife when she was pregnant with Yao — made a back in theatre, his new noodle restaurant in Shanghai has been wildly popular.

China’s high tolerance for male’s immoral behavior has been deeply embedded in the culture of bigamy and concubinage, which has persisted for thousands of years.

Concubinage had only been expressly prohibited in 1950, when the Marriage Law of the People’s Republic of China came into effect on May 1, 1950. Hong Kong did not fully prohibit bigamy and concubinage until October 7, 1971.

Even with legal restrictions in place, it was difficult to completely reshape the social norms and customs. Structurally, it is assumed and socially accepted that male with heightened socio-economic resources do not have to abide by the monogamous marriage system, which is not only prevalent in entertainment but also business. Moreover, the legal system still has a lot of catch up to do in safeguarding women’s safety in domestic violence and sexual harassment cases.

As a result, many members of the public, including some women who have internalized this prejudice, do not see any fault in men cheating or making mistakes they are ought to make.

What decisions should brands make?

That becomes a problem as female consciousness rises in china. Especially among millennials and Gen-Zs, who were born into an environment after monogamy’s been widely recognized, and in the official narrative, they can ‘hold up half the sky.’ Therefore, female thought leaders and some consumers increasingly find the imbalanced moral standards unnerving.

I’m not advocating for a purity test, just a standard where women are treated as equals, men’s immoral behaviors are held accountable, and celebrities’ PR teams to stop treating the public like fools.

The story of Cai Xukun’s comeback reveals something larger, particularly in the context of his running-shoe endorsement, it reveals how brands increasingly view consumers through the lens of traffic.

In that worldview, a runner matters less than someone does not. A customer who buys a product because they trust it matters less than a fan who buys it because their idol endorsed it.

The priorities are reversed. This strategy will not work forever.

It may seem like an easy decision for us — but what do you do if most of your competitors are following the traffic-forward strategy? What would you do if you are tied to hardline KPIs and you know your non-Chinese speaking supervisor has no energy to scrutinize your work? What would you do if a traffic celebrity, despite being tainted by scandals, reciprocates you with at least 3 millions of combined likes, shares and comments in one social post?

What decision would you make? 🔚

I moved to Tokyo for grad school after 2022 and now work as a freelance writer and designer. Over the last few years, I’ve watched friends and acquaintances back home get caught between “trying harder” and “lying flat” amid an increasingly competitive job market, even as opportunities have shrunk.

The last time I visited a friend in a new first-tier city, she was busy preparing for the guokao (国考), China’s national civil service exam.

When I asked why, she said it was her parents’ wish. Like many Chinese parents, they believed that a stable job was the only real job. She had been dead set against it at first.

After she started her first tiresome full-time job, she gradually realized she’d rather be a civil servant to lie flat (tangping, 躺平). After all, it comes with fixed hours and generous benefits for the rest of her life.

In order to lie flat later, she decides to do the exact opposite now:

She wakes up at 7 every morning, grabs some bread, and rushes off to her day job at a private company. After a full day of work, she returns home and studies for the exam, memorizing dense political terminology, prepping for interviews, drilling past questions compiled by other test-takers online. She is often too anxious to fall asleep at night.

She hadn’t even worked this hard for the gaokao (高考), China’s notoriously competitive college entrance exam. ‘Was it really worth pouring in this much effort, this much energy?’ I wanted to ask but didn’t dare to. I wished her the best.

On April 28, China’s Ministry of State Security published an article claiming that “lying flat” is being stoked by hostile foreign forces:

Numerous cases suggest that anti-China hostile forces, under the banner of “lying flat,” are actively attempting to erode the thinking of Chinese youth.

I wonder how my friend would react to it. If her goal is to lie flat inside the civil service system, does that make her “a victim of foreign subversion,” or its most dedicated opponent?

What follows is my attempt to think through that question: where this word came from, who has been fighting over what it means, what young people are actually doing, and how ordinary people responded when the state security apparatus tried to claim that their exhaustion was, in fact, a foreign plot?

