On May 1, 2026, over 325 million domestic trips were recorded across China. That number comes from the five-day May Day holiday, and it sounds like a boom. But scroll through Xiaohongshu during those five days, and you will see something else: people complaining. About makeup days. About crowds. About feeling more tired after a vacation than before.
The makeup day system is called tiaoxiu. You get a five-day holiday, but you work the two weekends around it. So a five-day break becomes a nine-day grind with a soft middle. Some netizens have pointed out that a Golden Week trip can be as exhausting as 996 work culture itself. The comparison is meant to be funny. It is also true.
I noticed something shift this year. The travel style known as “special forces tourism” has started to fade. You remember it: college students visiting ten attractions in one day, sleeping on overnight trains, posting step counts in the tens of thousands. Chinese media warned about this before May Day, citing health risks including joint damage and cardiovascular strain. The warning itself says something about where the culture was headed.
What replaced it is the staycation. The term has been circulating for a while, but this spring it became a labeled trend. Xiaohongshu named “staycation outfits” one of China’s six major spring 2026 fashion trends. The hashtag #Staycation穿搭 has 90 million views on the platform. The look involves linen, loose silhouettes, crochet accessories. It is clothes designed to feel like you are not at work, even when you are.
Some netizens call these “white person-style vacations,” a self-deprecating reference to the idea of lounging by a pool without guilt. But the joke has an edge. A five-star hotel stay in Shanghai costs thousands of yuan a night. The version of rest being sold to young people is aspirational in a way that defeats the purpose. You see this tension in the posts: painstakingly arranged flatlays of room service and hotel slippers, captioned with something about self-care. It is work disguised as rest.
CHAGEE, the tea chain, launched a campaign called “Color Walk” around the same time. Three new drinks with packaging designed after Matisse, van Gogh, and Monet. The paper bags became collectibles. People trade discontinued designs online. The drinks themselves are light summer flavors, but the packaging is the product. I keep thinking about how much energy goes into making disposable things feel permanent.
The staycation trend and the packaging trend are connected in a way I cannot stop noticing. Both are about taking something designed to be consumed and trying to make it last longer. A tea bag. A day off. You fight for the experience, then you try to preserve it. Young Chinese workers are not getting less tired. They are getting more creative about pretending they are not.