Round Table China

THE SOAPBOX: If you exercise for less than 30 minutes, it's basically useless? / The Labubu craze has officially taken over Hollywood. We tell you everything we know about the little monster's upcoming movie (16:53). On the show: Steve, Yushun & Xingyu

It's spring job fair season, and the crowd isn't flocking to the usual names. AI is stealing the show. So what does that leave students with? A job market that's rewriting the rules before they even walk in the door. The question is: how do you show up ready when nobody's quite sure what "ready" even means? On the show: Steve, Yushun & Xingyu

The Full Circle: Ganji, book covers, city pollen / A crumpled wrapper. A hotel clerk's request. A kindness relay across continents. This isn't a feel-good movie. It's the real story of how one piece of candy sparked a cross-cultural moment no one saw coming (12:55). On the show: Steve, Fei Fei & Yushun

Spring in China isn't just pretty anymore. It's big business. We dig into the high-stakes economics behind the petals. How do these fleeting flowers turn to a sustainable goldmine? On the show: Steve, Fei Fei & Yushun

There's a lot happening beneath the surface, literally. New sites are emerging, long-studied relics are revealing fresh secrets, and the questions we're asking don't have tidy answers yet. We share our first installment of China Finds. On the show: Steve, Fei Fei & Yushan

Spring has arrived, and so have your allergies. That yellow dust covering everything looks like nature's confetti and the trees themselves might be the problem. We look at how city planners accidentally turned pollen season into a full-blown sneezefest and whether there's any hope for breathing easy again. On the show: Steve, Fei Fei & Yushan

In offices and bedrooms across China, a new kind of downtime has taken hold. People are hunched over trays of tiny plastic beads, arranging them one by one with tweezers. It is called Pindou, and it has become an unlikely escape from the noise of screens and notifications. / With everyone worried about the environment, why are we still covering our textbooks in plastic (15:17)? On the show: Steve, Fei Fei & Yushun

Brown bears are breaking into homes. Wild boars are stopping subway trains. In 2026, the wild isn't staying in the wild anymore. China's conservation efforts are working so well that animals are showing up where they don't belong. We look at what happens when success creates conflict and explore a new law trying to make coexistence possible. On the show: Steve, Fei Fei & Yushun

What if you could walk out of a bad movie 20 minutes in and get your money back? A theater in Hangzhou is trying exactly that, and China's film industry is taking notice. The experiment pits audience satisfaction against artistic vision in a billion-dollar market. On the show: Steve, Fei Fei & Yushan

Young people in China are walking away from their screens and heading to the market. We explore the revival of Ganji and why an old-fashioned way of shopping, full of noise, street food, and human connection, is resonating with a new generation. On the show: Steve, Fei Fei & Yushan