Read more

📊 BIG STAT

China’s May Day travel numbers grow, but per-capita spending quietly slips // China’s Ministry of Culture and Tourism reported 325 million domestic trips during the May Day holiday, up 3.6% year-on-year, with total tourism spending reaching 185.5 billion RMB (+2.9%).

At the same time, per-trip spending came in at roughly 571 RMB, down from 574 RMB over the same period last year — a subtle sign that while more people are traveling, they’re spending a little less each time. We see the same pattern in dining and delivery.

🎭 CONSUMER CULTURE

China’s singles are “training for the Olympics”// A growing cohort of Chinese office workers who once hated PE class are now logging three-a-day workouts, using AI as training coaches, and only scheduling restaurant dates on ‘cheat days’.

This reflects the organic momentum of sports as a culture and as an identity among the early adopters, set against the larger backdrop of China’s policy support surrounding Xi Jinping’s vision of building “a leading sports nation (体育强国).”

💄 FASHION & BEAUTY

Miu Miu and Saint Laurent face backlash after blacklisting Hangzhou’s livestreaming districts // Miu Miu’s Tmall flagship was caught blocking orders from at least three Hangzhou neighborhoods — Yingfeng, Xixing, and Sijiqing — all major hubs for livestream commerce and MCN agencies, following a similar move by Saint Laurent days earlier.

The brands appear to be fighting rampant “wear-and-return” abuse by livestreamers, but the blanket geo-blocks also locked out ordinary residents, sparking accusations of regional discrimination.

Both brands quietly lifted the restrictions after media exposure. The episode coincides with a broader luxury rebound in China: Shanghai’s HKRI Taikoo Hui posted an 81.5% jump in Q1 2026 retail sales, fueled by the LV ship “The Louis” installation.

🍽️ FOOD & BEVERAGE

Diary producer Mengniu enters the protein water market // Dairy giant Mengniu debuted a whey protein isolate water at the Dalian Marathon on April 26 — a clear, mineral-water-like 250ml bottle that packs 10g of whey protein for 9.9 RMB. The launch follows Mengniu’s dairy-calcium electrolyte drink released earlier this year, as the company pushes deeper into China’s sports nutrition segment amid a 400-million-strong fitness population.

🛍️ RETAIL

Pop Mart’s LABUBU fridge resale prices spike to 90,000 RMB // Pop Mart launched its first home appliance — two LABUBU-themed mini fridges priced at 5,999 RMB each, 999 units only — on April 30, and they sold out instantly, with over 47,000 pre-registrations. Resale listings on secondhand platforms hit as high as 92,300 RMB, a 15x markup, before the drop.

The move extends Pop Mart’s IP empire beyond toys. LABUBU’s THE MONSTERS family alone generated 14.16 billion RMB in 2025 revenue, accounting for 38% of the company’s record 37.12 billion RMB total.

🎬 ENTERTAINMENT

The Devil Wears Prada II underwhelms in China amid backlash // The sequel opened in China on April 30, right before the 5-day May holiday. It is ranked 4th on the national chart with 76.65 million after two weeks, according to the Maoyan Pro.

Pre-release buzz soured after a clip introduced an Asian assistant character whose name was widely perceived to echo the derogatory slur “Ching Chong,” while her nerdy, socially awkward portrayal was criticized for reinforcing Western stereotypes of high-achieving but unsophisticated Asians. The backlash triggered boycott calls on Chinese social media.

🧠 TECH

Xinhua launches GEO platform // State news agency Xinhua launched its own Generative Engine Optimization platform on May 9, aiming to both establish itself as an AI SEO pioneer and a rule-setter.

Partnering with China Academy of Information and Communications Technology (China’s telecom standards body), it is drafting China’s first national GEO compliance standard, targeting rampant industry abuses like fabricated authority signals and AI “data poisoning.” The signal is clear: with both Google and Chinese state media now formally endorsing GEO as a real discipline, the game shifts from gaming AI models to earning their trust.

Samsung exits Mainland China’s home appliance market // Samsung Electronics announced on May 6 that it will stop selling all home appliances — including TVs, monitors, fridges, washing machines, and air conditioners — in mainland China.

