RADII

Nine years ago, RADII was born from a simple belief: the authentic stories of youth culture across China and Asia needed a voice. Since then, our mission to captivate the world through stories that transcend boundaries has turned RADII into a definitive hub for creators, thinkers, and tastemakers. From breaking emerging artists to documenting overlooked subcultures, we’ve built something genuinely new. Today, the media landscape is shifting rapidly.

For many growing up in China, the local “Supply and Marketing Cooperative” (gongxiaoshe) serves as more than just a place to pick up fish jerky or a flavored milk drink—it’s a portal to childhood. Picture rustic wooden cabinets, the faint smell of cooking oil, and neighbors chatting for hours. These decades-old rural shops were once the heartbeat of the countryside, the go-to spot for daily essentials and agricultural supplies long before e-commerce giants dominated the landscape.

If you feel like you’ve aged five years in a single workweek, you’re not alone. Welcome to the era of “office aging” (a cousin of the internet slang 上班丑, or “workplace ugliness”), a phenomenon striking fear into the hearts of China’s Gen Z workforce. It’s the creeping realization that the relentless 9-to-5 grind is draining their youth, turning fresh-faced graduates into hollowed-out corporate zombies. But Chinese youth aren’t taking this sitting down.

The best way I can describe walking through Youth Palace, at Rockbund Art Museum in Shanghai, is that it felt less like touring an exhibition and more like exploring a building for the first time as a kid—the kind of exploring where you don’t yet know which doors you’re allowed through, so you just try all of them.

We’ve reported plenty of times on the rapidly evolving world of robotics. From incredibly agile humanoid bots turning backflips to relentless robo-dogs patrolling the streets, and even robotic horses on the horizon, the future is looking mechanically wild. Yet, out of nowhere, the internet has decided that a tiny, non-functional duck is the robot we all actually need. Image via Digital Trends.

As incoming students flood Chinese university campuses this fall semester, they aren’t just being greeted by enthusiastic upperclassmen and busy administrative staff. They are being welcomed by something straight out of a sci-fi flick: AI-powered robot dogs. Image via China Daily Global Edition.

For Song Yadong, fighting in Shanghai was about more than a UFC main event. It was a return to where his UFC story began—only this time, he wasn’t the teenage prospect trying to prove he belonged. He was the hometown headliner. Image via Instagram/risecombatsports. Almost nine years ago, a 19-year-old Song made his UFC debut in Shanghai, submitting Bharat Khandare on the preliminary card.

Imagine building an app without typing a single line of traditional code. Welcome to the era of “Vibe Coding”—a rapidly growing tech movement where natural language is your primary programming tool, and AI handles the heavy lifting. Instead of stressing over syntax errors, vibe coders simply describe what they want to create, collaborating with AI models to bring their ideas to life.

Roll the dice. Move your token. Start as a nobody, climb your way up. Sound familiar? Image via popmarket. Meet Shengguan Tu (升官图, “Promoting Officials”), an ancient Chinese board game that plays remarkably like Monopoly—but with one major twist. Instead of buying up real estate or avoiding jail time, players navigate the elaborate and complex system of China’s imperial official ranks. The traditional board for the game Shengguan Tu. Image via Sohu.

In 2017, the survival horror video game Dead by Daylight wanted to introduce a Chinese butcher character as a thank-you to its growing Chinese fan base. To better understand its audience, the developers held a poll on the Chinese Steam forum. Options included classic figures from Chinese folklore, like the Black and White Impermanence (黑白无常), the two guardians of the underworld, and the White Bone Spirit (白骨精), a shapeshifting demon from Journey to the West.