China Arts & Entertainment
The Rise of China’s Electronic Dance Music Scene: From Underground Culture to Online Communities
China’s electronic dance music: it’s status-quo, future, and why social media is key.
Perhaps few foreigners would see China as a go-to destination for its electronic dance music scene. Surely, most Chinese also do not see their own country that way. But China’s club culture is on the rise.
Although most of the ‘dance music capitals’ are located in Europe and the US, the online music broadcasting platform Boiler Room – which is focused on electronic music – now lists two Chinese cities among its 100 locations, Beijing and Shanghai.
Created by producers and performed by DJs, ‘Electronic dance music’ is an umbrella term for percussion-based electronic music made for nightclubs, raves, and festivals. In Europe, electronic dance music is often simply called ‘Dance Music,’ with subgenres including techno, house, trance, etc. 1
In 2016, DJMag, one of the biggest electronic dance music magazines worldwide, listed a total of four Chinese clubs in its top-20-clubs ranking. And if one would walk around Shanghai or Beijing today, one would find a similar quantity and quality of good nightclubs there as in any major European city – although it might require some more effort to find the right ones.
Club Lantern in Beijing, photo by author.
Nevertheless, electronic dance music is generally still misunderstood, and, more importantly, under-commercialized, in China today.
The 54-year-old Rainbow Gao 2, an important face of Chinese electronic music and founder of the ‘The Mansion’ nightclub/hostel/concept, tells What’s on Weibo that the overarching obstacle to the spread and development of dance music in China is a lack of infrastructure and general awareness.
BACKGROUND: THE ELECTRONIC MUSIC SCENE IN CHINA
“In the 1990s, dance clubs mainly focused on the music itself – they weren’t interested in making money.”
Since virtually no dance scene existed before Deng Xiaoping’s Reform and Opening-up in 1978, a Western ‘party culture’ only started emerging in China during the 1980s. But at that time, parties were mostly concentrated around Western hotel bars in Beijing, and there were few dancing bars run by locals.
During the early 1990s, proper nightclubs started opening up in the big Chinese cities, mostly located in big hotels or in renovated cinemas. “During this period,” Rainbow Gao tells What’s on Weibo, “clubs and clubbers mainly focused on the music itself – they weren’t so interested in making money.”
Rainbow Gao, founder of ‘The Mansion’ Shanghai
The development of Chinese dance music continued throughout the 1990s. Through the efforts of Chinese pioneer DJs such as Ben Huang, a real underground scene started to emerge.
The first ‘Berlin-Basement-style’ clubs were opened 3, and the scene started gathering more attention. Later, DJs such as Weng Weng or Mickey Zhang started throwing their own parties and setting-up their own labels, showing that the spread of electronic dance music was well under way.
DJ Weng Weng (Organizer INTRO festival), image via The Beijinger.
Finding an audience was hard at first – according to an interview in the Beijinger with famous Chinese DJ Weng Weng, the first electronic dance music parties were actually organized and attended mainly by foreign exchange students.
But, as more and more young Chinese started appreciating the music, the culture, mixing, and promoting, the local scene slowly started to grow.
INTRO festival
In the 2000s, the underground scene experienced a slight setback. A series of money-focused nightclubs started to open, solely driven by commercial motives.
“For these clubs, the music itself is really the last thing they think about. Sales come first; how to sell tables to people, how to make the club look ‘busy’ by having foreigners drinking for free, hiring actors to attend,” Rainbow Gao says: “There is also this show-off culture, so if they buy a bottle of champagne, it is not unusual to light fireworks to make a spectacle out of it. It’s really about showing off and making money.”
Today, Chinese nightlife is a combination of these big money-focused clubs and smaller music-focused ones. But even in the shadow of these big money-making machines, China’s underground dance scene is still thriving.
Most large Chinese cities now have at least one big electronic-music nightclub. Beijing, Shanghai, Chengdu, Shenzhen, Kunming, Guangzhou and Hangzhou are all popular destinations for Chinese DJs.
Hundreds of thousands of Chinese, young and old, go out every weekend to listen to dianzi wuqu (电子舞曲 ‘electronic dance music’), haoshi yinyue (浩室音乐 ‘House music’), tie ke nuo (铁克诺音乐, ‘techno’) or chushe yinyue (出神音乐 ‘trance music’).
