China Insider

News.

What we're reading, writing, and arguing about — every week.

Food & Beverage

Bubble Tea Gets a Storybook Makeover: CHAGEE Taps an 80-Year-Old Illustrator for Its Summer Drop

CHAGEE (霸王茶姬) just made a summer play that has nothing to do with celebrity endorsements or viral dance challenges — and everything to do with an 80-year-old pi

Jul 122 min read
Beauty

Beast's 15th Birthday Is a Mirror Maze Filled With Watermelons and Hidden Perfume

Fifteen years ago, Beast (野兽派) was just a flower shop on Weibo — no storefront, no catalog, just an account that took orders through DMs and wrote a story for e

Jul 112 min read
Food & Beverage

Manner Coffee's Latest Collab Turns a Korean Fashion Brand Into Summer's Chillest Cup

MANNER's collaboration cadence is relentless — but their latest drop with Korean designer brand Rest & Recreation suggests they've figured out something smarter

Jul 112 min read
Marketing

HELLY HANSEN's Summer Collab Rides a Chinese Pun About 'Howling' Into the Wild

Norwegian outdoor brand HELLY HANSEN just made its first move into the designer-toy space — and the hinge point is a single Chinese character: 嗷 (áo).

Jul 102 min read
Marketing

McDonald's Brings Back Wang Leehom 23 Years Later — This Time With Fries

In 2003, Wang Leehom stood in a McDonald's, threw on a pair of headphones, and delivered a Chinese-language hip-hop track that would burrow into a generation's

Jul 102 min read
Food & Beverage

Hema Is Putting Indie Chinese Winemakers on 500 Supermarket Shelves

Walk into any Hema supermarket in China right now and you'll find something unusual in the wine aisle: a bottle with a winemaker's actual face staring back at y

Jul 92 min read
Sports & Wellness

Nearly Half of YONEX's Revenue Now Comes from China — Here's How That Happened

Here's a number that makes you stop: nearly 48% of all YONEX revenue now comes from China.

Jul 93 min read
Retail

ALDI’s plain white ice cream boxes have Chinese shoppers asking if they can use insurance

ALDI China has accidentally turned discount ice cream into one of the summer’s funniest retail stories.

Jul 83 min read
Travel

Ctrip Made Jackie Chan Rip Down a Green Screen — and It's Actually a Brilliant Tourism Pitch

Here's a problem no amount of drone-shot mountain panoramas can fix: when foreign travelers picture China, they're often picturing a movie — cinematic, distant,

Jul 82 min read
Fashion

MINI Just 'Robbed' a Chinese Shoe Brand — and It's the Best Campaign Stunt We've Seen This Summer

Here's a sentence you don't read every day: three MINI Cabriolets just emptied a Shanghai shoe boutique and sped off into the night — and the brand whose store

Jul 73 min read
Food & Beverage

New York’s Molly Tea stores lost the logo and became “? Tea”

New York’s Molly Tea stores did not just change their name.

Jul 77 min read
Fashion

Under Armour Taps Chinese Designer Feng Chen Wang to Lead a Radical New Women's Line

Under Armour just made a move that quietly rewrites the sportswear collaboration playbook — and it did it from Paris.

Jul 72 min read