Quick Scroll

• • 🧠 China has approved a coin-sized brain–computer implant for commercial use in people with spinal cord injuries. Developed by Shanghai-based company Neuracle Medical Technology (博睿康) in collaboration with Tsinghua University, the so-called “NEO” is the world’s first market-approved brain implant designed to help people with severe paralysis regain hand motor function.
  • 🚨 Lei Siwei (雷思维), Vice-Governor of Gansu and member of the provincial Party Standing Committee, is under investigation as of March 17, with the notice issued by China’s top anti-corruption body citing “serious violations of discipline and law.” The case is the latest in an ongoing series of provincial-level anti-corruption actions that’ve been continuing into 2026.
  • 📚 Several Chinese provinces and cities are removing biology and geography from high school entrance exams starting from next year, as part of a broader government-initiated campaign to reduce pressure on students and put a stop to “educational involution” (教育内卷).
  • 👀 Taiwanese actor-singer Jerry Yan (言承旭), best known as Dao Mingsi from Meteor Garden and a member of F4, is at the center of somewhat of an authenticity crisis after fans photographed his concert teleprompter showing not just lyrics, but scripted emotional cues for his performance like “your eyes slightly reddening” and “now you take a deep breath.”
  • 🎮 More than 100 Chinese universities are offering esports majors nowadays, sparking online discussions this week. These programmes go far beyond just playing video games, covering esports operations, management, data analytics, game design, etc, reflecting the growing professionalisation of China’s esports industry.
  • 🎓 A feature by Chinese magazine Sanlian Life Weekly (三联生活周刊) went trending for highlighting a sharp gender shift in China’s higher education demographics, with female students now outnumbering men at universities. Female undergraduate enrollment grew by 348% between 2002 and 2022.
  • 🧪 A laboratory explosion at Chongqing University on March 20 killed one student and injured three. Initial findings point to improper handling of chemicals.
  • 💔 China’s superfamous actress Yao Chen (姚晨) and filmmaker Cao Yu (曹郁) jointly announced their separation on Weibo in a poetic way, using classical Chinese language: “A journey through mountains and rivers, a blessing for three lifetimes. Fate comes and goes, all is joy” (山水一程，三生有幸。缘来缘去，皆是欢喜). A related hashtag received 300 million views.

Chinese Woman Who Sold Abducted Toddlers Captured After Two Decades

A woman who played a key role in a series of China’s notorious child trafficking cases, causing relentless suffering for many families, has finally been caught after being on the run for two decades. The arrest of the woman, referred to as “Mei Yi” or “Auntie Mei” (梅姨), has dominated Chinese social media over the past week, ever since Guangzhou police announced on March 21 that they had finally captured her.

This story touches upon multiple issues that have turned it into such a major topic.

Mei Yi was involved in a series of child trafficking crimes carried out by a gang led by Zhang Weiping (张维平) and Zhou Rongping (周容平) across multiple areas in Guangdong province between 2003 and 2005. She acted as a middleman responsible for transferring and selling abducted children, mostly toddler boys. In just over two years, the group abducted and trafficked nine young children.

The parents of these boys never stopped searching for them, while Chinese authorities worked for years to crack the case. In 2016, eleven years after the last abduction, police arrested five core gang members, including Zhang, who later confessed and revealed that the person reselling the children was a local elderly woman nicknamed “Mei Yi.” However, her real identity and whereabouts remained unknown for years. Zhang Weiping and Zhou Rongping were both sentenced to death and executed in 2023.

Thanks to new technologies—from digital tracking systems to DNA matching—the abducted children were located one by one and reunited with their biological families over the years: the first in 2019 and the last in 2024. By then, the boys were roughly between 14 and 21 years old, meaning they had spent nearly their entire childhoods with the families who had bought them.

Evading Capture by Being Ordinary

One aspect of this case drawing attention is not just how Mei Yi was caught, but how she managed to evade arrest for so long. The crimes took place more than twenty years ago, in factories, rental housing, and other areas with dense migrant populations, leaving very little traceable evidence. It is also unclear how accurate the composite sketch of Mei Yi—circulating since 2017 and updated in 2019—actually was. Authorities have not released a confirmed photo following her arrest, and it is possible her real appearance differed significantly from the sketch.