THE CHALLENGES OF CHINA’S ELECTRONIC MUSIC SCENE
“Only passionate people invest money in these clubs, and they’ll do so from their own pocket.“
The rise of the electronic music scene in China has not been without hurdles, and more challenges are lying ahead.
One of these hurdles lies in the fact that China can be a bureaucratic maze for those wanting to open a nightclub or organize a festival or concert. Rents are high, licenses expensive and clubs can be subject to police crackdowns.
The Dutch organizers of the international trance music-focused Transmission festival, which took place in Shanghai last week, apparently were relieved and satisfied about their event – which was an administrative nightmare to prepare. After having been through the whole procedure of organizing a festival in China, Rainbow Gao explains, they will now probably be able to organize a festival anywhere in the world.
Transmission Festival Shanghai (image 票虫网).
“If someone wants to open a club for the love of music, the first obstacle they face is very high rent. Then, as a club, you have to arrange many licenses, from the fire department, for security, police approval, approval from the cultural department – and this process is really difficult. Sometimes there can even be corruption – and sometimes the local leader in charge will not give his approval for fear of causing trouble,” Gao says.
Because of the high costs and small commercial appeal, music-focused nightclubs can also find it hard to find finance, unlike their money-focused counterparts.
“Investors won’t invest in those clubs: only passionate people invest money, and they do so from their own pocket,” states Rainbow, who never got her own initial investment back after founding The Mansion.
Another pressing challenge has to do with the Chinese general public’s lack of awareness or understanding of dance music’s cultural and commercial potential.
One example is that Chinese parents will rarely regard the jobs of ‘DJ’ or ‘producer’ as ‘real’ jobs, and will thus not always support their children in their artistic ventures. It is an issue not specific to electronic dance; many children growing up in Chinese families will be told that “if you want to be homeless, go get an art degree.”
Local governments can also be short-sighted, Rainbow complains: “The thing in China is there is not only the economic problem, i.e. people thinking about money over culture, but the problem is also the government. For example, I have been asking local governments to support ideas like the YinYang festival on the Great Wall, or the China Pavilion all over the world for years, but when I talk about it with them, they say they can only put money in ancient Chinese culture. But I think that it won’t really have an audience, while we already have one.”
WHY SOCIAL MEDIA IS KEY
“The use of social media is crucial to developing the scene.”
Electronic music is alive and kicking on the internet in Europe and North America, where there are thriving online music-sharing platforms such as Soundcloud or Mixcloud, websites for buying music like Beatport or Juno, and, of course, a multitude of other social media platforms such as Facebook, Instagram or Snapchat for DJs and clubs to promote their brands.
China also has domestic equivalents to these online platforms. But, according to online music magazine Factmag, it is key for the Chinese dance music scene to use its local social media more effectively in order to develop a unified presence online, in the same way that Western countries have.
At time of writing, the most popular music sharing websites in China are Xiami 虾米, an online music service providing recommendations and downloads services and belonging to the Alibaba group, and Douban 豆瓣, an independent social-networking platform focusing on the sharing of cinema, literature and music.
Xiami is, by far, the more used resource of the two; DJs such as Mickey Zhang have tens of thousands of listeners on Xiami, but only several thousands on Douban.
DJ Mickey Zhang (image via thebeijinger.com)
Xiami Music has a large music library with more than 3 million tracks, 330 kinds of music styles, tens of thousands of music radios, and over 500 thousand hits packages created entirely by users and self-developed algorithms, which can recommend good music to users. It also boasts a much broader user-base, unlike Douban, which fosters smaller, niche communities.
According to Chinese social media marketing company Chozan, most of the 60 million registered Douban users come from a well-educated, urban, middle-class background.
The platform is more niche-focused than other Chinese social media platforms and fits the needs of Douban users, who use it to view and share specific topics they are interested in; it is an online community based on user-generated content, predominantly focused on books, movies, and other (popular) culture related topics.
Of course, virtually all Chinese DJs and nightclubs also have Weibo accounts, where they often gather more followers than on Douban. But the problem with Weibo is that the range of topics covered is overwhelmingly broad – it can then be very hard to create communities centered around a specific genre of music. “On Weibo, people talk too much about everything, so it can be a little bit of a waste of time..”, Rainbow says.
Most music discussion groups (some of which we will list below) on Weibo do not focus on techno, house, or trance but rather on ‘underground’ music in general, or on all kinds of electronic dance music put together.
