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China's Analogue Economy: Fuse Beads, Bead Cafés and the Turn to Crafts and Hobbies

Published October 2026

Overview

Fuse-bead sales on three of China's largest marketplaces rose from CN¥ 81 million to CN¥ 1.57 billion in a year, as crafts and hobbies took off.

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Key Findings

China rarely says "detox", and on Douyin the language it does use belongs largely to parents. Eight phrases for quitting the phone or going screen-free came to about 92,000 posts on three social platforms between September 2025 and August 2026, against 6.5 million posts about fuse beads alone, and on Douyin the most-used of them comes, we believe, mostly from parents and the coaches who sell to them, with the posters using it clustered in their thirties.
The craft and hobby economy doubled in a year, and the growth goes well beyond fuse beads. Online sales of five craft and hobby products (fuse beads, yarn, jigsaw puzzles, cross-stitch and paint-by-numbers) rose +116% on a like-for-like basis across three of China's largest marketplaces, while sales of toys as a whole fell 7%. Fuse beads, which went from CN¥ 81 million to CN¥ 1.57 billion, account for most of that growth, but yarn grew +65% and jigsaw puzzles +40%, and the other four products together grew +36%. We believe fans of a television drama started the fuse-bead boom, platform campaigns then added to demand that already existed, and screen fatigue is a smaller motive.
The craft has moved into shops, which our sales data do not cover. Posts about bead cafés (拼豆店), where customers pay by the hour for a table, a pegboard and an iron, went from about 4,000 to about 230,000 in a year, and the most-used fuse-bead hashtags on Douyin include bead cafés, new shop openings and somewhere to take the children.
Journals are selling more units at lower prices, and China has its own version of the analog bag. Journals and planners sold 5% more units online at an average price 13% lower. China's version of the analog bag is the journaling bag (手帐包), and posts about it more than tripled in a year, even leaving out the months of one brand's giveaway.
Most of the retro devices associated with the analog bag are declining, and the one that grew did so on price. Online sales of compact digital cameras grew +58%, mostly because their average price rose by more than two-fifths, while instant cameras were flat after a strong year, and MP3 players and board games fell.

Read the chapters

Region	China
Industry	Toys & Games E-commerce & Consumer Trends
Report Type	Market Analysis
Pages	33
Language	en
Author	Moojing Market Research Team

Topics

Toys & Games E-commerce & Consumer Trends China Consumer Trends Social & Content

Frequently Asked Questions

It examines how Chinese consumers took up crafts and hobbies, from fuse beads to yarn and jigsaw puzzles, and what is driving the trend, in five chapters: the vocabulary of digital detox in China, the craft and hobby economy and the bead cafés, journals and China's version of the analog bag, retro devices with a comparison against the United States, and four recommendations for brands. It compares China with the Western "analog bag" trend throughout.

Online sales of fuse beads (拼豆) across three of China's largest marketplaces were CN¥ 1.57 billion from September 2025 to August 2026, up from CN¥ 81 million in the twelve months before, on 94.0 million units at between CN¥ 16 and CN¥ 17 each, so the growth came from volume. The figure covers online sales only and leaves out the bead cafés, where a growing share of spending on the craft now happens.

The vocabulary exists but remains small. Eight phrases for quitting the phone came to about 92,000 posts in the latest year, up from about 58,000 the year before, against 6.5 million posts about fuse beads. Chinese consumers more often take up crafts and hobbies than talk about reducing their phone use, and time online is still rising.

From Moojing Market Intelligence: observed online sales across three of China's largest marketplaces from September 2023 to August 2026, which are not the total size of any Chinese market, and social listening on Weibo, RED and Douyin from September 2024 to August 2026, which counts posts, not purchases. Figures from outside sources, such as CNNIC, CIPA and Meituan, are attributed in the report.