China Trend Watch: From a Hospital in Crisis to Chaotic Pig Feasts
From 5,000 people crashing a rural pig feast in Chongqing to a collective effort to save Beijing's Yanran Angel hospital, these are this week's talking points on Chinese social media.
🔥 China Trend Watch | Part of Eye on Digital China by Manya Koetse, China Trend Watch is an overview of what’s trending and being discussed on Chinese social media. The previous newsletter was a deep dive into the Dead Yet? app phenomenon.
Welcome to another edition of Eye on Digital China. Not a day goes by these days when Trump isn’t trending. Whether it’s about Venezuela and Greenland, ICE, or his recent speech at the World Economic Forum in Davos, his name keeps popping up in the top hot lists.
However, there are dozens of other topics being discussed on Chinese social media that actually aren’t about the US or the shifting geopolitical landscape. From football to pig-slaughter feasts, from a Henan grandpa in Paris to the latest birth rates, there is an entire world of topics out there that’s blissfully unconnected to anything happening in Washington or Davos — with many of these discussions signaling bigger social stories unfolding in China today. Let’s dive in.
Quick Scroll
🐶 “Eat more dog meat,” a local Community Health Service Center in Ya’an advised in a seasonal health text, suggesting it would help people stay healthy & warm during cold weather. The message sparked controversy among dog lovers online. The center later apologized and issued a corrected version, replacing dog meat with lamb, beef, and chestnuts.
⚽ Chinese goalkeeper Li Hao (李昊) is the man of the moment after China’s under-23 national football team beat Vietnam (0-3) and advanced to the final of the AFC U23 Asian Cup. It marks the first time since 2004 that any Chinese men’s national team (at any level) has reached the final of a continental tournament. In the final, China will face Japan.
👶 China’s latest birth data for 2025 are in, showing yet another record low. The birth rate fell to 5.63 per 1,000 people, with 7.92 million babies born last year — a 17% year-on-year decline.
💸 An “underground” private tutoring operation in Beijing has been hit with a staggering fine of more than 67 million yuan (US$9.6 million) for offering after-school classes without official approval. It’s the highest fine so far under China’s “Double Reduction” policy, introduced in 2021 to curb private tutoring and ease academic pressure on students.
🕯️ He Jiaolong (贺娇龙), a Xinjiang local official who was at the forefront of Chinese officials livestreaming & promoting their regions in creative online ways, died this week after a fatal fall from a horse during work-related filming. She was 47 years old.
🎭 Another death that trended this week was that of renowned Chinese comedian Yang Zhenhua (杨振华, b. 1936), a crosstalk (相声) artist remembered for his classic performances and widely regarded as a cultural icon.
🏛️ A child abuse case that has haunted Chinese netizens for the past two years has come to a close. Xu Jinhua (许金花), the stepmother who tortured and starved her 12-year-old stepdaughter, known as “Qiqi,” to death, was executed on January 20. Xu was sentenced to death in April 2025, and her appeal was rejected last November.
What Really Stood Out This Week
1. Mass Shutdowns of Local Chinese Pig-Slaughter Feasts
Annual pig feasts are traditionally meant to be a source of community bonding and ritual exchange. But for many towns and districts, páozhūyàn (刨猪宴), traditional pig-slaughter feasts, have now become a source of concern, leading to shutdowns of local events across multiple provinces.
The story begins on January 9, when a farmer’s daughter nicknamed Daidai (呆呆) from Hezhou in Chongqing posted a lighthearted message on Douyin asking whether people could help with her family’s pig slaughter, saying her old dad would not be able to hold down the two pigs. In return, she promised to treat helpers to “pork soup and rice,” adding: “To be honest, I just want the road in front of my house to be packed with cars, even more than at a wedding. I want to finally prove myself in the village!“
Two days later, on January 11, when the pig feast took place, Daidai got more than she had asked for. Not only was the road in front of her home packed with cars — the entire village was completely blocked as over 1,000 cars and some 5,000 visitors arrived. With two pigs nowhere near enough, five pigs ended up being slaughtered. Livestreamers flooded the scene, Daidai’s name was quickly trademarked, and before she knew it, she had entered internet history — including her own Baidu page — as the girl who turned a local gathering into a national feast.
By now, the incident has spiraled into a much bigger issue, as others in the Sichuan–Chongqing region want to replicate the viral success of Hechuan, creating chaos and sometimes unsafe situations by turning neighborhood moments into tourist activities. This has led to a series of events being canceled or shut down.
On January 14, a planned páozhūyàn, initiated by local influencer Jia Laolian (假老练) in Longquanyi District in Chengdu, had to be canceled at the last minute after thousands of people registered to attend. On January 17, an online influencer in Caijiagang Subdistrict, Chongqing, also held a free pig-slaughter feast that quickly led to potentially dangerous overcrowding. Police shut it down. Another event took place in Ziyang, where 8,000 people had registered to attend while there were only 200 parking spaces available. There were more.
The current hype surrounding these pig-slaughter events reflects a sense of urban–rural nostalgia for local traditions and human connections, but probably says more about how viral tourism in China has worked since the frenzy surrounding Zibo: at lightning speed, influencers and local tourism bureaus jump onto fast-moving trends, hoping to get their own viral moment and, quite literally, piggyback on it.
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