The archive · Marketing & Growth · Marketing decision · 2025
Xiaohongshu's park literature festival — 125K visitors in two days, 100M+ topic views
Xiaohongshu rebuilt toilet, kitchen, classroom and train-seat writing scenes in Luxun Park; every visitor became a 'life writer' and 125K people came
Xiaohongshu (小红书)
What it had to solve
Xiaohongshu's users write more than 100M characters of life notes every day, but that writing lived only on screens; the platform wanted to turn its 身边写作大赛 (Writing About Life contest) into a public, in-person event where 'everyone is the author of their own life' becomes literally true.
How it works
In November 2025, Xiaohongshu (小红书) staged its first Literature Festival in Shanghai's Luxun Park, turning everyday places into writing scenes: a mock classroom with blank exam paper, a kitchen where receipts became poems, a toilet where toilet paper was the page, a high-speed-train seat with sick bags to fill, and a park corner with a vending machine selling sentences instead of snacks. Every visitor got paper and became a 'writer of their own life'.
The festival grew out of Xiaohongshu's Writing About Life (身边写作大赛) contest, which began in 2024 and collected 10,000+ users' 12M characters of submissions, published as the book 《我不擅长的生活》. The park event added a 7-metre 'world clock' of notes from 44 countries recording the same day, exhibitions including a sewing-machine grandmother's home and a fishing-town poetry wall, and 20+ talks, readings and a book market with guests such as poets Yu Xiuhua and Liu Qing and writer Ma Jiahui.
The results were measured in people, not sales: park foot traffic passed 125,000 over the main days, 10,000+ writing fans attended, and festival topics surpassed 100M views. The second contest drew 20,000+ entries and 40M+ characters in one month from 44 countries and 232 cities, and nearly ten first-time writers received publishing offers — proof that the campaign's claim, 'everyone is the author of their own life', had become the product itself.
Why it lands
- Staging the writing behavior — not the app — let users' own words carry the brand message without an ad pitch.
- Placing writing in toilets, kitchens and train seats made literature feel available to everyone, not just authors.
- The contest supplied endless real material, so the festival was built from community content rather than agency fiction.
- Public locations and free access turned the event into civic culture, which is why a writers' association endorsed and amplified it.
What it did
The festival drew 10,000+ writing fans and park foot traffic passed 125,000 over its main days; related topics topped 100M views; the second Writing About Life contest collected 20,000+ entries and 40M+ characters in one month from 44 countries and 232 cities, and several first-time writers began signing book deals.
What you can take
Instead of advertising the product, stage the behavior it enables: a platform can turn users' everyday output into public culture, letting the community's own words carry the message.
Since then
Xiaohongshu said the Literature Festival would become a long-term event so literature can reach more people, with the Writing About Life contest continuing as its engine. The festival also entered Chinese cultural-press coverage — including the China Writers' Association — as an example of a commercial platform sponsoring genuinely public writing culture.
Sources
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