From China’s first soap opera Yearnings to the rise of AI-fueled nostalgia.

Manya is the founder and editor-in-chief of What's on Weibo, offering independent analysis of social trends, online media, and digital culture in China for over a decade. Subscribe to gain access to ...

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I n April 2025, China’s food delivery sector witnessed a somewhat dramatic development, which attracted major attention online, when Chinese e-commerce giant JD.com publicly challenged food delivery ...

D o you know who Li Gang is? On April 22, 2025, it is the name that is top trending on Chinese social media platforms Weibo, Douyin, and Kuaishou, following the news that Li Gang was arrested (# 李刚被逮捕 ...

A fter visiting Shanghai, Beijing, and the Shaolin Temple in Henan, popular American YouTuber IShowSpeed (Darren Watkins) livestreamed from Chengdu on March 31. During his stream, he visited a ...

Manya is the founder and editor-in-chief of What's on Weibo, offering independent analysis of social trends, online media, and digital culture in China for over a decade. Subscribe to gain access to ...

PART OF THIS TEXT COMES FROM THE WEIBO WATCH PREMIUM NEWSLETTER Over the past few weeks, the Chinese blockbuster Ne Zha 2 has been trending on Weibo every single day. The movie, loosely based on ...

PREMIUM NEWSLETTER | ISSUE #43 Overview: Dear Reader – “Dear Li Hua”: Explaining the TikTok Xiaohongshu Honeymoon What’s on Weibo Chapters – 15 Years of Weibo What’s Popular – ‘Black Myth Wukong’ at ...

O ver the past few days, a Chinese song ‘challenge’ has been going viral on TikTok, with various TikTokers from America and beyond mastering the phonetics of a Mandarin song, lip-syncing it and ...

A shocking and extremely cruel video in which a Chinese wanghong (online influencer) tortures a stolen cat has sparked outrage on Chinese social media. The person involved is the Anhui-based food ...

Sheep a Sheep was the game hit of the year in China. But looking back, people struggle to understand how the simple game actually became such a success in the first place. I t was the game that ...