Inventive, Diverse, and Indulgent. Chinese Youth Are Taking Instant Noodles Up a Notch
Too busy to check in on the RADII website every day? We got you every Monday with a summary of all the freshest takes on China’s youth culture in the last week:
- Yet another example of fan culture in China run amok, fans arrested for selling celebrity flight information.
- Chinese-American singer Wang Lee Hom’s divorce announcement blew up on the Chinese internet. We catch you up on the timeline of the messiest and most high-profile divorce in recent memory.
- Tragic death of Tencent Game engineers triggers online speculation, some blame his passing on Chinese Tech companies’ notorious 996 work schedule.
- Netizens are going crazy for McDonald’s new ‘cat boxes’, which come with the purchase of a special combo meal.
- As many of you found your way home through the multiverse in the new Spidey film, we found an Elon Musk lookalike that will have you second-guessing which reality you are in.
Intrigued? Keep scrolling, my friend.
Chinese Youth Take Their Love for Instant Noodles to the Next Level
“It would be a pity to exclude instant noodles from my life,” says Fiona Xu, a 21-year-old junior college student based in the city of Hangzhou in East China.
So many of her memories involve the food item, Xu tells RADII. When she was in Europe for her middle school exchange program, teenage Xu found convenience stores were the best place to shy away from conversations and enjoy a hot meal. Her most common selections were a pack of instant noodles and a rice ball.
The ubiquitous snack became even more important during the early days of the pandemic. Xu’s university campus was closed to the public, and she had limited access to food in the college dorm, so she had to rely on instant noodles, eating them at least three times a week.
Even though Xu has moved out of her dorm, she still eats instant noodles regularly. Since the end of 2020, she has been documenting every pack of noodles she consumes and sharing her culinary adventures on social media.
This beautifully made claymation promotional video for the 2022 Beijing Winter Olympics has won our hearts. The two-minute-thirty-second clip was posted on Weibo, a microblogging site, featuring a dozen clay figurines partaking in various winter sports.
Each adorable clay character represents one of the 12 animals of the Chinese zodiac, and the symbolism doesn’t stop there, many of the figures are also dressed in traditional Chinese clothing.
Excuse us while we find some extra space on our office desk for these little guys!
- An 11-year-old boy dancing in his green fish mask to COVID test has gone viral on Chinese social media.
- What if you could have Chinese signature dishes like Dumplings, Old Beijing Zha Jiang noodles, and Southern-style buns, but ALL plant-based and with ZERO animal products? Zrou is the solution to your equation.
- With innovations at every turn, Beijing is set to take on its title as host of the high-tech Winter Olympics with flying colors. Here are six high-tech innovations that we are most looking forward to.
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