And so I come up with the idea, why don't you come and help us? Olivia, say hello to our audience and maybe introduce a bit more about yourself.

Sure.

Thank you so much for having me on, Robert.

It's a huge honor.

I can safely say long time listener, first time caller.

So it's a great honor to be here.

I have been living in China for about 10 years.

That's what I want to add here.

Her observations complicate the simple story.

We tend to think of China as one big, homogeneous place.

But the reality is that there are so many different parts of China, and much of it ends up being quite contradictory, which is why it's also so difficult to reduce answers to good or bad, slow or fast.

My journey last summer, and actually I've continued my field work visiting lower tier cities across China this year as well, which has brought me to over 40 cities across China in the past year, took me to almost every single province and was done almost entirely by train.

In each of these cities, I walked on foot for miles, just watching life unfold, seeing where and how people spend their time, how they spend their money, and talking to them.

Now let's look at China under a very broad brushstroke first to answer this question.

So from the early 2000s up until around 2020, China was undergoing monumental growth.

We want to ask her, from her work with international brands on WeChat, Xiaohongshu and Zoin, what are the no-negotiables for a foreign brand that wants to succeed in China now in 2026?

So what inspired you to embark on this tour and what were you hoping to learn that you simply couldn't get from anywhere else?

I've been living in China for over 10 years now, and that has been mostly in Shanghai.

As we know, China changes very quickly, things happen very fast, and Shanghai can be a bit of a bubble, so it is quite different from the rest of China.

And I got to a point last year where I had gone on two different trips.

So I had gone to Jingdezhen, which is a little bit south of Shanghai.

And I had gone to Harbin, which is way up in the north.

If you don't like cold weather, I would not recommend going there in the winter.

Yeah.

What signals are you seeing around how the meaning and experience of Chinese New Year has been shifting and the ways that brands reflect this?

Yes, this is a great question because I see the campaign messaging shifting quite a lot, especially this year.

And I think we'll get into a little bit more detail some of those very specific campaigns from ON, you know, from Apple and Lululemon.

But just to paint a broader picture here.

Three to five or even longer, I would say five to eight years ago, I think we had campaigns from brands which were a lot about family and these larger, really deep societal issues.

And then I would say maybe two to three years ago, we had campaigns that were a little bit more cheerful.

Last year, Ely, the dairy company, had a really great campaign that was very funny about sort of lightened the mood.

What's your take on this?