This is why, according to Rainbow, the online potential of dance music lies more with the development of Xiami and Douban: “I think that there is a great potential with new technologies for the spread of culture and music. For example, when I use Xiami today, I am so happy to see many young people writing and uploading music.”
Photo posted by Arkham on Weibo.
In this way, social media could provide the infrastructure necessary for the development of a thriving China-based electronic-music scene. Fostering creative online communities and online sharing can give opportunities to new generations of artists to get together, organize events, and share music and knowledge.
Social media could also help in increasing the general public’s awareness of different genres of music. According to Rainbow, the problem is not that Chinese people do not like dance music, but rather that many have never been exposed to it.
“The thing is – I have also seen a lot of poor countryside people who listen to music, but not electronic music, simply because they don’t know it yet. When we did the YinYang festival on the Great Wall, the first year (out of five) we had some promotional CDs and t-shirts which we gave to villagers who live there. The second year, they came to us asking for more CDs because they all loved it. Within a year, it [electronic music] became extremely popular among them. It’s just that they were not aware.”
Despite its relatively late beginnings, and the series of obstacles it faces, the electronic dance music scene in China has enormous cultural and commercial potential. And perhaps, social media could be the key to unlock it.
“People don’t really have a way to reach out. The use of social media is crucial to developing the scene,” Rainbow Gao concludes.
–By Luka de Boni
EXTRA: WHO TO FOLLOW IN THE SCENE
What’s on Weibo has compiled a list of DJs, Nightclubs, labels and discussion groups to follow on Chinese social media. Not all artists/nightclubs/labels have pages on all platforms. Because Douban and Xiami don’t function on a follower-followee basis, but rather by the number of page visits or music streamings, the number of followers on these platforms have not been listed:
DJs to follow:
Mickey Zhang: Weibo – 2,800 followers. Xiami. Douban.
Weng Weng: Weibo – 4,800 followers. Douban.
Diva Li: Weibo – 13,000 followers. Xiami.
Yang Bing: Xiami.
Nightclubs to follow:
Arkham, Shanghai: Weibo – 19,000 followers. Douban.
Mansion, Shanghai: Weibo – 2,000 followers. Xiami.
Lantern, Beijing: Weibo – 9,000 followers. Douban.
TAG, Chengdu: Weibo – 6,600 followers. Douban.
Labels to follow:
Genome6.66MBP: Weibo – 2,000 followers. Xiami.
Asian Dope boys: Weibo – 5,400 followers.
Discussion groups/pages to follow:
Shanghai Nightclub Guide (上海夜店蹦迪指南): Weibo – 23,600 followers.
No Solution Music Network (无解音乐网): Weibo – 37,000 followers.
Mixmag China: Weibo – 12,000 followers.
Native Instruments China: Weibo – 10,000 followers.
Electronic music live performance equipment application and discussion (电子音乐现场演出设备应用及讨论): Douban – 4000 members.
National electric music musicians contact (全国电子音乐人联系): Douban – 3000 members.
Enjoyed this article? You might also enjoy our interview on The Early Days of Rock in China.
By Luka de Boni
Follow @whatsonweibo
1 In this article, electronic dance music refers to the styles of music that emerged in the 80s in Detroit and in Chicago, such as techno or house. The main components of these genres are 4/4 beats, with the repetitive rhythm of the music more important than the song itself. Note that electronic dance music should not be confused with EDM, which is its own musical genre. EDM is a term given by American journalists in 2010 to commercial electronic music in order to boost the genre’s commercial appeal. EDM music is more melodic, non-repetitive and focuses on the ‘drop’, a fast, noisy accumulation of cymbals and hi-hats to give the song a feeling of climax. EDM DJs are world famous – Martin Garrix, Aviici or David Guetta are well-known representatives. Electronic dance music DJs on the other hand are famous only within their community – names such as Maceo Plex, Pan-pot ir Richie Hawtin will probably not ring a bell.
2A DJ, model and entrepreneur, Rainbow Gao (高天虹) has been engaged in entrepreneurial ventures since the early 1990s. After a modeling career that spanned through the 1980s, she opened one of China’s first KTV rooms in 1992, hosted a podcast radio-show in Tianjin, and founded her first establishment ‘Sun Garden Bar’ in Beijing in 1995. Around this time, she became acquainted with electronic dance music while partying in Beijing. During the 2000s, she founded and managed a modelling agency. Since 2010, Rainbow has been heavily invested in the musical and cultural scenes, mostly through The Mansion, a nightclub and event-place which she owns and manages. The concept of The Mansion is simple: work, and you can sleep and eat there for free. Rainbow Gao explains: “Mansion as a club venue is creative in many ways . It’s not just about the music, it’s also about the community, the freedom, and not about the money … There is a free DJ school, and even a free bar-tending school.”