A lawyer close to the case told Chinese media outlet The Paper that what made her so hard to catch was probably not how clever her tactics were, but that she appeared so normal to those around her, who might have never guessed she was a criminal. Besides arranging illegal “adoptions,” Mei Yi also acted as a local matchmaker and fortune teller, and she even lied about her identity and used aliases with someone who was her partner for two years.

Official media do not disclose exactly how Mei Yi was eventually tracked down, but it’s clear that the authorities got much closer after all the abducted children were found in October 2024, undoubtedly leading to important clues that connected all the cases.

Not Such a Happy Ending

Chinese state media have largely framed the case as a story of justice served: Mei Yi as a long-sought villain, the police as persistent heroes, and China’s advancing technology as the key to solving the case. A kind of “happy ending.”

But the truth seems more complicated, with a loud silence surrounding nine families where the abducted boys spent their entire childhoods. Their willingness to pay for a male child is part of a broader issue linked to China’s one-child policy, relatively light penalties for buyers of trafficked children (or even legal limitations due to statutes of limitation), and a deeply rooted son-preference culture that was especially strong in those years 2003- 2005.

Some online commentators did argue to “not let those hypocritical ‘adoptive parents’ off the hook.” Yet the situation is complicated by the fact that some of the boys still consider these families their parents, and in some cases choose to stay with them rather than return to biological families they barely remember.

The fact is that Mei Yu is just one chapter in a much larger story that is far from finished.

Just earlier this week, the story of another abduction case also went trending. It concerns a man named Du Jun (杜军), who was abducted in 1991 at the age of 3 while playing outside a shop with his sister. Du Jun, who spent 35 years separated from his biological family, finally reunited with his biological mother following a successful identification process that is part of a continuing series of long-separated family reunions facilitated by China’s expanding DNA-matching and digital tracking systems.

Du, now 38, had not known he was trafficked as a child, nor that his biological family had searched for him for years. He became an orphan at a young age and built a life for himself. He was found through online search efforts, the dedication of volunteers, DNA research, and a specific detail only his biological family knew: that he had a bend at the joint of his left middle finger because of an accident as a toddler.

Du Jun as a young child before his abduction, and Du Jun reunited with his biological mother in 2026. Images via Hongxing Xinwen.

As with the nine abducted boys, Du Jun’s reunion with his family does bring light to a long, dark tunnel – but it doesn’t bring back the missed childhood, the shattered families, and the endless, tear-filled years.

Let’s hope many more “Mei Yis” will be brought to justice in the years ahead.

A Censored Menstruation Train-Incident

Another story that became a major talking point on Chinese social media this week involves a woman named Ms. Zhang, who was charged 180 yuan (US$26) after accidentally staining a bedsheet on a sleeper train. The woman unexpectedly got her period while traveling overnight to Lanzhou and was unable to obtain any sanitary products on board. A train attendant asked her to either wash the bedsheet herself or pay compensation.

The woman, who ended up washing the sheets herself by hand in cold water, later shared her experience on social media and suggested that all trains should sell sanitary pads. Her post resonated with many, and even though she took it offline, it was quickly picked up by Chinese media.

After the post went viral, Lanzhou Railway issued an official statement on March 20, presenting its version of events and challenging some of the woman’s claims.

The statement included details that depicted staff as helpful, such as an attendant allegedly offering to wash the sheets and a conductor searching for sanitary pads (but finding none). At the same time, it used seemingly accusatory language, repeatedly describing the woman’s menstruation as having “contaminated” (污染) the bedding as well as two other spots where she had sat.

Zhang did not accept this explanation and again turned to social media (under the username @勇敢小狐不怕困难) to reveal what she said had been happening behind the scenes. She shared that someone from Lanzhou Railway had repeatedly messaged her privately, asking her to delete her posts, claiming that employees’ jobs were at risk because of the incident, and even offering her money—which she refused, despite ultimately taking the post down.

Zhang further suggested that her posts were “disappearing as soon as they were published,” that the media narrative was being controlled, and that she had been pressured into silence.

