If you’re on Chinese social media a lot, you may have heard of “city walks,” which have become a popular leisure activity among Chinese urban youth over the past few years. But have you actually tried going on a “color walk”?
To participate in this ongoing trend—which has already garnered over 700 million views under #colorwalk on Xiaohongshu alone—all you need is your phone (or anything with a camera) and your color of choice. As you walk through local neighborhoods, the aim is to simply capture objects or scenes that predominantly feature that color to create a collage of your findings.
Chinese netizens have praised the trend as an accessible way to practice mindfulness and focus on the present, with experts also noting that certain colors may even evoke different emotional responses. For many young people in China, “color walking” is less about photography and more about slowing down a brain that rarely gets a break. Gen Z in particular has become increasingly vocal online about burnout, anxiety, and “fragmented attention” caused by nonstop scrolling, overtime work, and the pressure to constantly optimize their lives.
On Xiaohongshu, wellness trends centered around mindfulness, emotional regulation, and “healing” activities have exploded in recent years, with users gravitating toward low-cost rituals that help them reconnect with the present. Psychotherapists interviewed by Chinese media say the act of focusing on a single color helps redirect attention away from stress and repetitive thoughts, while softer tones like green and blue can trigger feelings of calm and relaxation. In that sense, color walking feels like the perfect Gen Z coping mechanism: part scavenger hunt, part meditation, and a small rebellion against the chaos of hyper-online life.
To give you some inspiration for your own color walk, here are some more collages posted by other users on Xiaohongshu.
Cover image via Pexels/Felix Maltz.
