The platform has launched its First Grassroots Mini Competition (第一届民间小赛). Users are invited to conjure up their own contests across art, food, lifestyle, pets and fashion. The scope is intentionally wide. Hyper-specific observations, regional quirks, or completely unhinged ideas are all welcome.

The format builds on momentum sparked by creator 樊小书, who framed these contests as a way to ‘defend, celebrate and live ordinary life well.’ Don’t be fooled by the earnest sentiment. It works because the barrier to entry is basically non-existent. No expertise required.

Online, the Rednote competitions play out through posts. Users submit entries, rally votes and let likes decide winners. Offline, the strongest ideas get a second life. After online rounds, selected competitions can receive support from the platform to host real-world finals.

That jump from feed to physical is important. A slipper contest is funny enough online. A slipper contest with a live final is content. It drives a feedback loop that fuels what Rednote runs on: engagement.

The mechanics also fit a key part of Rednote’s strategy lately. That is the push to promote a more community-driven platform. In their recent interest report, they highlighted all sorts of niche activities their users are engaged in. It was light-hearted, highlighting knitting communities and spaces for things like badge collecting.

The Rednote competitions feel just as unserious. Rednote clearly knows the most engaging thing on their platform is probably people messing around with everyday life.

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The broad strokes show Rednote as a flourishing ecosystem of passions, subcultures, and self-expression. According to the report, more than 3,000 distinct interest circles now exist on the platform, with over 300 operating at a sustained, organised level.  

The trends Rednote highlights are revealing. One is the appeal of creativity. Handicraft hobbies – from pixel bead art and doll clothing – are surging. Anime, comics and games (ACG) are hitting new highs too, powered by fans collecting guzi (谷子) merchandise. These often come in the form of figurines of popular anime characters but could also be anything from badge collections to posters.  

Another shift is how interest has become an emotional proxy. From lost phone literature – a short-form storytelling genre that’s fictional narratives are written from the perspective of someone who finds a stranger’s lost smartphone and scrolls through its contents – to deliberately abstract, citation-style writing, young users are using niche formats to say what feels difficult to articulate directly.  

Outdoor interests show a similar logic. Rather than grand adventures, Rednote’s 2025 Interest Report notes a move toward fragmented, lightweight encounters with nature: watching clouds, observing birds, collecting leaves, interactions with nature reduced to its smallest units.  

What we can gleam from Rednote’s 2025 Interest Report

So what does all this mean taken as a whole? The report arrives after Rednote’s strategic repositioning last July, when it formally upgraded itself from a ‘lifestyle guide’ to a ‘lifestyle interest community.’ The shift was meant to capture a generational change: young users are no longer simply browsing for tips or recommendations, but stitching together countless micro-interests into something closer to a personal operating system for daily life.  

For brands, these circles are framed as ideal entry points into emotion-driven consumption. But beware: These communities are not neutral media channels. They are emotionally charged spaces where users are charmed by escapism and a little of life’s quiet magic. Brands that enter too loudly, too instrumentally, or with overly polished narratives risk breaking the spell. 

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China’s soft power rise: the moments

Labubu

Labubu (拉布布), the snaggle-toothed forest creature dreamed up by Hong Kong artist Kasing Lung and made famous by China’s Pop Mart (泡泡玛特), has become a white-hot soft-power export. What began as a vinyl toy craze has turned into a global aesthetic – equal parts creepy, cute and collectable.

Fans from Seoul to Paris queue for blind boxes, while resale prices soar online. More than merchandise, Labubu represents a shift in perception: Chinese design no longer imitates global trends – it creates them. By exporting a home-grown pop icon with genuine emotional pull, Pop Mart has shown that cultural influence can flow east to west.

Black Myth: Wukong

The same is true of Black Myth: Wukong (黑神话: 悟空), the release that put China’s big-budget video game industry on the map. Players from around the world found much to love about the title’s cinematic fights, poetic landscapes and folkloric detail.

The appreciation signified a shift in the eyes of players: one that frames China as a country that can produce great entertainment, and entertainment accessible to all. But perhaps most importantly, the game is unapologetically Chinese. It’s based on a great work of Chinese literature. It doesn’t water down its aesthetic for foreign markets. It takes pride in itself as work of – you could argue – art. Few moments have showcased China’s creative self-assurance as vividly as this.

Innovation and influence

This year’s World Artificial Intelligence Conference in Shanghai saw Chinese robots kickboxing, racing and generally blowing minds. DeepSeek’s undercutting of western GPT models had a similar effect and it isn’t limited to AI.