On Xiaohongshu and Weibo, many users sided with Zhang. The wording used by Lanzhou Railway struck a chord, particularly the framing of menstruation as “contamination” while simultaneously blaming Zhang for staining multiple areas, despite not providing any sanitary products.

“Where exactly was she supposed to sit?” one Xiaohongshu user asked. “In the aisle? On a suitcase? Squatting by the toilet door? Lying on the floor?”

One major reason why this debate exploded online is not just the media discourse itself, but the way it taps into broader frustrations among Chinese women over social taboos and structural shortcomings surrounding menstruation in public spaces.

Over the years, various incidents involving menstrual products have gone viral and sparked grassroots efforts to change the current situation.

In 2022, a female passenger also expressed her frustration online about sanitary pads on high-speed trains, drawing online attention. Many commenters, mostly men, argued that pads weren’t “essential items” and shouldn’t take up retail space onboard. The railway authority’s official response—describing sanitary pads as “personal items” that don’t need to be sold—only worsened online outrage.

For many women, these kinds of incidents, from trains and schools to planes, highlight how little society apparently understands or respects their basic needs.

Whenever there’s new music by the Taiwanese producer, actor, composer, singer-songwriter, and ‘King of Mandopop’ Jay Chou (周杰伦), it goes trending.

Not only does his music bring back memories of the early 2000s – when he first rose to prominence and became super popular – but his catchy tunes and lyrics also resonate with younger audiences.

But it’s not just the music that makes waves – it’s also the music videos that have become artistic and sometimes spectacular productions by themselves. “Other artists just make a music video, he turns it into a movie,” some commenters wrote after the release of his 2022 Greatest Work of Art video.

On March 24, the music video (MV) for the lead single Children of the Sun (太阳之子) dropped, a production made in collaboration with Wētā Workshop, the New Zealand-based visual effects studio known for its work on Avatar and The Lord of the Rings.

The music video shows Jay Chou in a fictional European world spanning from the 16th to the 20th century, filled with references to famous art, from Vincent van Gogh and Dali to Mona Lisa, Ophelia, and The Anatomy Lesson of Dr. Nicolaes Tulp by Rembrandt (Jay Chou appears in the painting himself).

The cost of the music video production reportedly exceeded 20 million yuan (US$2.9 million), and some commentaries described it as the most expensive MV in the history of Mandarin-language pop music.

You can watch the video on Weibo here, or on Youtube here.

“It became a memorable moment in China’s meme culture recently: the popular fictional online character “Purple Potato Spirit” (紫薯精) has an emotional breakdown and is offered food for comfort by her male co-worker, who says: “If the whole world condemns you, I’ll take you to eat Liu Wenxiang” (如果全世界都指责你，我就带你去吃刘文祥).

The scene, from a short-video series by Douyin creator Zhou Xiaonao (周小闹), unexpectedly made the Chinese restaurant chain Liu Wenxiang (刘文祥) go viral, turning it into an internet hit as the trend resonated with overworked young workers who enjoyed the mix of cathartic online meme culture & affordable comfort food.

The viral moment caused immediate chaos. Liu Wenxiang stores across the country were overwhelmed by two-hour queues, ingredients sold out, and the “order explosions” (爆单) forced some locations to temporarily suspend operations altogether.

Who could have expected a Douyin comedy creator to catapult a long-standing Chinese brand back into the spotlight so suddenly — not through its own marketing, not through a brand collaboration, but because a fictional online persona is obsessing over its malatang (spicy skewer soup)? It’s very much China’s online culture.

While I’m writing this newsletter, however, China’s 3.15 Consumer Rights Day is dominating Chinese social media. Earlier tonight, the 36th edition of China’s annual consumer rights show (3·15晚会) aired — a joint production by CCTV and government agencies that aims to educate the public on consumer rights while exposing violations and holding companies accountable.

Tonight, Liu Wenxiang suddenly saw its image crumble as the show exposed that multiple franchise locations across the country had been substituting duck meat for the advertised beef and pork in various menu items. According to the report, staff knowingly misled customers even when they knew beef or lamb was not actually being delivered — a practice reportedly involving thousands of orders per location each month.

The price gap helps explain why: pure beef rolls cost ¥28 (about US$4) per 500 grams, while duck rolls cost just ¥7 (about US$1) — a fourfold difference.

