Gold prices are through the roof and even gold beans are too expensive now. So young Chinese shoppers pivoted to milligram-sized gold fragments stamped with Hello Kitty and "get rich" blessings for ¥10 a pop.

These tiny phone charms contain actual 999 gold, just nowhere near enough to be worth anything if you tried to melt it down. But nobody`s pretending this is an investment. It`s an emotional backup and a good luck charm that costs less than lunch. Wedding favors, office gifts, anime con swaps, gold fragments became the new social currency because they`re fancy enough to feel generous but cheap enough that losing one won`t wreck your day.

#radii #radiimedia #chinesegenz #goldtrends #luxuryculture #consumerbehavior #emotionalvalue #microtrends #chineseconsumers #luxuryforless #goldcharms #streettrendsChina ...

Where Winds Meet (《燕云十六声》) wasn’t supposed to work on Steam. When it launched in November, another Chinese MMO had just flopped internationally. But Where Winds Meet hit 250,000 concurrent players, and most of them are Western gamers who can’t stop playing.

Here’s what hooked them: It’s a free-to-play wuxia (武侠) open-world MMO set in a fictionalized Northern Song Dynasty, and it’s massive. The world is packed with minigames, secret areas, and random encounters. You can pet cats (which actually gives you buffs). You can fish using Tai Chi instead of a fishing rod. The graphics are stunning, with scenery that makes players stop mid-quest just to screenshot.

The combat animations: especially boss fights are motion-captured in collaboration with Stephen Tung Wai, a nine-time award-winning fight choreographer from Hong Kong cinema. The game is loaded with references to classics like Kung Fu Hustle and Crouching Tiger, Hidden Dragon. Skills like Leaping Toad and Guardian Palm are straight out of those films.

But here’s the twist: At launch, the Steam rating dropped to 42%. Western players were confused by the cultural references. What is “Jianghu” (江湖)? Why did I turn into a horse? Why does everyone look like a scholar instead of a muscular warrior?

Then they kept playing. The story hit emotionally. The world felt alive. The animations didn’t look cheap or generic like other martial arts MMOs. Players realized this wasn’t some low-budget cash grab, real effort went into making it look and feel good.

Reddit threads exploded with questions. Chinese players jumped in to explain wuxia culture and clarify that “xia” (侠) isn’t about being a superhero, it’s about helping people because you happened to be there.

Now the game sits at 88% positive reviews. Western players are still learning what “Jianghu” means, but they’re hooked. A streamer stumbled on shadow puppetry and said, “This is so cool” without knowing what it was.

Where Winds Meet proved something: a deeply Chinese game doesn’t need to be watered down for Western audiences. It just needs to be good.

#radii #radiimedia #wherewindsmeet #game #gaming #chinese #wuxia #chinesegame #chinesegaming #steam #mmo ...

If you’re unfamiliar with it, Three Squirrels is one of China’s largest snack brands, a billion-dollar company built on cute mascots and e-commerce dominance.

So when a customer tried to return a pack of chestnuts and the merchant name appeared as “Refund Mouse,” confusion spread quickly. Was the brand being passive-aggressive? Was it a glitch?

The truth is stranger: Three Squirrels confirmed that every employee is assigned a “mouse name." It’s part of the company’s internal culture, where staff adopt rodent-themed identities — from entry-level workers all the way up to executives.

The CEO refers to himself as “Squirrel Daddy.” Upper management goes by names like “Mouse Little Ren” and “Mouse Three Rivers.” Even the Party branch follows the naming system.

The contrast between playful internal identity and ceremonious customer address quickly became a talking point online. Social media users enthusiastically invented their own “mouse names,” turning comment sections into a kind of collective improv performance. It was funny, but also a reminder of how deeply China’s workplace nickname culture (花名文化) has embedded itself into modern corporate life.

Originally introduced by tech companies like Alibaba, the system was meant to reduce formality and flatten hierarchy. At Three Squirrels, it has evolved into a full symbolic universe — where internal tools, office spaces, and team structures all follow the same rodent-coded logic.

Some find it charming, others find it absurd, but it’s undeniably one of the more distinctive corners of China’s corporate landscape.

#radiimedia #radii #ChinaWorkCulture #ThreeSquirrels #花名文化 #ChinaInternet #BrandCulture #CorporateIdentity #ChinaTrends ...

Paris Hilton walked into MINISO last week and left with five meters of receipts.

So why is a Chinese affordable lifestyle brand turning global celebrities into excited teenagers? MINISO hits a cultural sweet spot that luxury brands simply cannot. It’s dopamine shopping, cute maximalism, nostalgia therapy, blind-box anticipation, and pop-culture chaos all packaged in a store you can enter with 20 dollars and walk out feeling like a collector. It’s the closest thing to a loot box IRL, and everyone — rich, broke, famous, anonymous — gets the same serotonin rush.

#radiimedia #radii #MINISO #ChinaDesign #PopCulture #ConsumerTrends #GlobalChina #SerotoninShopping #CuteCulture ...