3The typical Berlin techno/house nightclub is set in a basement, or ‘bunker’. The concrete walls improve the sound-quality inside, and reduce the noise heard outside.
Spotted a mistake or want to add something? Please let us know in comments below or email us.
©2018 Whatsonweibo. All rights reserved. Do not reproduce our content without permission – you can contact us at info@whatsonweibo.com.
China Brands, Marketing & Consumers
Starbucks Goes Xinjiang & The Kardashians in China
Starbucks rebrands as “Star-Bazaar” in Urumqi—what does it say about shifting perceptions of Western brands in China? Also: a cheating sports influencer and the souvenirs that became most hated.
Originally published in the Eye on Digital China newsletter on Sunday, October 4, 2026.
In this edition:
- Quick scrolls: A Chinese athlete cheated her way to the Berlin Marathon’s finish
- Zooming in: When Localization Gets Political: Starbucks Goes Xinjiang
- On the Feed: The Kardashians in China
- Phrase of the Week: The 3 souvenirs sold everywhere, but nobody wants them
🗞️ QUICK SCROLLS
🇯🇵 The National Day holiday has begun, but nobody’s going to Japan. Although Japan was the number one outbound destination for Chinese travelers during last year’s October holiday, it has now dropped out of the top ten destinations entirely. According to data from Chinese tour operator Tuniu (途牛), Indonesia, Turkey, and South Korea are among this year’s most-booked overseas destinations.
🚲 Chinese fitness influencer “Abeeeer” was caught cheating during the Berlin Marathon after she posted about running her “personal best.” The sport-blogger (530k+ followers on Xiaohongshu) was photographed riding on the back of a bicycle around the 38-kilometer mark. On Saturday, she publicly apologized and admitted that she had broken the rules and that she was “feeling unwell.”
The sports influencer was caught hitching a ride to the finish line.
🏳️🌈 Japanese volleyball player Rui Takahashi came out as gay on Tuesday, saying he wanted to help others struggling with their sexuality by coming out publicly. On Douyin, many Chinese fans and commenters praised Rui for his bravery.
🤖 Former Global Times editor-in-chief Hu Xijin (胡锡进) published a National Day essay praising the country’s achievements but forgot to delete the AI chatbot’s closing follow-up question (”Would you like me to read through the whole text again and check it for omissions?”). Hu quickly deleted the AI prompt, but “Hu Xijin’s National Day AI ghostwriting fail” had already gone trending.
⚽ Chinese football produced its best and worst result of the year nineteen hours apart. On Friday, the senior men’s national team lost 0–5 to Palestine – a first-ever loss to that opponent – in a friendly in Chongqing. On Saturday, the under-23 team China took the men’s football bronze medal at the 2026 Asian Games, beating Uzbekistan 4-3 on penalties.
🎵 One of China’s most influential singers, composers and music educators has passed away. Liu Huan (刘欢) died of illness in Shanghai on September 25. Internationally, he is best remembered for singing “You and Me,” the official theme song of the 2008 Beijing Olympics.
📱 Chinese internet users now spend more time watching mini-dramas than scrolling social media. Bytedance’s Hongguo app, the short-drama platform, reports 168 million daily active users and an average of 125 minutes per user per day, exceeding Douyin (which itself overtook WeChat for the first time in July).
👁️ ZOOMING IN
Starbucks Goes Xinjiang: When Localization Gets Political
Just ahead of the National Day holiday, Starbucks opened in Xinjiang. The opening of the two stores in the capital, Urumqi, became a big topic of discussion both in China and across English-language social media, but for very different reasons, and viewed through very different lenses.
The brand’s Urumqi debut marks its first expansion into the region since entering the Chinese market over 26 years ago. Back then, Starbucks mostly targeted white-collar workers, focused on first- and second-tier cities, and, for many, symbolized cosmopolitan, urban life.
Starbucks’ move into Xinjiang comes as part of the company’s new Chinese investment and ownership structure: in April of this year, Chinese company Boyu Capital (博裕资本) became 60% owner of Starbucks’ China operations.