Public opinion is currently in full swing, rapidly turning against the brand that people had embraced so enthusiastically over the past few weeks.

And that, too, is a sign of this social media age. Unofficial sources can make you go viral in a minute, but when you’re officially exposed for essentially scamming customers, it becomes very difficult to recover. I wonder whether “Purple Potato Spirit” will still be treated to Liu Wenxiang malatang after this scandal.

(For more on China’s consumer day show, see last year’s post here.)

Let’s dive into the other trends that were widely discussed on Chinese social media this week.

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Quick Scroll

• • 🏎️ F1 Fever All eyes were on the F1 Chinese Grand Prix in Shanghai this weekend, especially given the cancellation of the Bahrain and Saudi Arabian races. The race was completely sold out, and Chinese media noted a marked increase in Chinese F1 fans, especially among women, with China’s current F1 fanbase exceeding 150 million.
  • 🥢Swallowed Chopstick A 46-year-old man named Wang from Dalian gained attention after visiting the doctor for a sore throat, and it was found that a 12-centimeter metal chopstick had been lodged in his pharynx for eight years. Wang told the doctors he had accidentally swallowed it during a meal but was too afraid of surgery to seek treatment. The chopstick has now been removed, and Wang is fine — the chopstick remains intact as well.
  • 📚 Iron Rice Bowl This weekend, 5.87 million people took the provincial civil service exams, known as the  Shěngkǎo (省考), across 23 provinces, competing for 126,000 positions in provincial and local government offices — an average of 47 applicants per job (with some desirable positions attracting as many as 1,900 applicants for a single post!).
  • 🚆 Boarding for Pyongyang Earlier this week, a train from China arrived in North Korea. As of March 12, the China–North Korea international passenger train operates four times a week between Beijing and Pyongyang. The train service, which remains highly restricted for ordinary travelers, had been suspended for years during and after the pandemic.
  • 🏛️ Mao Under Construction From this week until the end of August, the Chairman Mao Memorial Hall (毛主席纪念堂) at Tiananmen Square, which houses the embalmed body of Mao Zedong, will undergo internal renovation and construction work and will be closed to the public. The site, opened in 1977, draws millions of domestic visitors each year.
  • 🇨🇳🇺🇸 US–China Talks High-level US–China talks commenced in Paris on March 15. The discussions, led by US Treasury Secretary Scott Bessent and Chinese Vice Premier He Lifeng (何立峰), carry added significance because of their timing: right after the Two Sessions concluded and China’s 15th Five-Year Plan was approved, and before Trump’s anticipated China visit from March 31 to April 2 (although Beijing has not yet officially confirmed it).
  • 🌹 Steel Roses Victory China’s women’s national football team, officially nicknamed the Steel Roses (钢铁玫瑰), became one of the most-discussed sports topics on Chinese social media this week after the team secured their spot at the 2026 FIFA Women’s World Cup in Brazil, defeating Chinese Taipei in the AFC Women’s Asian Cup. The celebration in football balanced the online disappointment over the elimination of China’s table tennis champion Wang Chuqin (王楚钦) from the World Table Tennis (WTT) Champions Chongqing tournament after losing 2–4 to 18-year-old Japanese player Matsushima Sora.

Why Everyone in China Is Talking About “Raising Lobsters”

This week, everyone is talking about raising lobsters.

“Raising lobsters” in Chinese is yǎng lóngxiā (养龙虾), and it’s now widely used as a term for deploying AI agents. The reference to the lobster comes from the lobster-like creature that serves as the logo of the AI agent OpenClaw, formerly known as Clawdbot, developed by Austrian computer programmer Peter Steinberger and released in November 2025.

OpenClaw describes itself as a “Personal AI Assistant” or “the AI that actually does things,” such as sorting out your inbox, sending emails, managing your calendar, checking in for flights – all through the chat apps you already use.

So why is the open-source AI tool such a major success in China, going well beyond developer niche communities? One of the reasons so many people are talking about and using OpenClaw is that installing it has become a niche profession in itself.

