Chinese App Xiaohongshu Outshines Instagram

I’m writing this from Dali, a city in China’s Yunnan province that locals affectionately call “Dalifornia.” It earned that nickname because it has become a refuge for burnt-out tech workers, artists, and wanderers seeking a quiet escape. My DiDi driver hums along to old karaoke ballads as we glide past rice paddies and fog-shrouded mountains. This is not the China most foreigners picture when they imagine megacities of glass towers, bullet trains, and drone deliveries.

Over the past decade, Dali has drawn a particular crowd: young Chinese urbanites exhausted by the relentless pressure of places like Beijing and Shanghai. In those cities, competition for good jobs is brutal, and housing remains punishingly expensive despite the recent property downturn. Here, the ancient streets are lined with vintage shops, trendy cafés, ceramic studios, tattoo parlors, and DIY art spaces,the unmistakable markers of a globally recognized “cool neighborhood.”

The setting itself shapes the vibe. Dali sits at about 6,500 feet above sea level, nestled between the Cangshan mountains and the shimmering Erhai Lake. This southwestern mountain town feels designed for lingering over coffee and browsing art markets. If you’ve never tried Yunnan food, I can’t recommend it enough. Because the province borders Southeast Asia, many dishes carry subtle hints of Thai, Burmese, or Lao influence while remaining unmistakably Chinese.

Yunnan is also famous for its wild mushrooms. You might remember when then-US Treasury Secretary Janet Yellen accidentally sparked a craze for hallucinogenic Yunnan mushrooms after eating them during an official visit to Beijing in 2023. But my favorite local specialty is cheese. Yunnan is one of the few places in China with a long tradition of dairy production, and locals grill slabs of salty rushan cheese that taste similar to halloumi.

But I’m not writing today about burned-out tech workers or Yunnan cuisine. Instead, Dali perfectly illustrates something I’ve become increasingly convinced of during this trip: Tourism in China now works fundamentally differently than it does in much of the West. And the app Xiaohongshu, or RedNote as it’s known outside China, is a huge reason why.

Last weekend, I found myself wandering through a remote tea plantation in Ya’an, a village in Sichuan province. I was with my friend Yaling Jiang, who writes the excellent newsletter Following the Yuan. We were searching for “Earth’s Fingerprints,” a scenic area where tea fields wrap around hilltops in giant concentric rings that resemble enormous lush green thumbprints pressed into the ground.

Neither of us had been to this corner of Sichuan before. In fact, it was my first time in the province. Yet somehow we ended up in this obscure location almost entirely by ourselves. We got there thanks to Xiaohongshu.

American analysts often describe Xiaohongshu as “China’s Instagram,” but that comparison badly undersells the platform’s capabilities. Yes, people post aesthetic photos and aspirational lifestyle content. But the app also functions as a powerful discovery engine layered on top of comprehensive mapping functionality.

Within Xiaohongshu, users can search directly for restaurants, cafes, stores, parks, landmarks, or entire neighborhoods. The app’s built-in map lets you browse posts geographically, so you can instantly see the places near you that people are talking about. Then, you can get turn-by-turn directions to whichever spot looks the most intriguing, all within the app. You can also see exactly how far a restaurant or store is from your current location.