Journeying through the viral Shandong county netizens once dubbed the “center of the universe”
Caoxian was never meant to be famous. I realized this within hours of wandering its dusty roads, dotted with the shells of unfinished apartment blocks and the occasional group of elderly locals chatting in thick accents.
In 2021, a local vlogger put the county on the map. “Shandong, Heze, Caoxian. Niubi liuliuliu. Wo de baobei,” the rotund Dashuo intoned on Douyin (China’s version of TikTok), using internet slang to express Caoxian’s awesomeness.
His love for his nowhere hometown, which sits under Heze city in the southwest of Shandong province, touched netizens. A thousand memes bloomed. Within a few days, Douyin videos referencing Caoxian racked up 770 million views. One meme showed the whole planet revolving around the county, mimicking Beijing’s ring roads. You could be in Caoxian’s first ring or its 17th, but you were definitely in its orbit. Then it went a step further, with Caoxian labeled “Yuzhou de zhongxin (宇宙的中心)”—the center of the universe.
Naively, I had taken Caoxian’s viral fame for new-found popularity, akin to how, in 2023, Zibo, also in Shandong, transformed from an obscure city into China’s barbecue capital, attracting millions of visitors. But this April, as I stepped off the train at Caoxian during the Qingming Festival holiday, I realized I was perhaps the only tourist in town.
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Viral Hinterland: The Famous Chinese County That No One Visits is a story from our issue, “Viral Attractions.” To read the entire issue, become a subscriber and receive the full magazine.
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