#44: Chengdu Disney 🏰, China's 1st F1 driver 🏁, Rapha enters China 🚴, Kosé quits Tmall🧖‍♀️, Xiaomi’s PR fight 🚙 | Following the yuan

Hi everyone, apologies for the delay as I continue to prioritize other people’s deadlines. 😭 This is something I’ve been reflecting on a lot.

Moving forward with the consumer news column, I want to experiment with a new format for the next three months, hopefully to provide you with more value. Specifically, I'll be doing the following:

1. Covering five newsworthy consumer news items (instead of three).

2. Providing quick summaries and takes on each.

3. Encouraging you to ask any questions about the impact of these items on your work/life. Feel free to leave a comment or reply to this email, and I'll respond within 48 hours, giving priority to paid subscribers.

👉 In that way, I hope that you can be exposed to more cases, in a way as digestible as possible, and potentially receive context and explainer more relevant to you personally. In return, the interactive approach would make me more driven to write!

Furthermore, to gain a more comprehensive China picture, I suggest you to follow

Bill Bishop

(aka the Substack OG, for politics and business),

Robert Wu

’s weekly review (also consumer news but from a different perspective),

Far & Near

(arts and culture), as well as

Jake

(indie music).

Chengdu Disney 🏰

This has nothing to do with Disney’s China expansion.

A rapper named Lodmemo, who participated in “Rap of China,” was eliminated during the audition. Dissatisfied with judge Xiedi, he released a rap song featuring the lyric “Xiedi, Xiedi, I want to diss you". Due to the phonetic similarity between "diss ni (you)" and "Disney," the song quickly went viral, and people swarm to Chengdu to check out the site where the music video was filmed.

People imitated Lodmemo’s move, which involved using community workout equipment in Xiedi’s hometown, while rapping the lyrics and having others take videos. It was so busy that local volunteers stepped in for traffic control. Here’s Lodmemo’s original MV:

Quick take: Some attribute the virality of Lodmemo to Chengdu’s inclusivity and pursuit for entertainment; some say that short videos and social media played a part. As for me, I do believe this also has a lot to do with the inward-looking trend of China as Beijing prioritizes ‘internal circulation’, which is focused on domestic reliance, and the nationals’ cultural confidence. As a result, the trends would only be born and circulating within the border.