After drifting off China’s entertainment radar for a while, Chinese model and actress Qu Ying (瞿颖) is entering a second act. A recent appearance on Papi Jiang’s talk show Hot Welcome (热烈欢迎) has pushed her back into the spotlight. It didn’t come through a polished celebrity image, but through a string of unintentional, deadpan jokes that have lit up Chinese social media, and it’s landed Qu Ying an ad with dairy brand Satine.
Clips of Qu mixing up English words – ‘spinach’ and ‘Spanish’, ‘percent’ and ‘person’ – have become memes. It’s offbeat, and perhaps even dated, humour but it feels fresh and relatable.
Dairy brand, Satine (金典), has moved in quick, announcing Qu Ying as ambassador for its fresh milk line (鲜活), and in doing so, converting her renewed relevance into a chance for some fin commercial work.
For the ad push, Satine lifts Qu’s viral lines directly into campaign visuals, turning language confusion into product messaging. The central line – ‘好喝不需要翻译’ (Good taste needs no translation) – ties the humour back to the product, running personality, meme and selling point into a single idea.
Online, users have extended the joke format with their own riffs, pushing the campaign beyond paid media into something more iterative and social. On platforms like Rednote (小红书) and Weibo (微博), this has played out through layered interaction: comment sections evolve into parallel joke threads, while short-form video users recreate and escalate the format through duets, edits and parody clips.
One noted that Qu Ying’s green dress is the colour of spinach (though they missed some low-hanging fruit with a Spanish gag there). Another was so keen on the campaign they commented saying ‘This wave must be supported.’ It might look like a celeb endorsement, but this is really all about cultural literacy and a sharp eye for timing.
