Hong Kong’s Star Ferry boatmen have been wearing this season‘s best tracksuit for decades. Yeti Out (@YetiOut) cut their new NO CODES capsule from the navy uniform worn by the crew of the 天星小輪 (tiānxīng xiǎolún, ”Star Ferry“). Co-founder Arthur Bray lives in Kowloon and rides the crossing most days, and that’s what pushed him to make a tracksuit that reads as Hong Kong without being too on the nose. The brand‘s framing is club culture without borders and, as the name says, no dress codes: the same fit works for a sweaty dancefloor, a restaurant shift, or the rave you go straight to from work, out the door in the city and out all night. Ahead of the drop, they put the collection on their creative community and captured the energy of Hong Kong style in the tracksuit. It landed exclusively at Hong Kong concept store J-01 before going global online on August 6. #radii #radiimedia #yetiout #streetwear #hongkong

A crudely-animated cartoon ox has become the biggest internet mascot on Chinese social media in weeks. Major outlets are already cashing in on the coverage. On social media, people have gone one step further, calling it China’s cult god. 牛来 (Niu Lai) climbed to the top of cinemas‘ daily screening charts nationwide, and screenings turned into actual events. Rect Repair ’s Saturday screening sold out in under three hours, with fans showing up carrying beef jerky and homemade merch. Nobody can quite explain why, beyond the fact that it‘s genuinely eye-catching. China’s cult-film scene never really had its icon. Whatever Niu Lai does from here, the sheer playfulness of it is exactly what this moment needed. #radii #radiimedia #niulai #cultfilm #chinesecinema

Imagine getting into an MFA program, and this is the syllabus you’re handed: Feng Shui Striptease. An ADHD Classroom. A workshop on your mother‘s tools. A class that teaches you to quit beauty. None of it looks like a real syllabus, because it isn’t one. Enter 山寨MFA (shānzhài MFA, ”knockoff MFA“) a nomadic artist collective born somewhere between Dali and Chaoshan, currently taking over an institution operating at the intersection of art and fashion on Changle Road, for two weeks. They call the whole thing the ”Drifting Economic Model“: making the puppets and performing with them count as the same labor. Shanzhai means ”knockoff.“ But here, it‘s reclaiming the idea of art education and relocating it to places where art isn’t supposed to happen. If the real degree‘s out of reach, they just built one. #radii #radiimedia #shanzhaimfa #chaoshanculture #cheruby

Before smartphones took over, summer break meant browser windows, Flash games, and keyboard co-op. Those long afternoons were spent pulling new friends over to your house, squeezing onto a single chair with the fan blowing, and taking turns guiding Fireboy and Watergirl through another level. From 4399 to QQ Zone, these six websites were the shared digital playground of Chinese millennials. To catch the full story by our RADII writers, click the article link: radii.co/article/6-chinese-m… #radii #radiimedia #chinesemillennials #internetnostalgia #flashgames

What if the most radical thing you could do right now… is stop? 🌸 In a world of infinite scrolls, algorithmic noise, notifications, likes, follows, and general overstimulation, legendary Hong Kong artist Michael Lau has a pretty simple prescription: look around. For our latest VIEWPOINTS exclusive, RADII managing editor sat down with the “Godfather of Designer Toys” to talk art, identity, inspiration, and why finding beauty in the ordinary might be more important than ever. From the seminal Gardener series to his Flowers universe, Lau has built a creative practice around seeing what other people overlook — and his latest collaboration with Carhartt WIP HK takes that philosophy somewhere new. The clothes become canvases, carrying his colorful flowers and their messages of joy, hope, and love into everyday life. Because maybe we don’t need more noise. Maybe we need more flowers. 🌻 Swipe through for some of our favorite moments from the conversation, click the link to RADII for the full exclusive interview: radii.co/article/michael-lau… #RADII #VIEWPOINTS #MichaelLau #CarharttWIP #flowersserendipity

Somebody in Beijing turned the fairground ring toss into a citywide event, and the hardest station is a fire hydrant. The game is 套圈 (tàoquān, "ring toss") — the carnival stall where you lob a hoop over a prize and take home whatever it lands on. Someone pulled the 22cm ring out of the fairground and pointed it at the street instead. Confirmed targets so far: hydrants, QR codes, security cameras, street signs, one fountain.Turns out the city is full of unexpected targets. What makes it interesting is the way you see the city from a different angle. In a place that usually demands speed and efficiency, we finally get the opportunity to slow down and notice things we had walked past for years. When we turn the city into a free playground, maybe we won’t feel as numb and lost in the tide of city lives. #radii #radiimedia #taoquan #citywalk #beijing #chineseyouth

