Oct 11, 2021 4 min read

What’s on the Docket for China’s Independent Designers?

It’s fashion week, baby.

Did you miss us? We took the week off last week for China’s national holiday celebrations, but we’re back from vacation this week to deliver a summary on all the freshest takes on China’s youth culture on the RADII website since before the break.

Shanghai Fashion Week Spring/Summer 2022 got its start on October 8. We’re big fans of Labelhoods’ showcases of China’s indie up-and-comer fashion brands. So, we’ve combed through what will be on display and laid out some predictions about what we’ll see this week.
Speaking of indie, here are six documentaries on Modern China from auteur Du Haibin that you should definitely watch (and a nice 20% discount from us).
What was life like as an ‘excess child’ in China? This book tells all.

Intrigued? Keep scrolling, friend.

Romance in China: 5 Predictions For Shanghai Fashion Week SS22

For years, Shanghai Fashion Week’s Labelhood has highlighted young and independent Chinese designers, elevating China’s fashion scene.

For over a decade now, the platform helped several emerging designer brands to grow significantly, including established brand Angel Chen, whose young designer came to the spotlight under Labelhood’s guidance, as well as up-and-coming brands like Yirantian, Chen Peng, and Ming Ma.

Labelhood recently released this season’s lineup and theme, ‘ROMANTIC,’ and announced that the spring-summer session will be from October 9-13 at China SSC Pavilion. From the lineup, we predict that you’re going to find a whole lot of:

Emerging newcomers (some as young as kids in high school).
A revolving door of graduates getting their own shows.
‘China Cool’ becoming a thing.
Sustainable materials. (But, like, they say this every year.)
Weird digital interaction experimentations.

Read more and remember to catch our live coverage of Shanghai Fashion Week SS22 on our Instagram.

Sandy beaches, palm trees, and surf shacks aren’t usually what comes to mind when thinking about China. And until Covid-19, the surf scene on the South China island province of Hainan was a quiet one, attracting only a handful of tourists, while diehard Chinese surfers were more interested in the better swells off the coasts of Southeast Asia.

However, as China’s borders locked down over the last year and a half, surf and beach culture started coming home, finding a place along the coastline of Hainan. Get a taste of the action in these stunning images.

Ever been offended by a robot? Be careful of the Megatron performer at the newly opened Universal Studios Beijing.

The hit Japanese television show Ultraman Tiga was purged from Chinese streaming sites for three days before making a comeback.
This might surprise you, but Chinese netizens are also jumping behind the #FreeBritney movement.
What was it like being an ‘excess child’ during the era of the one-child policy? This author’s new book tells all.

Squid Game, the South Korean show about prisoners forced to play classic children’s games to survive, is on its way to becoming possibly Netflix’s biggest-ever hit. Obsession over the series has even exploded in China, a country that does not have access to the Netflix streaming platform. We delve into why.

Indie music at an abandoned factory. Plain District, aka one of China’s up-and-coming electronic music projects, presented its latest showcase in Beijing and we went to check it out.

Documentary maker Du Haibin is known for his gorgeous and thoughtful movies showcasing the lives of ordinary Chinese people during this modern period of rapid urbanization.

We’ve got a list of six documentaries of his that you should watch on Asia-focused streaming service Montage with a 20% discount for RADII readers.

Perhaps the most famous of the recommendations is 1428, which has won several awards, including Best Documentary at Venice International Film Festival 2009.

In it, Du and his team travel to Sichuan after the Great Sichuan Earthquake and document the aftermath of the major disaster. He manages to film scenes and individual stories not shown on China’s official news streaming sites. This is the first time that the film is available on video-on-demand (VoD) in the US.

Are you a gifted meme maker? Or a storyteller crazy about Chinese youth culture? Take a look below, because we’re currently hiring for the following positions:

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