Starbucks Becomes ‘Starbazaar’
On Chinese social media, on the opening days of September 28–29 and in the days that followed, conversations were largely consumer-focused. The new stores, long queues, special menu, and merchandise created online excitement surrounding Starbucks’ Xinjiang debut.
The promotion of the new stores — particularly the Xinjiang International Grand Bazaar flagship store (the second store is located at Tianshan International Airport) — has also taken a distinctly local approach. Rather than emphasizing the arrival of a foreign brand in a new frontier market, Starbucks has presented itself as a brand adapting to, and becoming part of, its new local surroundings.
The flagship store incorporates Xinjiang elements throughout its design and marketing, from local patterns and music to a special menu featuring items such as baklava and lamb pastries, along with limited-edition merchandise. Its mascot is a Starbucks bear dressed in stylized Uyghur traditional attire.
Promotional visuals by Starbucks
The Urumqi Starbucks even has a unique store name: “Star-Bazaar” (星巴扎, Xīng Bāzhā), a play on Starbucks’ Chinese name, 星巴克 (Xīngbākè), and 巴扎 (bāzhā), “bazaar.” The nickname captures this broader marketing approach: not simply bringing Starbucks to Xinjiang, but giving Starbucks a distinctly Xinjiang identity.
This distinct approach resonates with Chinese consumers, who have been posting photos of the enormous lines in front of the stores and showing off their online “check-ins” at the new local hotspot.
Over the past years, Xinjiang has acquired positive associations in various Chinese consumption contexts. At one point, “made with Xinjiang cotton” even generated a buycott and became a popular slogan among online sellers sourcing cotton from the region.
Starbucks in China apparently has a lot of confidence in the positive appeal of Xinjiang-themed products: for the National Day holiday, it is rolling out Xinjiang-themed menu items to more than 2,700 Starbucks stores across 41 Chinese cities.
From Coffee to Controversy
On X and in Western media, however, reactions to the Xinjiang Starbucks have been far less positive. The opening was framed primarily as a political and human-rights story and faced much criticism.
Among these critical voices is US Congressman John Moolenaar, who chairs the House Select Committee on China. He called it a “morally bankrupt decision” to open stores in Xinjiang amid ongoing concerns about human rights abuses in the region, and called on Starbucks to close the cafes, arguing that “every cup sold in these stores ties an iconic American brand to the CCP’s brutal campaign against the Uyghurs.”
“There is no justifiable reason for an American company to do business in a region where the Chinese Communist Party has detained more than a million Uyghurs and is stripping them of their faith, language and culture,” he said.
Image spread by US lawmakers
American criticism of Starbucks in Xinjiang soon reached Chinese social media, becoming a number-one trending topic on Weibo on Sunday, October 4.
“Xinjiang” used to be a highly sensitive and heavily censored word on Chinese social media, but since around 2018–2021, when the region increasingly became part of the ordinary national development agenda, online discussions have been allowed and steered in different directions.
The controversial internment camps widely reported on in Western media were officially described as “vocational skills education and training centers” (职业技能教育培训中心): “people-oriented” facilities intended to “fundamentally eliminate the environment and soil that breeds terrorism and religious extremism.”
Following the 2021 sanctions on Chinese officials over alleged human rights abuses and the Xinjiang cotton controversy — when Western brands distanced themselves from Xinjiang cotton over forced-labor concerns — Chinese online narratives surrounding the region shifted further.
A major “support Xinjiang cotton” social media campaign, launched by state media and official channels, symbolized a defense of China’s sovereignty against Western interference. International criticism was cast as an attack on China’s dignity, rallying the public around national pride. Since then, foreign criticism of policies in Xinjiang has often not been censored, but instead published and reframed as another attack on China.
This time, too, these dynamics unfolded, although in a different form. The criticism was discussed in the context of America, once again, “digging up its tired old lies about Xinjiang” (#美方又翻出老掉牙的涉疆谎言#). China’s Ministry of Foreign Affairs spokesperson Guo Jiakun said that US institutions habitually fabricate accusations and attack and smear China for political purposes, “without any credibility whatsoever.”
Netizens blamed critics for being hypocritical and for “denying the people of Xinjiang the chance to drink Starbucks.” Many others also pointed out that ‘Starbucks China’ is no longer quite the same thing as ‘Starbucks.’