Caiwei Chen at MIT Technology Review recently described how small companies and independent entrepreneurs in China, such as the young Chinese developer Feng Qingyang (冯庆阳), have directly contributed to the tool’s success by helping others install it. Feng began offering “OpenClaw installation support” in late January this year, and what started as a side gig has now grown into a full-fledged professional operation with more than 100 employees.

While in Western countries the comments by analyst firm Gartner, which described OpenClaw as an “unacceptable cybersecurity risk” last month, were still resonating, the AI tool’s popularity in China has surged in recent weeks. Companies like Feng’s have mushroomed across the country, with unofficial OpenClaw installation events drawing crowds in many cities. Larger corporate events are also attracting attention, such as a recent installation event at Tencent’s headquarters in Shenzhen that drew hundreds of participants.

By now, virtually all of China’s major tech companies have jumped on the hype. From ByteDance to JD.com, companies are offering a range of OpenClaw products and services.

Success stories quickly went viral, including a claim that an OpenClaw agent completed three weeks’ worth of work for six employees in just 24 hours. But the hype has also brought concerns, with online rumors circulating about people’s credit cards being charged unexpectedly or local files and emails being deleted.

Chinese authorities have now restricted state-run enterprises and government agencies from running OpenClaw AI apps on office computers, while official cybersecurity agencies have warned about potential security risks.

In the RealTime Mandarin newsletter, Andrew Methven explained the rise of the online phrase “one lobster, three ways” (龙虾三吃), a play on the name of a popular Chinese dish. With the latest security concerns, Chinese business-oriented programmers are spotting yet more money-making opportunities; In addition to OpenClaw installation services, some now also offer “uninstallation services.” In other words, people are now making lobster money in three ways with OpenClaw: installing the AI, training people how to use it, and uninstalling it when things go wrong.

Viral Weibo commentary from one blogger (@菜刀曦曦) neatly captured the hype cycle:

“How fast the world changes these days. Yesterday I was scrolling Weibo and everyone was raising lobsters, paying to get it installed, and honestly I was tempted too. Today what I’m seeing is that the lobster is basically a Trojan horse, and now people are paying to uninstall it. Install: 500 yuan [US$72]. Uninstall: 299 yuan [US$43]. Those of us who didn’t follow the trend have effectively saved 799 yuan [US$115].”

From 6G Dreams to Pension Debates: The Viral Topics of the Two Sessions

In last week’s newsletter, I already discussed some of the main social media trends coming out of the Two Sessions. In the final days of China’s annual parliamentary meetings, which ended on March 12, several more noteworthy topics went trending.

📍 “6G Is Coming” (#6G网要来了#) became a hot-search phrase, as 6G was explicitly included both in this year’s Government Work Report and in the 15th Five-Year Plan, which lays out China’s strategic vision for the period from 2026 to 2030.

The report stated that China would nurture future industries, including 6G, quantum technology, and embodied AI, positioning itself as a global leader in 6G development. In November 2025, news emerged that China had completed its first real-world testing trial of 6G applications. Being roughly 100 times faster than 5G (you’ll be able to download a 4K movie in just one second), 6G is expected to become the future mobile standard, with commercial use in China planned for around 2030.

Beyond what was mentioned in the official reports or what happened in the corridors, it was mostly the policy suggestions and proposals from NPC delegates and CPPCC members that trended in public online debates.

📍 NPC delegate Tang Lijun (唐利军) proposed a “nighttime silence” for short video platforms, calling for a mandatory break from scrolling during 1 AM-5 AM to protect both children and adults from “unhealthy” social media use.

Although I believe it’s unlikely that such a measure would be enforced for everyone (for one, it could harm China’s digital economy), it might suggest that China’s current social media rules for children could be further tightened or even expanded to include individuals over 18.

📍 Overall, it’s clear that rest was a recurring theme during the Two Sessions. As discussed last week, there were discussions about adjusting Chinese public holidays and working fewer hours. NPC delegate and Xiaomi CEO Lei Jun (雷军) triggered all kind of discussions, one of them related to a comment he made during an interview with China News Weekly (中国新闻周刊), where he suggested that in the AI era people might no longer need to work eight hours a day or five days a week, and could perhaps work three days a week, two hours a day—dramatically improving quality of life.

