Week #40: Hainan fiasco II ⚠️, Oatly's struggle in Asia (China) 🌾, New year cinema winners and losers 🥇 | Following the yuan

While the top-grossing CNY movie "Yolo" is not the most progressive film on female empowerment, it has pushed the envelope of mainstream views.

During the Chinese New Year holiday, I had the opportunity to write about one of my favorite topics, the Chinese fast food brand Tastien, for Time. One thing I’d like to clarify is that I’m not suggesting it’s the best; it merely exemplifies a larger ‘new Chinese style’ trend of domestic brands taking place across various sectors of the consumer market.

Some other names that come to mind in food and beverage alone are Home Original Chicken 老乡鸡, Mr. Rice 大米先生, Bingz 西少爷, and a roster of Lanzhou noodle chains including Chen Xianggui 陈香贵 and Ma Jiyong 马记永 (many of them are actually struggling as consumer VC money dried up).

Home Original Chicken (left), Bingz hinges on the concept of Xi'an Rougamo (right)

However, the paradigm shift, as they say, has already arrived and will not go away even if financing remains challenging for some:

“Western fast food brands were the tastemakers in the early days of China’s economic rise, they are now giving away to homegrown upstarts...for a new generation of Chinese, they may one day look at milk tea or [Chinese burgers] with a similar feeling of nostalgia,” I wrote. Here’s the link to the piece ICYMI~

Hainan fiasco II (remember part I?)⚠️

What happened: Tourist attractions often call themselves “a place you never want to leave once you are here.” Over the CNY holiday, Hainan began to be seen as “a place you can never leave.”