Move over, Perler beads. The craft catching on with China’s urban youth now is 拼布 (pīnbù, ”assembled cloth“), or patchwork. For most of the past year, young China sat in shops placing tiny plastic beads with tweezers. 拼豆 (pīndòu, ”perler beads“) — as a “childhood hobby”, a way to slow down and make something real with your hands, with a big emotional payoff. Now some of those same people are putting the tweezers down and picking up scrap fabric. Grandma‘s quilting circle had this figured out first. #radii #radiimedia #pinbu #chineseyouth #diyculture #craftcore

Remember the fox-and-tiger board game? The tabletop 志怪 (zhìguài, "records of the strange") revival has a second act, and this one puts you on payroll. 《阴阳差事录》(yīnyáng chāishì lù, "The Yin-Yang Errands") builds its whole board around two figures lifted out of folk belief. The first is 走无常 (zǒu wúcháng, "walking as the wuchang") — an ordinary living person conscripted after dark to work as a constable for the underworld, then sent home by morning to get on with their day. The second is 掠剩使 (lüè shèng shǐ, "commissioner of seized surplus"), a supernatural official whose entire job is confiscating whatever wealth you earned beyond what fate allotted you. An auditor. In hell. Play it and you get warrants, quotas, a salary for passing the starting square, and the option to burn money for a ghost to make a problem go away. Players on Xiaohongshu keep landing on the same reaction: how is there still a job down there. Seems like Chinese hell was always modelled on the imperial civil service. #radii #radiimedia #chinesefolklore #boardgames #chineseinternet

Once in a while a meme shows up that's pure nonsense, and it just washes over the whole feed on Xiaohongshu. Since May it's been this trapped opossum, everywhere. What makes it different from the usual brainrot is that there's a little frustration in it. Somehow it captures the mood of young people right now better than anything else has. #radii #radiimedia #chineseinternet #memeculture #genzchina

This is what it looks like when China‘s biggest shopping platform runs a photography contest. Taobao’s brief was simple: post the most abstract, inexplicable photo you‘ve got. What showed up was not nonsense. Everyone quietly brought their best work anyway, cross-tagging #alexwebb under a contest that called them unhinged. A lot of contests in China seem to run this way: show the real skill, but file it under a joke title so nobody can accuse you of being performative — the same naming logic behind 发疯文学 (fāfēng wénxué, ”unhinged literature“) and 废话文学 (fèihuà wénxué, ”nonsense literature“). Swipe to see the ”unhinged“ photos >>> #radii #radiimedia #streetphotography #xiaohongshu #chineseinternet #taobao

Rusty Lake‘s new game: Empresses in the Palace, coming soon. A wave of fan edits is mashing up the Dutch indie game’s signature creepiness with the scheming of China‘s most iconic period drama. Palaces become puzzle boxes, and oncubines become trapped souls. One creator even built a full playable indie fan game. Rusty Lake: Four Seasons Empresses in the Palace Edition lets you walk through the Forbidden City like it’s one of the game‘s eerie rooms. Both worlds share the same obsession: memory, trauma, and the terrifying truth that the past never stays buried. #radii #radiimedia #chinesehorror #indiegames #gameart

Somehow the ghosts in these Chinese horror games are the least scary part. Long before jump scares, Chinese horror lived in objects: paper effigies, joss money, a red bridal dress that reads as funeral white. But sometime around 2019, a handful of indie developers stopped drawing haunted mansions and started drawing the ‘90s instead. The developer behind 烟火 and 三伏 gave the look a name: 电子包浆 (diànzǐ bāojiāng), ”digital patina.“ 包浆 is the soft sheen an antique picks up from decades of being handled. All bet on the same thing: you’re more unsettled by something you‘ve actually seen before. #radii #radiimedia #chinesehorror #indiegames #gameart