Another proposal came from NPC delegate Zhong Baoshen (钟宝申), who suggested reducing the standard workday from 8 hours to 7 hours while significantly increasing overtime pay standards. This idea was not necessarily applauded online; many commenters argued that an extra day off would make more sense and expressed skepticism about whether shorter hours would actually happen, given that the current eight-hour day already often results in overwork.

📍Then there were the welfare-related proposals that went viral. Delegate Zheng Gongcheng (郑功成), also president of the China Social Security Society (中国社会保障学会), called for establishing a “Mother’s Pension System” (母亲养老金制度).

The proposal suggests that during child-rearing years, mothers would continue to accrue pension benefits for old age without reductions for time spent away from work.

This proposal resonated with many female netizens. One popular comment said:

“Having children, raising them, caring for them… we spend countless sleepless nights and give up many work opportunities and personal time for it. Most of a lifetime’s energy ends up devoted to family and children. (…) Giving women who have given birth an additional pension subsidy is not an extra privilege; it is a recognition of the many years of sacrifice and effort we have made.”

📍Other popular proposals were not about the gender pension gap, but about the rural–urban pension gap. At least nine proposals focused on how China’s farmers contributed enormously to the country’s development over the decades—submitting grain to the state even when hungry during the Mao years, or performing obligatory labor (义务工) building railways, reservoirs, and other infrastructure through the commune system.

Despite these contributions, many argue that rural residents have historically not been treated fairly under China’s national welfare system, and that their contributions mean the state now owes them a decent safety net in old age.

These proposals received waves of support online. China Digital Times archived one post from WeChat public account “Reflections on the Past” (往事随想录) by author Peng Yuanwen (彭远文), who called China’s rural pension dilemma “the hottest issue at this year’s Two Sessions,” one that “overshadowed everything else, almost giving the impression that this year’s Two Sessions had only one real topic.” He added: “In my twenty years of observation, this is unprecedented.”

Although the pension was raised by only 20 yuan (about US$2.90) this year, there is now a growing wave of voices—from politics, academia, and the media- calling for substantial increases to bring pensions for urban and rural residents closer to the lower level of the urban employee pension.

Peng sees this as the clearest signal that change may be coming:

“Look around—the fields are already lush and green. Friends, can the autumn harvest still be far away?”

A traditional Fujianese folk ritual in which deity figures are paraded through the streets, accompanied by music, drums, crowds, and incense smoke, has been popping up on Chinese feeds in unexpected ways.

Recently (still ongoing today), dozens of netizens have gone viral on Douyin by jokingly recreating the Fujian “deity parade” (福建游神) ritual at home, at their workplace, or even in parking lots, using DIY deities and creative ways of throwing the “divination cups” (for example, tossing slippers instead).

From Sichuan to Henan, these creative netizens joke that “you don’t need to go to Fujian to see the deity procession.”

This year, a controversy over the selection of a spirit medium at a Mazu goddess procession—which I also covered in a previous newsletter—pushed these kinds of deity processions further into the mainstream than ever before. Suddenly, millions of people who had never paid close attention to these rituals were reading about divination cups, spirit possession, and the rules surrounding sacred selection.

Although that incident likely helped spark the current playful DIY deity trend, other figures appearing in these rural parades—also called “tagu” (塔骨)—had already gone viral before. One example is Zhang Shizi (张世子), a handsome figure in a rural deity procession who gained a sizable online fanbase, along with the subordinate “divine generals” (神将) that appear before and after the main deity, swaying and swinging their arms with attitude, and sometimes even bumping into spectators.

Going even further back is the trend of the “Electric-Techno Neon Gods” (电音三太子), which began years ago when Taiwanese temple youth groups started mixing sacred imagery with pop culture. They used the Nezha figure (哪吒, the Third Prince, 三太子) with a giant head, dancing to techno and house music instead of traditional percussion.

These current memes similarly blend religious ritual with pop culture, gamifying old customs in the social media age by treating participation in the folk ritual trend as a “cultivation path toward godhood.” Although it is all very tongue-in-cheek, there is also a clear appreciation of folk ritual aesthetics and spiritual customs behind it.

See videos here.

One More Thing

Humanoid Robots Spotted Running in Beijing Streets