Haier Marks 30 Years of Specialty Stores With Documentary Revisiting a 16-Year-Old Washing Machine Journey in Tibet
Haier released a documentary film revisiting a 2010 story in which a Tibetan man carried a 30-kg washing machine over a 5,000-meter mountain pass.
Haier (海尔) has released a documentary film, "Tianlu Huixiang" (天路回响), built around a single, documented consumer story spanning sixteen years. In 2010, a man named Zhige from Medog, Tibet carried a 30-kilogram Haier washing machine across a mountain pass approaching 5,000 meters in altitude, a journey that took three days and two nights on foot. The film revisits that story on the occasion of Haier's specialty store network's 30th anniversary.
The documentary traces how each subsequent chapter unfolded. In 2016, Haier service staff drove and then hiked to deliver a replacement machine to the same family. By 2026, a road had reached the family's home; the household had moved into a new house and expanded from a single washing machine to a full suite of Haier smart home appliances. The film uses these milestones to show how infrastructure in remote parts of China changed in parallel with the brand's own service model.
The campaign frames Haier's specialty store evolution explicitly: from appliance sales outlets, the stores have broadened to cover delivery, installation, repair, and general community convenience, with many locations now operating under the designation "Good Neighbor Convenience Service Stations."
The choice to anchor a brand anniversary campaign in a verified, longitudinal user story — rather than in product specifications or promotional offers — reflects a broader pattern in Chinese consumer marketing, where emotional authenticity and documented social impact carry growing weight with audiences. The Tibet geography and the visible transformation of living conditions in a once-inaccessible region give the narrative a specific resonance that a standard appliance advertisement could not replicate.
