Peppa Pig goes viral as China prepares for the year of pig

Peppa Pig goes viral as China prepares for the year of pig.

Peppa Pig has been extremely popular in China since 2016- and not only among children. She has also become a symbol of some subcultures. However, at some point in the last year, the government tried to crack down on this movement, banning Peppa from social platforms in China and rolling out its own animated pig.
However, Alibaba will release a Chinese New Year-themed Peppa Pig movie in February, and its promo video (not a movie trailer!) is something EVERYONE is talking about. It’s a short movie itself, is more targeted towards parents than children, and is a way of explaining how Peppa belongs to Chinese culture. And is also heart-warming. See the video here

Of course, Chinese e-commerce platforms are now blown with short movie-related products proving that in China, you can sell everything if you catch an opportunity..

If you think it looks like a strange, metallic version of Peppa Pig, well… yeah. That’s exactly what they are.

They’re actually air blowers. If you don’t know what those are, the hand-operated types are often found in rural households, used for starting a fire on the stove. They typically cost under US$5 each on Taobao. But slap on Peppa’s good name and now they’re five times that price.

(Abacus is a unit of the South China Morning Post, which is owned by Alibaba — the operator of Taobao.)

It’s all down to the viral phenomenon called “What’s Peppa” that’s taking China by storm. It was triggered by a roughly five-minute promotional video for “Peppa Celebrates Chinese New Year”, a full-length movie featuring the British cartoon darling Peppa Pig that’s coming to Chinese cinemas on the first day of the Lunar New Year — which, appropriately enough, begins the Year of the Pig.

The promotional video became a sensation in its own right, because it features one adorable grandfather’s quest to decipher his grandson’s gift request: “Peppa”. He eventually finds out from his neighbor that, when an air blower is painted pink, it looks just like Peppa Pig.

(And so that’s why the grandfather who bought a small child a household appliance as a gift is actually an amazing grandfather and not a terrible one.)