Young adults turn to fake furry friends to bolster their spirits

Internet operation officer Gao Qingmeng, 24, from an internet enterprise in Shanghai, was in a reflective mood while working overtime from home one weekend. To tackle her ennui, she scrolled through social media platforms, and suddenly came across a post from Jellycat, a UK-headquartered soft-toy company, and was instantly smitten by it.

She immediately felt an urge to buy one. Without hesitation, she left home and took an hourlong subway ride to purchase one — a Bartholomew Bear, a popular product from the company.

This was just the beginning. One toy led to another, and one by one, her legion expanded into a large collection.

Her workstation in office is now home to a zoo of plush toy creatures, and many also in shapes of green plants and flower pots. "They took up all my desk space! Then, my colleagues offered more space," Gao says, adding that now her colleagues' desks have been "invaded "by her surplus stuffed creatures.

"Whenever I work overtime or face challenges at work, my toys are a great comfort to me," Gao says. "They make me feel at ease and help me avoid anxiety and irritability, and offer me much emotional comfort whenever in need."

On various social media platforms, many young people are showing off their plush toy collections. There has been an increasing demand for plush toys in the Chinese market, not merely from their targeted customers — children — but also including young adults.

According to a report by the China Toy and Juvenile Products Association, a nationwide nonprofit trade association in the related industry, sales of plush toys on Alibaba's e-commerce platform Tmall during the June 18 shopping festival increased by 37.3 percent year-on-year, ranking first among toy categories.

Consumers of the post-2000 generation account for 43 percent of the market, followed by 36 percent by those of the post-1990 generation.

This trend is attracting attention and some experts, such as psychologists or psychotherapists like Zhang Chun, who works for Pencil Psychology, a company based in Xiamen, Fujian province, have begun to use such toys for the comfort of clients who come to their offices for counseling.

Zhang, 42, has stationed some of these toys in her counseling room in case clients, who come for psychotherapy, or talk therapy, may relax more. She says she hopes that these toys could help her clients merely by their presence, although she found few clients touched them.

Zhang describes them as "hyperlinks" to evoke imagination. Touching these toys, according to psychological hypothesis based on studies, such as the US psychologist Harry Harlow's monkey experiment during the 1930s, is "like clicking a hyperlink". "Generally, they can connect people instantly to their favorite works or characters," says the psychotherapist.

The experiment sought to uncover preferences for "bare-wire mothers" or "cloth-covered mothers" in different situations. The "mothers "had different changeable attractions; the wire mother holding a bottle with food, and the cloth mother holding nothing, or with the wire mother holding nothing, while the cloth mother held a bottle with food. The monkeys overwhelmingly chose the cloth mother, with or without food, only visiting the wire mother that had food when needing sustenance.

As more young people see eye to eye in these fluffy toys, the careers of some influencers even began to prosper, thanks to the growing trend. Wang Yaowei, 26, a graduate from the Macau University of Science and Technology, is one of them.

The online influencer, based in Hangzhou, Zhejiang province, has more than 6,000 followers on the Chinese social media platform Xiaohongshu. Besides being an internet operation officer of an internet enterprise, he earns extra money by testing and commenting on new plush toys for toy-making companies.

Before being an influencer, he bought each of his own toy collections.

Among all the plush animals, his most favorite one is LinaBell, an energetic pink fox, from the Disney toyline Duffy and Friends introduced by Shanghai Disneyland in 2021.

"Her unique design, naughty personality and interactions with visitors all bring me joy that temporarily relieves my worries," he claims.

It was said that more than 80 small plush keychains of the character were released, including ones with holiday-themed costumes. Wang would take corresponding small plush toys to work during festivals, such as the Halloween or Christmas, to create a sense of ceremony, he says.

Qiu Jiangyi, 30, a Hangzhou-based human resources worker from the jewelry industry, also loves collecting plush toys.

In order to acquire out-of-stock editions, she scours platforms selling secondhand goods, private groups and US e-commerce company eBay, or asks overseas buyers, representatives or friends to shop for them.

In order to obtain her favorite toys, once she finds there are stocks of them online, she would often click quickly to snap them up, or even pay more money, say several times the original price, to secure her purchase.

Qiu dresses her toys, takes them on outings and even seeks out craft enthusiasts on social media to customize toys' faces — a process referred to as "face reshaping", which involves tailoring techniques to make the plush toys look cuter.

While these activities resemble parenting, to Qiu, her actions don't carry any deeper meaning.

"They're just toys to me — visually appealing and providing aesthetic satisfaction, but I don't attach deeper emotions to them," she says.

Similarly, Gao buys clothes for her toys, and wears "parent-child outfits" — identical clothes as that of her toys, but she denies that it's a maternal mindset.

"My relationship with them is more of friendship, and I'd feel better when these toys of mine accompany me during many moments," Gao says.

To cater to the increasing buying power of the young people and their aesthetic preferences, more and more organizations making or selling cultural and creative products have embraced this trend.

For example, the Gansu Provincial Museum released "Gansu spicy hotpot" plush toys, making cute characters based on meat balls, fungus and crabs. Another creative product making company from Xi'an, Shaanxi province, gave birth to a plush toy brand, Romomo, making "weirdo" roujiamo (Chinese-style meat-stuffed hamburger).

To attract more young adults, these cultural and creative products have all added expressive faces to furry toys.

Yu Hexin contributed to this story.