Meanwhile, netizens also seem to appreciate the fact that Starbucks had not responded to the controversy — at least, not at the time of writing. Instead, its response has simply been to keep posting promotional material and videos about the Xinjiang stores, an approach some described as “defiant.”
The Starbucks opening in Xinjiang brings two very different sides of the same discussion into view. On one side, there is a consumer perspective; on the other, a human-rights angle. One emphasizes local culture, while the other focuses on international politics. And while one side stresses the responsibility of a Western multinational operating in Xinjiang, the other appreciates precisely how much this foreign company is localizing itself.
It also shows how Western rejection of Xinjiang-linked business can actually increase the symbolic value of Xinjiang-linked consumption in China. People may appreciate the local flavors, ethnic elements, colors, and design, but there is another layer to it, too: consuming Xinjiang can become an expression of national solidarity, especially when foreign criticism turns an otherwise ordinary consumer choice into something political.
In the end, perhaps the most striking thing is the shift in how Starbucks itself is perceived. When Starbucks first entered China, part of its appeal was precisely how foreign it was, offering access to an imagined Western, cosmopolitan way of life. More than two decades later, in Urumqi, Starbucks is being appreciated for almost the opposite reason: for how local it is becoming, selling an imagined Xinjiang experience back to Chinese consumers.
📱ON THE FEEDS
The Kardashians in China: “Manifesting” and Magic Mushrooms
The Kardashians have been on my feeds this week due to their recent China visit.
First: the Kardashians in the US are not what they are in China. Many people in China have never heard about them, but they did reach many people in corners of the internet due to fan-subtitled uploads of Keeping Up With the Kardashians or through clips cirulating online. What also matters: Kim Kardashian was one of the first major Western celebrities to open an official Xiaohongshu account back in 2018, and also one of the first to sell products directly from there.
What attracted attention in their China visit is that, after doing sightseeing and visiting the Great Wall, Kim Kardashian – who came to China for the NikeSKIMS sportswear event in Shanghai – went for dinner with her entire entourage at the well-known Yunnan restaurant In & Out (Yī zuò Yī wàng 一坐一忘).
That is the same restaurant where US secretary Yellen had her “magic mushrooms” back in 2023. The Kardashians had those same mushrooms with their orders.
They are called jiànshǒuqīng (见手青), which literally means “see hand blue”, in reference to turning blue when handled. It is the lanmaoa asiatica mushroom species that grows in China’s Yunnan region and is considered hallucinogenic (nothing happens when properly prepared though).
The restaurant quickly tapped into the buzz by launching a “let’s manifest” or “Let’s 显化” set menu containing the dishes they had.
The Kardashians, but mostly mum Kris Jenner, is famous among netizens as a lucky charm for wealth. Jenner believes in the power of manifestation: focusing on what you want through visuals and prayer in order to actually get what you want.
Some of the images used by Chinese netizens to “manifest” good luck through Kris Jenner visuals
The fact that mum Kris Jenner, more than Kim herself, became popular in China has to do with the perception of her as the driving force behind the family’s success, pushing everyone to where they are today and coordinating their careers. In doing so, she is the one who’s seen as the “symbol of wealth” and — through her own belief in the power of manifestation — became the perfect image for Chinese netizens to make their own wishes visible, like a digital good luck charm.
Kris wore a blue Tang suit (唐装, tángzhuāng) to the Shanghai launch event, which Chinese commentators read as a friendly gesture toward the Chinese market.
For In & Out, the “manifesting” formula seems to work. Their “Let’s Manifest” menu is popular and resonates online, where people mostly find it funny to see the restaurant capitalizing on its VIP guests so quickly.
🀄 WORD OF THE WEEK
Sucker’s Souvenirs Starter Pack: The Three Things Everyone Sells and Nobody Wants
景区”冤种三件套” jǐngqū yuānzhǒng sānjiàntào
Lit.: Scenic Area Sucker’s Three-Piece Set
Meaning: The “Tourist-Trap Trio”: generic souvenirs you see everywhere
During this National Day holiday, when so many Chinese are traveling all over the country, one phenomenon being discussed (also on Zhihu) is the scenic site’s 冤种三件套 (yuānzhǒng sānjiàntào), roughly “the sucker’s three-piece set,” or more loosely, the “tourist-trap trio.”
This refers to those three things that every Chinese tourist site sells nowadays, yet nobody really wants: scenic-spot hand creams, fridge magnets, and cultural-themed ice cream.
