Trending in Beijing: Internet-Famous Milk Tea, Holiday Plans, and Pork For Everyone

The fun, the strange, and the what-on-earth-is-this? Trending in Beijing is a wrap-up of top stories in Beijing as told by the trending hashtags, local press, and general power of the internet.

A cup of famous milk tea sells for RMB 300

And here we thought the milk tea craze was over. Last week, singer Jay Chou (周杰伦) released a song, "Won't Cry," that went viral in literal minutes. Just 40 minutes after release, the song was already in the list of top 8 track of the year. The frantic streaming of the song has even been blamed for the temporary outage of QQ music site. 

The song is yet another soapy fairytale love story where romance is built on coincidences, humble women who sacrifice themselves for men, and unreasonably fast escalation in the relationship. The story takes place in Tokyo and centers around a talented photographer and a girl working in a milk tea shop.

The mania began when that milk tea shop from the music video, Machi Machi, opened a branch in Shanghai. Machi Machi is a Taiwanese brand that already has shops operating in Japan and Korea. Thirsty (or starstruck) urbanites flocked to the newly-opened store and queues hit unreasonable heights on Sep 26, when some claimed they have been waiting in line since the day before.

A queue of 200-300 milk tea and Jay Chou fans can be seen in the video. According to posts on Weibo, many of the queuers were 黄牛 (huangniu) or queuers who later resell the drinks or are paid to queue for someone else. Prices for getting the cup of famed tea varied and one could request someone to queue for you for around RMB 200 or buy a drink from somebody else for RMB 100. The latter deal quickly became too popular and the price rose to RMB 300. 

Netizens are calling the queuers "really sick" under the hashtag #周杰伦MV同款奶茶店上海开业# (milk tea shop from Jay Chou's music video opens in Shanghai). 

More meat for the people!

Spend the holiday without pork? The Ministry of Commerce wouldn't see it happen.

Amid increased pork prices around China due to African swine fever, the authorities have announced that they will be releasing 30,000 tonnes of frozen pork from the central reserve in order to ensure that there is enough to go around during the holiday. This is not a completely new measure. In fact, it is the third time meat markets have been refueled by the central reserve before the National Day celebrations. 

This is not the only effort being taken to ensure everybody is taken care of before the 70th-anniversary festivities. Authorities have recently distributed over 620,000 TV sets to the nation's poorest so that they can watch all the majestic parades that will go down come Oct 1. Each household received a Chinese-made 32-inch LCD color TV.

Netizens are divided over the thawing of pork. "These should only be the measures we take if we are at war or fighting a natural disaster," said some, while many others praised government's effort to ensure the well-being of citizens. The hashtag #30000吨中央储备冻猪肉来了# (30,000 tonnes of frozen pork to be released from the central reserve) currently has 270 million readers. 

What are your plans for the national holiday?

If you answered "traveling", then you will be sharing the same plan with around 800 million people residing in China. Still looking forward to that beach holiday?

Last year's national holiday saw around 726 million tourists traveling inside and outside of the country. According to growth forecasts, this year's number should come much closer to 800 million. Seeing numbers like that, the internet naturally turned to memes.

"You are traveling mountains and seas to see people mountain people sea," wrote one netizen referring to a popular Chinese saying to describe crowded places, “people mountain people sea” (人山人海, ren shan ren hai). 

Seeing that Beijing will pretty much be closed during the majority of the holiday period, we either recommend getting out to the wilderness before it all hits the fan or working on your passion project indoors. May your holidays be crowded and merry!

Images: Weibo