August, peak heat season. RADII's August buzzwords are here to add a little teasing to all that restlessness. Maybe you're 丫够燥的 (Yā Gòu Zào De), running too wild for the weather. Or maybe the confidence has tipped over into 中国人能飞 (Zhōngguó Rén Néng Fēi), Chinese people can fly. And when it dips again, no big deal, just remember to 向上叹气 (Xiàngshàng Tànqì). Sigh upward. Then there's the biggest thing Gen Z is dealing with right now: no job. So what do you do about it? You say 没有工作的天 (Méiyǒu Gōngzuò De Tiān), day of no job. Because having a job comes with its own set of problems. Welcome to skill season, where your coworker might just be a 同事skill (Tóngshì Skill). August's buzzwords say more about the mood than the temperature does. Fall into the crazy heat and the Chinese words with us, follow @RADII_Media for more Chinese internet slang like this! #radii #radiimedia #chineseslang #chineseinternet #genzchina

The last thing you'd expect to become a romance game: Outlaws of the Marsh (水浒传), one of China's four great classical novels. It follows 108 outlaws who gather at Mount Liang to form a rebel army against a corrupt imperial court. Bing, a director by trade, has been sitting on the idea for eight years. She was fed up with otome games where female leads are always quiet, artsy, and waiting to be saved. Her demo went viral on Xiaohongshu, where women started debating which hero they'd date. #radii #radiimedia #otomegame #水浒传 #chinesegaming

Just looking at these feels like you're gonna get lost in there. "Enter the Jade Palace…" is a new series by Efe Levent ( @CityhermitMM ). You drift between faded and vibrant, sliding through lo-fi AI visual textures, jade palaces, and Chinatown malls. What makes Levent stand out is how he layers these familiar visual tricks with distinctly Asian textures. Endless palace corridors start to feel like a shared subconscious landmark: somewhere you've dreamt of multiple times but can never quite name. #radii #radiimedia #liminalspace #dreamcore #chinatown #backrooms

Recently caught eyes by Tiehan✨ Scrolling through his feed, it seems like no piece of China‘s ethnic music can hide from him: he’s folding it all into South African-born Amapiano grooves, and it fits perfectly. For most people, discovering a genre abroad just means a new playlist add. But for Tiehan, it rewired something. Born and raised Mongolian-Chinese, he‘d always carried a soft spot for China’s ethnic sonic traditions. In 2023, while Tiehan was living in Toronto, he first heard Amapiano: the log-drum-driven house sound that had already taken over club floors from Lagos to London. It reminded him of home. Soon after, he released his Chinamapiano mixtape. For Tiehan, music feels less like production and more like a cultural bridge. Outside of music, he also has a very unique cooking-wear collection, and this Saturday, he‘s bringing Amapiano back to Shanghai, at Heim Shanghai . Definitely an artist to keep on your radar. #ChinaMusic #Amapiano #ChineseCulture #RADIIMedia #radii

On July 9th, 2005, @dannyway made history by jumping over the Great Wall with a broken foot, and @blabacphoto was the one who documented the whole thing, turning one skateboard trick into China's entry stamp into global skate culture. Photography has followed nearly every major chapter of modern skate culture's development. From classic shots that landed on magazine covers to documentaries, and independent zines, it's made skateboarding into a shared visual language across the world. As skate culture spread, photographers' lenses moved with it, leaving the American West Coast behind for cities and communities everywhere. Two decades later, a generation of Chinese photographers has been filling in everything that jump left out. On view at Fotografiska Shanghai through October 25. #radii #radiimedia #skateculture #fotografiskashanghai #chinesephotography

At first glance, it’s hard to tell what‘s going on in all these film photos, or even which one you’re supposed to stare at. But every picture documents a vivid moment of China, right before social media existed. In 2009, French collector Thomas Sauvin found a batch of 35mm negatives about to be destroyed at a recycling plant on the outskirts of Beijing. If he hadn‘t bought them, they’d have been stripped for silver. What started as damage control became 北京银矿 : over a million negatives, mostly shot as film cameras entered ordinary Chinese households through the ‘80s and ’90s. These pictures were taken before social media ever existed, so looking through them feels like actually stepping into these people‘s lives. Feels like you could stare at these for a whole day. #radii #radiimedia #beijingsilvermine #chinesephotography #filmphotography

Feels like they just grabbed whatever was in their closet and threw it together, and somehow it worked. Hong Kong was at its cultural peak in the 80s: film, music, street, ads all colliding...and style just rode the wave. Zero red carpet energy ✨ #radii #radiimedia #HongKongFashion #80sFashion #HongKongStars #OOTDInspo #RetroStyle #VintageFashion #90sVibe #HKCinema #StyleInspo #ThrowbackFashion