The innovation taking place in Chinese business has seen an explosion of brands out of the Middle Kingdom. Heytea and Chagee are now regular sights abroad. Chinese luxury brands like Songmont and Judydoll are now influencing taste in foreign markets, not following it. The message is clear: China’s innovation isn’t catching up anymore, it’s setting the pace.

The Rednote Migration

When TikTok’s (抖音) future in the U.S. was thrown into doubt, millions of users crossed the digital border to Rednote (小红书). What they found wasn’t propaganda, it was people: Neon-dripped street scenes in Chongqing, cafe culture in Beijing, couples posing with milk tea.

For many western users, it was a first unfiltered glimpse of everyday China. And importantly, a relatable one. The migration became an accidental act of soft power. Casual posts and human stories reshaped perceptions. China, it turned out, wasn’t a distant regime – it was a scrollable, familiar world that shares much in common with one westerners would recognise as home.

IShowSpeed’s China trip

When American streamer IShowSpeed landed in China, few expected it to become a soft power moment. But Speed’s wide-eyed livestreams from Chengdu’s street-snack stands to Beijing’s basketball courts made China feel real, funny, and alive. Speed’s unfiltered enthusiasm drew millions of global viewers, flipping stereotypes into scenes of warmth and curiosity. He wasn’t guided by state media or brand deals, just genuine fascination. Much like the Rednote migration, these candid moments presented a country that looked nothing like the headlines.

China’s soft power rise: a new kind of influence

You could add to this article the overseas rise in popularity of Chinese online literature, the success of Ne Zha 2 (哪吒之魔童闹海), and numerous other cases. The common thread here is a largely organic change in perception. No longer is China the factory of the world. It’s a rising cultural powerhouse. To match the likes of America however, China will have to do a lot more. It’s clear that one of the hallmarks of a strong soft power nation is there though: self-confidence, and a healthy dose of interest from the outside world.

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The space wove together a bookstore framed by an old Sichuan-opera stage, a fragrance zone launching the new Journey to China collection, and a dining corner at The Hall featuring Chengdu-inspired dishes – each element echoing the local pace of life: what local Sichuanese call an yi (安逸), and an English speaker would probably call ‘easy going.’ 

• #LV成都耍起# sees more than 1.14 million views.
• Collaborative posts between LV and thier brand ambassador gets over a million likes and 800k shares.

That sense of play translated instantly into social currency. On Rednote, the hashtag #LV成都耍起# (Lit. Louis Vuitton Chengdu, let’s play, or LV Having fun in Chengdu) has drawn more than 1.14 million views. Check-in posts that blend travel diary and fashion flex have been popular on both Rednote and Weibo with visitors photographing the opera stage backdrop, the activities and themselves with the city guide that inspired the event.  

On Weibo, posts between LV and their local brand ambassador, actor Simon Gong (龚俊), have received over a million likes and 800,000 shares. Users commented on how the event seemed to capture Chengdu’s chilled-out way of life.  

Not one to miss out on a marketing feedback loop LV has made the city guide free until 13^th November, extending the pop-up experience beyond the venue. It’s a smart move. They’ve effectively turned local discovery itself into brand touchpoint.  

Louis Vuitton launched its City Guide collection in 1998, long before branded content was a buzzword. At the time, most luxury houses expressed heritage through fashion shows or flagship architecture. LV chose travel writing. Now the Louis V suitcases are one of the brand’s most iconic products. It looks like their pop-ups are just as popular. 

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In Mixue’s stunt lies the essence: the idea that every tiny surface, moment, or interaction can carry a story. From cup sleeves to AR walls to 15-second videos, brands in China are discovering that intimacy beats scale. A story that reaches one consumer at exactly the right time often performs better than a billboard that reaches a million in passing. 

Douyin’s micro marketing moments: Brands in 15 seconds 

Micro-media doesn’t have to live on paper. On Douyin, snack-sized videos are the new storytelling frontier. Korean brand Samyang Foods proved it with the hashtag challenge #生而火辣无所畏惧# (Lit: Born hot and fearless), where users filmed themselves doing fiery dance moves after eating Samyang’s spicy noodles. The campaign’s branded filter – flames, bold text, and all – spread organically, pulling in hundreds of millions of views.  

