The Many Colors of RedNote

Balmain is a residential suburb located two kilometers from Sydney’s central business district. An affluent neighborhood, it is known in Sydney for its restaurants and cafés housed in quaint Victorian-era buildings.

Less well known, even among locals, are the Balmain Waterview Wharf Workshops, a group of restored buildings that have been repurposed to house small-scale creative businesses. Although historically significant, the workshops are well off the tourism trail — unless, that is, you check RedNote.

On the app, better known in China as Xiaohongshu, the Waterview Wharf Workshops are among Sydney’s top “check-in” spots. The “Sydney rainbow houses” — a label used exclusively by Chinese tourists — feature in numerous Xiaohongshu posts as one of the Australian capital’s most photogenic locations.

The workshops are not the only example of Xiaohongshu-driven tourism in Sydney. The app has a track record of turning “ordinary” places around the world into “must-visit” — or more accurately, “must-photograph” — destinations. And Sydney, which is the top Australian destination for Chinese tourists, is home to a range of the kind of niche natural and cultural sites popular with the app’s users.

Perhaps more surprising is how Xiaohongshu users — in particular, young Chinese women — select which sites are worth visiting. Our review of Sydney-based tourism posts suggests that color often plays an important role in this process.

The key to the Waterview Wharf Workshops’ popularity on Xiaohongshu is their appearance: rainbow-colored buildings and few people. Repainted in bright colors in 2014, the workshops are surrounded by residential neighborhoods and remain relatively quiet on most days. That means visitors can take their time, pose, and snap photos for as long as they wish.

As with the Waterview Wharf Workshops, many other “check-in” sites recommended on Xiaohongshu feature distinct colors. Moreover, users will often attempt to harmonize their outfits, accessories, and makeup with the colors of the backdrop. In Xiaohongshu posts recommending Waterview Wharf Workshops, most users who share photos are wearing simple white, black, or denim outfits. In posts recommending the Cronulla Sand Dunes — the only sand dunes in Sydney, but rarely visited by Sydneysiders due to their remote location — users wear long, bright-red dresses to stand out against the blue sky and sandy dunes. In posts recommending niche harbor sites, photos often feature light-colored outfits and fresh makeup to “blend in” with the ocean.

In addition to posting photos, many Xiaohongshu users will write out detailed tips on how to get the “most color” out of a given scene, including the best time to take photos and the best angles. Posts about golden hour provide specific times for photo-taking during different months, as well as exposure settings for capturing sunset portraits with smartphone cameras. Those about Sydney’s jacaranda flowers come with information about the location and shooting date, even including the approximate temperature a few days before and after to help future travelers determine the peak bloom. For many users, taking colorful portrait photos is the main aim — or at least one of the main aims — of their trip, and something to which they’ll dedicate considerable planning and effort.

Although often compared to Instagram, these practices suggest that Xiaohongshu is not just a platform for young Chinese tourists to showcase their photos. It is also a place where they can seek travel and photography advice. Posts on Xiaohongshu about Sydney’s “check-in” spots not only suggest color-matching outfit ideas and tips on how to take most colorful photos, but also provide comprehensive tourism guides, such as public transport or parking information, as well as recommendations for nearby restaurants and cafés. To an extent, the app has become a kind of “Lonely Planet” for China’s younger generation of tourists — one created by users in collaboration with each other.

While Xiaohongshu users are sometimes written off as “narcissistic,” “shallow,” or only in it for the engagements, their creativity, pursuit of beauty, and the pleasure they derive from taking photos and sharing advice on social media should not be overlooked. Xiaohongshu posts recommending check-in sites not only reveal Sydney’s more colorful side, but also help to “create” it, as users lay down and evolve parameters for maximizing the beauty of various out-of-the-way scenes.

Of course, there are plenty of issues with using Xiaohongshu as a tourism guide, from overly edited photos that mislead tourists, to the neglect of a destination’s culture and history. However, even as someone who has lived in Sydney for six years, I still find myself looking at Sydney check-in photos on Xiaohongshu. And while I didn’t take any photos of my own on a recent trip to the Waterview Wharf Workshops, that didn’t stop me from enjoying its vibrant colors.

Professor John Connell from the University of Sydney and Professor Chris Gibson from the University of Wollongong made equal contributions to this article.

Editor: Cai Yineng.

(Header image: Social posts about the “Sydney rainbow houses.” From Xiaohongshu)