The formula is the same everywhere, repeated in the same kinds of shops, and is part of China’s wénchuàng (文创 – culturally creative) boom that started in the 2010s, where local cultural elements and symbols are turned into commercially attractive products that aren’t even produced locally. Even though the landmarks and texts may change, they all follow the same cookie-cutter model reproduced across the country.
Examples of the same souvenirs sold at every scenic site.
But these kinds of common tourist-attraction purchases are becoming less popular among younger Chinese. One reason is that they are more critical of overconsumption and unwilling to buy overpriced stuff they don’t need anyway. They are willing to spend money on more genuine, locally made items, like pottery or DIY products.
Another reason is that these products have also become the ultimate sign of the lamentable homogenization of Chinese tourist sites (景区同质化), where you’ll find the same shops, foods, signs, and souvenirs whether you’re up north or down south.
Another reason is that online shopping has become so mainstream that most shoppers now recognize they can buy the same products for much less on sites like Taobao.
Tourist hand cream sold on Taobao.
💬 On Xiaohongshu, one commenter wrote: “A fridge magnet that costs 9.9 yuan with free shipping online suddenly sells for 28 yuan once you’re inside a tourist attraction. And the ice cream is the funniest one: five seconds to take a photo, ten seconds to melt, and whether it actually tastes good is anyone’s guess.”
💬 Another commenter on Zhihu wrote: “Really good cultural-creative products should try to put the place into the product, rather than simply putting the name of the place onto the product. Because what people really want to take home when they travel is some small connection that existed between themselves and that place. When your product can achieve that, then it truly becomes a souvenir.”
That’s a wrap!
Best,
Manya
🔚
Eye on Digital China, by Manya Koetse, is co-published on Substack and What’s on Weibo. Both feature the same new content — so you can read and subscribe wherever you prefer. Substack offers community features, while What’s on Weibo provides full archive access.
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Chapter Dive
The Power of Ugly: Why Niu Lai Became China’s Unlikeliest Box-Office Hit
How the two-person animated film Niu Lai turned its “ugly” visuals, dreamcore nostalgia, and remarkable cinema journey into a nationwide participatory meme.
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Manya Koetse (@manyapan) and powered by What’s on Weibo.
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Mbappé, Mao & the Backlash on Chinese Social Media
Mbappé, Mao, and the Joke That Shall Not Be Named
The French Protests, Viewed from China: Five Narratives on Chinese Social Media
What Does 20 Yuan ($3) Mean Anymore? China’s Disappearing Living Rooms & the Great Laundry Debate
Starbucks Goes Xinjiang & The Kardashians in China
Why Japan Has So Many Surnames, China’s Back-to-School Shifts & Taiwan Pavilion Trouble
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Denis Doeland
August 28, 2018 at 4:48 pm
Great read! The music industry has been fundamentally transformed by the digital revolution. The production, distribution, marketing, promotion and consumption of music, and electronic dance music (EDM) in particular, have been digitized. Music professionals and festival organizers face new challenges and are able exploit new opportunities. Especially in China. Herewith some of the learnings I experienced with the dj’s and festivals I assist https://www.edmandthedigitalworld.com/2015/09/22/why-djs-and-festivals-should-change/
Frankie
October 6, 2018 at 4:27 pm
I completely disagree, China has no music scene at all. They have no taste in music at all. They let recordings play or only EDM. The people never dance. They hire girls to stand around in the clubs so that men come and spend money. It`s all fake. Foreign Dj`s need to play what the owners want. It`s a total drag. When a tune plays that has lyrics in the people sit down as they don`t understand anything else besides doef doef doef. No house,tech house, minimal,techno or trance. Complete waste of time and above all else all the alcohol is fake.
Migs Feranti
June 25, 2026 at 4:47 pm
This article goes down the usual route of a few clicky Chinese dj’s and club owners who clubs and events were more centred on hype or claims, not the music.
They contribute a miniscule amount of what actually happened in China with the club scene when it was foreign DJ’s that got things going, especially the British. Monotonous minimal house nights and the occasional event with even more monotonous minimal house played a miniscule part in whatever scene there ever was in China.
Manya
July 16, 2026 at 4:05 pm
This article was written eight years ago. There’s a more recent article, although also 5 years old, you might like to check out here: https://www.whatsonweibo.com/mainstream-underground-and-online-electronic-dance-music-in-china/