I keep thinking about a scene I read about in a Chinese news report last week. In Nanning, Guangxi, a vintage clothing store owner named Li Wangchuan watched young people rifle through racks of second-hand shirts. They were not just shopping. They were looking for something the present cannot give them.
The numbers back this up. A 2025 report from iiMedia showed Chinas retro economy — vintage clothes, old cameras, vinyl records, second-hand books, cassette tapes — hit 355.2 billion yuan in market size, up 11.7 percent from the year before. By 2030, they predict 587.9 billion. These are not trivial numbers for an economy that runs on speed.
I think about what drives this. There is a specific exhaustion among young Chinese with the relentlessness of digital life. Everything moves. Everything updates. Your phone nudges you. Your boss messages you on WeChat at 10 p.m. The algorithms know you better than your mother. So some people step sideways.
They buy a CCD camera from 2008. They go to a flea market in Xi’an, at Xicang Market, where a “new second-hand market” runs on weekends. They buy a book with someone else’s notes in the margins. They listen to old songs on a device that does not connect to the internet.
The article from Guangming Daily called this “embracing idle economy.” A more cynical read: young people are priced out of the new, so they make the old cool. Both things can be true. A Fuji Instax camera costs less than a smartphone and gives you a physical photograph. You can hold it. You can tape it to a wall. It does not disappear into a cloud.
I also noticed the government is paying attention. On May 19, the National Data Bureau released its 2026 Digital Society Development Work Plan. Among the 23 tasks: “promote digital family smart applications,” “accelerate AI-empowered transportation scenario innovation,” “expand digital consumption channels.” The state wants more digital integration, more data flows, more smart systems. But on the ground, young people are buying film cameras.
This is not a rebellion. It is quieter than that. It is a personal rebalancing. When the state pushes for more data and more screens, some people respond not by fighting but by walking into a physical store and buying something that was made before they were born.
I do not know where this goes. The retro economy might be a phase. It might be the beginning of a longer shift. But for now, 355 billion yuan buys a lot of nostalgia.