Xiaohongshu (RedNote): What It Is and How to Use It, 2026 Guide
If you've been following Chinese digital culture for a while, or recently came across the 2025 "TikTok refugees" phenomenon, you've probably already heard of Xiaohongshu. If not, it's time to get to know it: it's one of China's most influential platforms and one of the most revealing for understanding how young Chinese people shop, communicate and make decisions.
In this article:
- What is Xiaohongshu?
- Why it matters: the power of influence
- Main features
- How to start using the app
- Xiaohongshu for foreigners
- The 2025 TikTok refugee moment
What Is Xiaohongshu?
小红书 (Xiǎohóngshū), literally "little red book", was founded in Shanghai in 2013 as a shopping guide for Chinese tourists abroad. It quickly evolved into something much more complex: a hybrid platform that combines a social network, a search engine and a marketplace in one place.
The most common description of Xiaohongshu is a cross between Instagram, Pinterest and Amazon: Instagram's visual aesthetic, Pinterest's discovery function and the depth of Amazon's product reviews. But in practice it's more than the sum of those parts; it has its own dynamic that none of those platforms reproduces.
The core content is called 笔记 (bǐjì), "notes", and they can be photos or videos. Each note includes text, tags and often mentions of products or places. Users follow creators (博主, bózhǔ, "bloggers"), save notes into collections and actively use the app as a search engine: when someone in China wants to know whether a restaurant is good, whether a beauty product works or what the best places to visit in a city are, they search Xiaohongshu first, not Google or Baidu.
With more than 300 million monthly active users and a strongly female, urban demographic (women aged 18 to 35 in first- and second-tier cities), Xiaohongshu is the platform that best represents the tastes, aspirations and buying behavior of Chinese Gen Z and millennials.
Why It Matters: The Power of Influence
Xiaohongshu isn't just a social network: it's where millions of Chinese consumers form their buying opinions.
A positive product review from a 博主 with the right audience can sell out stock within hours. International beauty brands have found that a single viral note on Xiaohongshu can have more impact on sales in China than an entire ad campaign in other media. Chinese marketing even has a name for it: 种草 (zhòng cǎo), literally "planting grass", which describes how a recommendation "plants" the desire to buy something.
For international brands that want to enter the Chinese market, Xiaohongshu is now one of the priority marketing channels. Not for direct advertising (Xiaohongshu users are very sensitive to blatant ads and filter them out quickly) but for authentic organic content that builds credibility gradually.
For everyday users, Xiaohongshu is simply the most useful place to discover things: local restaurants, travel, skincare routines, books, study tips, decor ideas. In many cases the platform has replaced Google, Yelp or Pinterest in young Chinese users' daily search habits.
Main Features
Photo notes (图文笔记, túwén bǐjì)
Xiaohongshu's most classic format: one or more photos with descriptive text, category tags and mentions of products or places. It looks similar to an Instagram post, but with more text and more emphasis on practical information. The title carries significant SEO weight: notes with good titles show up in the app's internal search results.
Video notes (视频笔记, shìpín bǐjì)
Short videos in a style similar to TikTok or Instagram Reels. Xiaohongshu has bet heavily on video in recent years, although the platform is still more text-and-image than pure video, unlike Douyin.
Built-in search
One of its most used and most distinctive features. Xiaohongshu's search engine handles Chinese terms with great contextual precision: searches like "romantic restaurant in Chengdu" or "best serum for dry skin" return real users' notes, not ads. This feature has made Xiaohongshu many Chinese users' preferred search engine for anything lifestyle-related.
Built-in shopping (小红书商城)
Products mentioned in notes can link directly to purchase pages inside the app. Xiaohongshu has its own marketplace, although integration with outside platforms like Taobao and JD also exists. The jump from "discovery" to "purchase" happens in the same environment.
Location tags
Geotagged notes are especially popular for restaurants, cafés, travel destinations and activities. Searching by location on Xiaohongshu is one of the most effective ways to discover local places with real visual context, much more useful than the text reviews on other platforms.
How to Start Using the App
Download and installation
Xiaohongshu is available internationally on the App Store (iOS) and Google Play. Unlike many Chinese apps, it doesn't require a VPN to download or use outside China.
Sign-up
You can sign up with a phone number (Chinese or international) or with a WeChat account. The process is simple and doesn't require additional identity verification for users outside China.
Language
The interface can be set to English, although the platform's native content is mostly in Chinese. To get the most relevant and authentic content, searching in Chinese (even with simple characters or pinyin) returns much richer results than searching in English.
Getting started
The home feed takes a few days to calibrate to your interactions. At first, explore the categories you're interested in (travel, food, languages, culture) and save ("收藏", shōucáng) the notes you find useful. The algorithm learns fast.
Recommended searches to start with:
- 中国旅游 (zhōngguó lǚyóu): travel in China
- 学中文 (xué zhōngwén): learning Chinese
- 上海生活 / 北京生活: life in Shanghai / Beijing
- 中国美食 (zhōngguó měishí): Chinese food
Xiaohongshu for Foreigners
Xiaohongshu has a surprisingly active community of expats and foreigners living in China. There are notes in English, French, Spanish and other languages, although they make up a small fraction of the total content.
For a foreigner in China, the platform is useful in several practical ways:
Discovering places. Searching for your city or neighborhood in Chinese brings up visual reviews of restaurants, cafés, markets and local activities that don't appear on TripAdvisor or Google Maps. It's the most effective tool for exploring like a local.
Understanding trends. Xiaohongshu is where most Chinese consumer, aesthetic and youth culture trends are born. If you want to understand what's in fashion, which products are going viral or which places everyone's talking about, the platform is a direct source.
Connecting with the expat community. There are groups of foreigners in China who use Xiaohongshu actively: search for 外国人在中国 (wàiguórén zài Zhōngguó) to find content from foreigners sharing their experiences.
Practicing Chinese. The mix of image and text in Xiaohongshu notes makes them perfect for learning vocabulary in a real context: you read the text while you have a visual reference for what it describes.
The 2025 TikTok Refugee Moment
In early 2025, Xiaohongshu was at the center of one of the most unusual digital migrations in recent internet history.
Facing the looming TikTok ban in the United States (passed by Congress and awaiting implementation), millions of American users looked for alternatives. Many landed on Xiaohongshu. Within days, the platform filled up with American users introducing themselves in English, sharing Western content and looking to connect with Chinese users.
The result was unexpected: instead of the culture clash many predicted, there was a massive wave of genuine exchange. Chinese users taught Americans to make dumplings; Americans taught Chinese users English in the comments; there were conversations about the differences between the two cultures, about stereotypes, music, food and politics, all in the same space.
The phenomenon got a name: "TikTok refugees" (TikTok 难民). And it sparked a global discussion about what happens when two digital worlds that normally never meet suddenly share a platform.
For Xiaohongshu, it was a moment of unprecedented international visibility. For many Westerners, it was the first time they'd interacted directly with Chinese users outside an academic or tourist setting. And for quite a few of those who stayed on the app (even after the TikTok crisis was partly resolved), it was the gateway to a platform that turned out to be genuinely interesting beyond the initial drama.
In 2026, Xiaohongshu has a more visible international community than ever, with more multilingual content and more awareness of its global audience.
Whether you're in China or simply want to better understand Chinese culture and consumers from the outside, Xiaohongshu is one of the most direct and authentic windows there is. You don't need to master Chinese to get started, although learning it opens up a completely different world inside the same app.
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