The retreat caps a long decline: Samsung’s China TV sales had fallen to roughly 5% of their 2014–15 peak, and its appliance division posted its first-ever operating loss in 2025. The move frees Samsung to double down on semiconductors, which accounted for 94% of the company’s operating profit in Q1 2026 — smartphones remain on sale in China.

DeepSeek seeks record 50 billion RMB in first-ever funding round // DeepSeek is seeking to raise up to 50 billion RMB in its debut external funding round, which would be the largest single raise by a Chinese AI company to date, valuing the company at roughly 350 billion RMB.

Founder Liang Wenfeng will personally put in 20 billion RMB, while China Integrated Circuit Industry Investment Fund (known as the “Big Fund”) is in talks to lead. The move marks a sharp pivot for a company long defined by its refusal to take outside money.

🏃‍♂️ SPORTS

Premium outdoor brands race to plant flags in top-tier cities// A wave of international sport and outdoor labels opened China debut stores in recent months — Japanese urbanwear label Nanamica opened in Shanghai, while Spanish trail-running brand NNormal and Danish camping brand Nordisk also entered the market, joining Mammut in a broader push by premium outdoor brands to secure prime retail locations in China’s top-tier cities.

The prime retail spots once dominated by luxury fashion houses are now being snapped up by performance brands, one storefront at a time.

🌍 TRAVEL & TOURISM

Chinese tourists are geocaching hidden textbooks at landmarks worldwide // A viral “textbook relay” trend has Chinese travelers hiding high school textbooks at the very landmarks pictured on their covers — Big Ben in London, the Pyramids in Cairo, the Colosseum in Rome — then posting coordinates on RedNote for strangers to find, sign, and re-hide them.

The game has drawn millions of views and even a nod from the Chinese Embassy in London, turning shared classroom nostalgia into a global scavenger hunt.

China’s viral “boyfriend NPC” craze hits a wall // A flirtatious male NPC called “Little Yellow Fish” at Jiangxi’s theme park Gexian Village went viral for feeding lollipops mouth-to-mouth and staging faux-wedding skits with visitors.

On May 1, a commentary in state media People’s Daily called the acts vulgar, which pressured the park to apologize and overhaul its program — the performer now tucks flowers behind visitors’ ears instead. But the crackdown backfired online, with young women accusing regulators of a double standard: why does male-targeted eye candy go unchecked while female-oriented content gets shut down overnight?

🗓️ UPCOMING – PICK & CHOOSE YOUR CHINA ITINERARY IN MAY 2026

• May 13-15 2026 Global Outdoor Sports&Ecosystem Expo, Shanghai

• May 18-20 SIAL Shanghai 2026, Shanghai

• May 21-24 China Sport Show, Xiamen

• May 22-24 2026 the 9th Beijing Catering Procurement Exhibition, Beijing

News gathering & writing:

Editor:

Since China reopened in late 2022 after COVID, I’ve been asked and been asking people this question:

Is the Chinese economy really that bad?

I remember discussing multiple phenomena from consumers seeking cheaper replacements, to white collar professionals swarming to cheap lunch deals, to special forces tourism — all can be wrapped up under the umbrella of consumption downgrade. Since 2024, it has become increasingly clear that downgrading one’s options is not just a vibe, but represents something more structural.

At this turning point, what you see may seem contradictory to one another.

If you reside outside of China, have made trips back after COVID, and feel relieved after seeing that the shopping streets and malls are filled with people, you might feel like China has gone back to how you remember it.

But what you may not realize is that things have fundamentally changed. Traffic may no longer be directly correlated with value.

In the consumption downgrade era, brands and manufacturers have also downgraded — they’ve lowered their quality or switched to cheaper alternatives, they have cut marketing budget or use a combination of AI and freelancers to produce campaigns — that’s how they can stay competitive in the price war.

We are seeing this phenomenon across different industries. Since the Labor Day holiday is around the corner, let’s use travel as an example:

In 2019, the May 1 national holiday was changed from four to five days to boost spending. It did achieve that by total revenue.