What makes this micro-media is the format: a bite-sized, participatory moment embedded in a social feed. It’s not an ad. It’s more like a meme the brand co-owns. Each short clip becomes a story fragment consumers build themselves, collectively forming the campaign narrative. 

Xiaohongshu: Community seeding over mass marketing 

If Douyin represents the viral side of micro-media, Xiaohongshu (小红书 / RED) represents the intimate side. Rather than chasing broad exposure, brands there work through KOLs who post unpolished, first-person notes about products. A lipstick review here, a café discovery there – each post a micro-story that feels personal, not promotional. 

These fragments accumulate into community capital. For beauty or lifestyle brands, this distributed storytelling works far better than polished campaigns. Each post is small, but collectively they create the sense of a movement.  

Alipay’s Ant Forest  

Alipay’s Ant Forest (蚂蚁森林) turns the most ordinary gesture – a payment – into an act of storytelling. Under this initiative, every digital transaction generates ‘green energy points’ that can be used to plant virtual trees. These are later matched with real saplings in China’s desert regions. What began as a CSR tool has evolved into one of China’s largest eco-communities, with over 500 million trees planted and millions of users tracking their growth.  

Each push notification updating you on your effort at saving the environment is a micro-media moment: a small reminder that sustainability can fit inside a payment screen, and that you are driving that positive impact.  

Micro marketing in China and the power of the smallest stage 

What ties these efforts together – from Mixue’s novels to Samyang’s Douyin filter – is a belief that attention has shrunk but storytelling hasn’t. In China’s dense media landscape, it’s the smallness that stands out. Micro-media works because it inserts meaning into the mundane: a 5-second scroll, a coffee sleeve, a tap of the POS screen.  

Rather than shouting louder, brands have learnt to whisper smarter. They use formats that feel native to how people already live and share. Whether it’s a KOL’s post on Rednote, a Douyin challenge, or a line of text on a receipt, each is a portal into brand culture disguised as ordinary life. 

Attention, atomised 

Micro media marketing marks a shift from reach to resonance. Instead of chasing eyeballs, brands are creating tiny, repeatable gestures of connection. Objects and moments that people want to photograph, decode, or collect.  

In a country obsessed with virality, it’s oddly poetic that this highly effective advertising strategy comes from the smallest medium. No longer do brands need to focus on how many see your message, but on who feels it, when, and how fleetingly. 

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This year, Street Life Festival opens in three locations, Shanghai, Guangzhou and Hangzhou, with even more scale and the introduction of a Rednote Card (小红书卡) that offers discounts at local businesses, incentivising further engagement.  

Street Life Festival brings Rednote’s online lifestyle community into the real world by turning online, user-driven discovery into street-level experiences. It’s a cost-effective way of pushing engagement and creates a neat feedback loop that’s smart in all sorts of ways. Here’s why:  

Rednote: Screen life to street life 

Rednote are keen to build their offline presence. Doing so is the natural extension of their role as a place of lifestyle discovery. Users flock to Rednote to hunt out the latest on-trend café or quaint bookshop, discover new brands and neighbourhoods, but without real-world activation there’s the risk the inspiration dries up.  

Street Life Festival closes that loop, turning digital recommendations into tangible experiences that users can engage with directly. It also positions Rednote to compete in China’s lucrative local-life economy, where rivals like Meituan and Douyin are aggressively driving offline consumption.  

The rise in popularity of shopping festivals can be, in part, attributed to consumer apathy over online life and endless consumerism. Buying something at a shop or stand highlighted at festivals like Street Life feels a lot more emotionally resonant than tapping ‘buy’ and having a stranger drop it at your door.  

By breaking those ever-depressing traps of modern-life, Rednote creates a feedback loop: Users engage offline, then feel incentivised to share online. They also strengthen their image of authentic, community-driven discovery and pave the way for monetisation.  

Why Street Life is smart marketing 

Street Life Festival is more than a cultural event – it’s a marketing strategy cleverly disguised as a community celebration. At the core of this strategy is a push for long-term brand equity. Rather than one-off campaigns, annual events give Rednote a recurring brand asset that strengthens associations with creativity and taste.  

That’s a message that comes through even stronger when Meituan’s big pull is in discounts and Douyin’s is in entertainment. Being tasteful is something Rednote’s users can be proud of – it’s something you want your friends to know you for, something most consumers would like to project themselves as, something you’d like to share… 

To make Street life happen, Rednote partners with city governments and cultural bureaus, further embedding itself as an institution. Alliances here enhance credibility, but they also open doors to new forms of institutional support and visibility, aiding growth next time around.  

