520 – shorthand for 我爱你 (I love you) because of the similar sounding Mandarin pronunciation – was once dominated by flowers, jewellery, and highly commercialised romance narratives – a Chinese Valentine’s Day for the online generation. But this year, young Chinese consumers aren’t so interested in grand declarations of love. Instead, emotional self-maintenance is the order of the day.
This year’s festival has given up on love for a partner, in place of爱你老己 – an internet slang term that translates literally to ‘love your old self,’ though lands closer to something ‘Be kind to yourself, bestie.’ We’ll call it ‘love yourself’ for ease’s sake. There’s been plenty of talk in recent years about young Chinese people’s rejection of traditional romantic relationships. This is another example in a growing list, and one visible in brand’s 520 messaging.
The love yourself trend and your more traditional valentines messaging bear a narrative split in important ways. Self-care is looked at as something casual, humorous, and socially shareable – a sharp contrast with what’s usually quite earnest messaging around love. On Chinese social media, users joke about buying milk tea for 老己, rewarding 老己 with hotpot after work, or spending 520 alone and not feeling bad about it.
Yihe Tang (益禾堂), for example, leaned directly into anti-romance humour through a colab with Pepe the Frog that positioned singlehood as playful rather than pitiable. Nayuki (奈雪的茶) partnered with healing-style IP Scruffy Puppy (潦草小狗), embracing soft, emotionally messy companionship over traditional romance. Douyin Mall expanded its 520 storytelling beyond couples entirely, reframing love through parents, children, and pets.
The Dao view: 520, love yourself and the emotional-value consumption trend
Underlying all this is the continued rise of what Chinese marketers call 情绪价值 — emotional-value consumption. Young Chinese consumers are increasingly buying products for comfort, healing, reward, or companionship over utility.
Love yourself might sound like throwaway internet slang, but its popularity reflects a shift in China’s consumer culture that anyone with an eye on the market should be watching. Its expression on 520, as it often is in other sectors, has the focus on everyday emotional survival: getting by in a world that drives you to softer, more individual, and easier to live with shopping habits.