However, between 2019 and 2025, the volume of trips grew by over 60% from 195 to 314 million, but the spend per trip its still below 2019 levels of 603 yuan.

Read more

Editor:

Editor’s notes: What’s the point of archetypes and stereotypes? I believe they are essential to our understanding of different human conditions and how environments shape individuals. Within China, the difference is that an archetype is a recognized character type, and stereotypes form later in people’s minds when the archetype enters mainstream discourse, get repeated, generalized, and later solidified into collective assumptions.

From the outside, China has still largely been seen as a monolith: people on this vast land think and act in unison under the one Party rule. Inside of China, however, people from different parts of the country take genuine pleasure in learning about and debating these regional archetypes and stereotypes.

We want to bring you six of them today, most of which are rooted in the coastal regions. We hope they can open conversations and be a starting point for further curiosity.

Share Following the Yuan

江浙沪独生女 Only Daughter in Jiangsu, Zhejiang & Shanghai

Definition: Young women from China’s affluent Yangtze Delta who are typically the sole children of their families. Characterized by privileged backgrounds, high educational attainment, and a nurturing upbringing, they represent the “gold standard” of a middle-class life. This image prioritizes aesthetics and lifestyle, while implying that they typically live a sheltered life and have high standards for their future partners.

Origin: Emerged as a viral cultural trope in the summer of 2023 (approx. June–August) on lifestyle platforms like RedNote. It represents the intersection of the One-Child Policy’s legacy—which saw its strictest implementation in the Yangtze River Delta—and the region’s concentrated private wealth.

Read about it in media: 三联生活周刊 (Sanlian Lifeweek) 2023/08/04 江浙沪独生女，打工人最眼红的顶配人设？(“Only daughters from Jiangsu–Zhejiang–Shanghai: the ultimate life setup that makes working people jealous?”）

Trending post on RedNote 江浙沪独生女，下辈子的投胎第一志愿 (“Jiangsu–Zhejiang–Shanghai only daughters: my top choice for reincarnation in the next life”)

界面文化(Jiemian Culture) 2023/08/20 “江浙沪独生女”真的值得羡慕吗？| 编辑部聊天室 (“Are ‘Jiangsu–Zhejiang–Shanghai only daughters’ really worth envying? | Editorial Roundtable”)

北京土著/京爷 Native Beijinger / Jing Ye

Definition: Individuals born and raised in Beijing, characterized by the leverage of local residency (hukou) and abundant urban resources. This archetype is defined by a sense of cultural superiority and innate relaxation, emphasizing a “seen-it-all” worldliness. They project an aura of unfazed confidence and leisure, rooted in the security of a lifestyle that remains comfortable without the need for intense social competition.

Origin:

Beijing Native (北京土著): Primarily a self-identifier, this term carries a strong sense of local belonging and cultural identity. The term “Native” gained popularity in the early days of the Chinese internet (circa 2005–2010). Its original purpose was to distinguish “Old Beijingers” (multi-generational locals) from “New Beijingers” (migrants or Bei Piao).

“Jing Ye” (京爷): Predominantly a name used by outsiders, often functioning as a derogatory label with ironic and sarcastic undertones. The term “Jing Ye” exploded in popularity between late 2022 and early 2023, fueled by the viral nature of short-video platforms. It evolved into a symbol of social critique and regional stereotyping.

Read about it in media: 三联生活实验室 (Sanlian Life Lab) 2025/11/18 谈恋爱遇到“北京爷们”，已老实 (“Dating a Jing Ye: I’ve learned my lesson”)

ONE文艺生活 (ONE Literary Life) 2025/06/18 为啥北京人不管几岁都是孩子？(“Why are Beijingers, no matter their age, still like kids?”)

Trending post on RedNote 宝宝，你是一个京爷 (“Baby, you’re a true Jing ye”)

山东公务员 Shandong Civil Servant

Definition: The ultimate embodiment of institutional worship, representing the quintessential middle-class path within the state system. This archetype emphasizes social prestige, conservatism, and a strong adherence to family and social order. It implies a “pre-defined life template” rooted in stability and conformity.