More importantly, by building the festival into a recurring cultural IP, Rednote creates a lasting asset with emotional resonance. All this generates masses of online engagement. You can think of it as Rednote lighting a match that starts a blaze. With the opening of the festival, they set their own platform alight with engagement, and again, not just any engagement, but a meaningful kind. At the very least this is a highly cost-effective strategy. At best it’s marketing magic. 

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From Yi minority silverware to Southern Min objects d’art, regional and ethnic (ICH) arts and crafts items are a big part of the market. There are also workshops where visitors can make their own windchimes or patchwork art. From local delicacies like Yunnan fungi and Inner Mongolian craft beer to rock-climbing gear and other equipment, the market offers an array of options to suit most interests.

Like Douyin’s “stroll festival”, Rednote also invited streamers from different categories to broadcast live at the market and spark discussion online. Events such as band performances, an amateur fashion show, sports activities and workshops created an all-encompassing experience.

At the same time, Rednote added a “Market” tab to the bottom of its homepage. The e-commerce page is not labelled “mall” or “shopping”, but instead relies on the platform’s interest circles for users to “browse”, much like at the offline market. As Rednote rebrands itself as an “interest community”, it has tried to put both words into practice and differentiate itself from competitors. It will be interesting to see how the platform continues to monetise the community with its new “marketplace” function.

Need to boost your China strategy? Dao Pro delivers bespoke insights on marketing, innovation, and digital trends, direct from Chinese sources. Find out more from our Dao Strategy Team here.

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• Rednote has been leveraging its interest communities since its rebrand with new features and campaigns.
• Goofish, on the other hand, is leveraging hobby-based trading to tap into interest consumption.
• Other platforms, such as Dewu, are also trying to get on the bandwagon as Chinese consumers shift from “rational consumption” to “emotional” and “interest” consumption.

Earlier this month, Rednote (小红书, Xiaohongshu) underwent a major rebrand, changing its slogan from “your lifestyle guide” to “your lifestyle interest community”. Many see this as a significant shift in direction for Rednote, which has long been known for its lifestyle and fashion guides and tips. The addition of “interest” is seen by many as an indication that Rednote is trying to leverage the “interest” consumption that has been booming in China since last year. In fact, Alibaba’s second-hand marketplace platform Goofish (闲鱼, Xianyu) has also been tapping into the strong interest economy in China.

Rednote: from lifestyle guide to interest community

Since 2025, Rednote has been moving beyond “lifestyle” and guides. From the “hanfu” (汉服, traditional Chinese clothing, sometimes with modern twists) to “erciyuan” (二次元, lit. 2-dimensional, meaning anime, comics, games, and light novel culture), users have been sharing and consulting with each other about their hobbies and interests. As the community grew, Rednote took notice, especially of the potential these communities have in the future of e-commerce.

Since its rebrand, Rednote has launched an interest-centric feature called “interest block” (兴趣街区), allowing users to quickly find their community on the platform. There were 8 blocks at the time of launch, each corresponding to an overarching category of interest, including “gaming”, “erciyuan”, outdoor activities, trends, entertainment, travel, home DIY and food. The blocks also include gamified features to win prizes, such as LABUBUs in the trend block or Taylor Swift albums in the entertainment block.

Rednote is also extending its interest features offline. It has announced a “2.5D” “Red Land” immersive “open world” adventure island for gamers and the “erciyuan” crowds. In a space of over 80,000 square metres, users interact with over 20 anime and manga IPs and over 30 gaming IPs, with more than 10 original stalls for users to showcase their creations. An “erciyuan” music festival is also planned for the evening. Meanwhile, Rednote has also completed its ticket sales for its Go Wild Festival for outdoor activity lovers this year.

Goofish: more than a second-hand marketplace

Goofish (闲鱼, Xianyu), the second-hand marketplace from Alibaba, is also rapidly becoming the trading place for interest and hobby items. From Pokémon cards to clothing for LABUBU, Goofish is the go-to place for people to trade their “goods” (谷子, or guzi, usually IP merch).

On one hand, Goofish is a trusted marketplace platform that comes with guarantees; on the other, users are familiar with browsing for funny comments and unusual or “abstract” (抽象, weird and postmodern humour) items. The open environment has enabled people with different interests, such as celebrity merch, toy blind boxes, and gaming, to flock to the platform to both sell and buy. Young people’s monthly “goods” purchase value has increased by 97.2% between Q1 2023 and Q1 2025.