Origin: Rooted in the long-standing Confucian tradition of “studying to become an official” (Xue Er You Ze Shi). It evolved into a viral internet phenomenon around 2020–2021 amidst increasing global economic uncertainty.

Read about it in media: 每日人物 (Renwu Magazine) 2023/04/02 山东考公团，战遍江浙沪 “The Shandong civil service exam army: conquering Jiangsu–Zhejiang–Shanghai”

Trending post on RedNote 山东考公现状 “The current state of Shandong civil service exam takers”

沪上名媛/沪少/上海老克勒 Shanghai Socialite/ Shanghai Young Master / Shanghai Old Clerk

Definition: All three terms come from Shanghai’s obsession with qiangdiao — style and class, from the Westernized, dignified old-school gentleman (Old Clerk) to modern youth pursuing extreme refinement and social hierarchy (Socialite and Young Master). They all describe image-conscious, taste-driven Shanghainese — though both now often carry irony (especially Shanghai Socialites).

Origin: 老克勒 dates back to the early 20th century in Old Shanghai, derived from the English word “clerk.” It originally referred to a generation of Westernized elites who embraced a sophisticated, jazz-age lifestyle. In contrast, “Shanghai Socialite” (沪上名媛) and “Young Master” (沪少) resurfaced and became viral on social media around 2020–2021, following the infamous “Shanghai Socialite Group” (上海名媛群) exposé.

Read about it in media: 豆瓣笔记 (Douban Note)：老克勒：上世纪二三十年代最潮的人 (“‘Old Clerk’ the trendiest people of 1920s–30s Shanghai”)

Trending post on RedNote 上海话：老克勒是什么意思？(“Shanghainese: what does ‘Old Clerk’ mean?”)

南风窗 (South Reviews) 2020/10/28 上海，以及名媛 (“Shanghai, and the ‘socialites’”)

谷雨实验室 (Guyu Lab by Tencent) 2020/10/15 她们，曾想在上海这样养成“名媛”｜谷雨影像 (“They once tried to cultivate themselves into ‘socialites’ in Shanghai | Guyu Visual”)

东北老铁 Northeast Homie

Definition: Grassroots masculine archetype characterized by generosity, unwavering loyalty, and a blunt sense of humor. This identity is often intertwined with the collective nostalgia of a population navigating post-industrial economic transition and widespread migration for work. Lao tie literally means “ironclad buddy” in Northeastern Chinese dialect — a ride-or-die friend — but has since broadened into a casual, warm-toned catch-all for “folks” or “guys,” especially in livestreaming culture.

Origin: Emerged in the mid-2010s (2014–2016) from the early ecosystem of short-video and live-streaming platforms (notably Kuaishou).

Read about it in media: 环球财富网 (Global Fortune Network) 2017/02/22 快手热词“扎心了老铁”入榜2017年度十大网络用语 (“Kuaishou buzzword ‘That really hits home, bro (zhāxīn le, lǎotiě)’makes the Top 10 Internet slang of 2017”)

语言学午餐Linguistics Lunch 2017/04/16 扎心了，老铁——如何像东北人一样优雅地使用“老铁”一词丨语言学午餐 (2017/02/22) “‘That hit deep, bro’ — how to elegantly use the term ‘laotie’ like a Northeasterner”

北漂/沪漂/深漂 Beijing/Shanghai/Shenzhen Drifters

Definition: A label for the migrant population who leave their hometowns to strive in Tier-1 cities. The core of this identity is the tension between abundant opportunity and extreme pressure, compounded by a persistent sense of institutional and social instability.

Origin: The term “ X Piao” gained widespread social recognition in the late 1990s and early 2000s, coinciding with the massive internal migration toward Tier-1 cities.

Read about it in media: 小红书热帖 (Trending post on RedNote) 北京土著和北漂的两种不同的生活状态 “Two completely different lifestyles: Beijing natives vs. migrants”

智族Life (GQ Life) 2019/06/25 家在回龙观，城市异乡人 “Home in Huilongguan: urban outsiders”