To utilise this base of interest consumption, Goofish introduced its own interest communities sub-brand, Yuli Yuli (鱼鲤鱼鲤). Yuli Yuli shifts the focus away from transactions toward serving the communities that form around shared interests. From easier searches to authentication, IP-based content topics and social engagements, Yuli Yuli is trying to build Goofish’s own “interest community”, just like Rednote’s consistent efforts in e-commerce.

In fact, prior to both platforms expanding into the internet consumption sphere, it had already been reported that young people were using Rednote as a trading platform for used items. With its huge user base and an algorithm that connects people with similar interests and fewer “lowball” offers than Goofish, many casual sellers started using Rednote to resell their used items. While there are risks in using a content platform for e-commerce, platforms like Goofish clearly took note of the community’s potential in times of interest-driven consumption.

As Rednote and Goofish seemingly meet each other halfway between community and e-commerce, there is another player that is worth mentioning: Dewu (得物), or Poizon. The platform started as a trainer marketplace for sneakerheads with its unique selling proposition in authentication. It has now expanded to luxury and designer toys, looking to Rednote as inspiration for its community building.

Interest consumption is another form of “emotional value” that moves away from the pragmatic “rational consumption” sentiment. It might be a good time to renew your message to one that resonates more deeply, rather than continuing to focus on “value for money”.

Need to boost your China strategy? Dao Pro delivers bespoke insights on marketing, innovation, and digital trends, direct from Chinese sources. Find out more from our Dao Strategy Team here.

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Of course, the community has been a crucial element in Rednote’s success, as all the guides and answers are directed precisely to the right audiences through its algorithm, originally shaped by users. By adding “interest” to the more general “lifestyle”, Rednote is specifying which sphere of lifestyle it excels at. The platform used to be the origin of trends such as citywalk, the camping boom and the “20 minutes in a park” effect. Now it has delved deeper into interests and hobbies, from birdwatching and trading card unboxing, to “cotton dolls” and “pain gold” (the “pain” version of gold accessories), and has been the centre of new interests and hobbies.

• #一觉醒来 小红书你变了 Rednote, you changed overnight: 9.50 million views on Rednote, ranking number 1 on the Hot Topics list

From “erciyuan” (二次元 or ACGN, anime, comics, games and light novels) to more “abstract” interests like keeping toothpaste or mango seeds as pets, and even “pain” graduation gowns, Rednote is home to all sorts of passions, from mainstream to niche. This is due to its long-standing support for UGC, its algorithm that matches content to the right audience, no matter how niche, and the way the platform spreads from core influencers and central interests to related niche ones.

The platform is reportedly valued at 26 billion USD, and there are also reports of an IPO in the works. With the new slogan, he latest rebrand of Rednote will likely capture more of young people’s interests as the consumer sentiment in China shifts towards “self-pleasing” and “emotional value”.

Meanwhile, eagle-eyed netizens spotted the similarity between the new slogan and Douyin’s “interest e-commerce”. With Rednote’s ambition in e-commerce in recent years, it might mean it will soon have to take on Douyin directly in the interest arena.

Need to boost your China strategy? Dao Pro delivers bespoke insights on marketing, innovation, and digital trends, direct from Chinese sources. Find out more from our Dao Strategy Team here.

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Between January and 15 May this year, Rednote users generated notes on weight management in the millions, and engagement in the billions. The top three topics in the categories were: fitness and weight loss, which made up a third of the notes, 16% about health and wellness, and 14% about food and beverages. Trending hashtags range from fat loss lifestyle to building muscle, all the way to how thin people can gain weight.

There are currently 4 growing trends in the weight management category on Rednote: eat, play, care and move. Eat mostly refers to the NHC weight loss menu, which saw its engagement grow 394% in 90 days, with over 3.19 million views. Play is gamified weight loss from brands such as JD.com or Decathlon, where you can earn a 100 RMB (13.91 USD) coupon for every 500g you lose during its weight loss challenges, to the workout app Keep’s in-app medals. Care means the traditional healthcare and wellness methods that are more gradual and gentler on the body. Move refers to casual workouts like “5 minutes quick exercises” that you can do at your workplace.

As a lifestyle platform, Rednote is behind a lot of the “lazy person’s workout” trends that break intense training apart into bite-sized chunks in one’s daily life. With China striving to get healthier, many brands are trying to reach young consumers. Rednote is already shaping how they do that.

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