As dusk falls, every treatment bed in the night outpatient clinic of the Tuina (Chinese therapeutic massage) department at Zhejiang Provincial Hospital of Traditional Chinese Medicine is fully occupied.

Patients, either sitting or lying down, relieve fatigue and relax under the moderate pressure of the doctors' hands.

Notably, most of them are young faces.

Previously, a doctor from the hospital's Tuina department mentioned in an interview that 70% to 80% of the outpatients were young people.

At peak times, two or three doctors treat seventy to eighty patients in a single evening.

The hashtag "Night Tuina Clinic Overflows with Young People" subsequently trended on Weibo, sparking widespread discussion.

This phenomenon is not an isolated case.

Once upon a time, wellness was mainly associated with middle-aged and elderly people.

But nowadays, young people are taking the lead, practicing the proverb "keeping wolfberries in an insulated cup" with their own bodies.

In May 2023, data from the "China's Wonderful Life Survey" initiated by the National Bureau of Statistics showed that among the consumption plans of young people aged 18 to 35, healthcare ranked third, surpassing learning/training and culture/entertainment, following only travel and digital product purchases.

Looking closely at the wellness methods of young people, most deviate from the gentle and slow-paced philosophy of letting nature take its course.

Instead, they "replenish while draining" — working the hardest shifts, staying up the latest nights, partying the most energetically, while also using the most comprehensive foot soak packs, eating the largest black sesame seed pills, and practicing the most systematic Ba Duan Jin (a form of qigong).

Massage and foot therapy stand out prominently in this trend.

The high-intensity, fast-paced work and life rhythm have prematurely burdened young people's cervical and lumbar spines.

Prolonged sitting and desk work bring a cascade of issues.

Thus, during work, computer screens and keyboards record their struggle; after work, massage parlors and hospital Tuina departments witness their moments of relaxation.

In this process, more and more young people are falling in love with foot massage and therapy — it serves as both a common stress-relief method and a new fashion trend.

Massage & Foot Care: A New Wellness Fashion

What do young people do with their spare time after work nowadays?

Besides conventional choices like dining out, binge-watching, KTV, and traveling, another answer might be added: massage and foot therapy.

After all, computer stands and ergonomic chairs at desks usually help maintain a proper sitting posture but cannot instantly relieve discomfort from prolonged sitting.

Yet the effect of massage and foot therapy lies in the uniform tapping, pressing, kneading, and rubbing — relieving not only stiff shoulders, tight backs, and painful lumbar regions but also tense nerves, anxious moods, and weary minds.

A post-90s internet professional in Beijing, after accompanying a friend for a one-hour "shoulder, neck, and back conditioning" session, began her own consistent "back pain self-rescue journey" on her friend's recommendation.

She feels that before working overtime, it's like "replenishing health in advance"; after overtime, it means "timely healing."

To some extent, for young people, massage and foot care is not only a rehabilitation method and a health service but has gradually evolved into a form of social interaction and a wellness fashion.

The aforementioned post-90s internet professional believes that massage has become a part of her daily life — once a week on average, spending over 10,000 yuan annually.

Even when making weekend plans with high school classmates she hasn't seen for a long time, their get-togethers have shifted from "group shopping" to "group massage."

"I usually search and filter on platforms; prices vary by store. Cheap ones cost tens of yuan, while a full-body massage can be a few hundred yuan. But after the massage, I feel extremely refreshed and revived. As long as I can get through the following week, the money is well spent."

She once scheduled a massage between two trips, which quickly restored her energy and gave her a "new lease on life."

"I went straight to Shanghai Disneyland afterward without any delay."

Speaking of massage experiences during travels, another post-90s consumer deeply empathizes.

Cities like Chengdu, Yangshuo, Lhasa, and even Bangkok have provided her with unique massage experiences.

She remembers one time in Yangshuo, climbing a wild mountain in the rain until the soles of her feet were blistered and she was utterly exhausted.

Barely making it down the mountain, she immediately found a shop and got a massage "from feet to head."

Data shows that as early as 2022, the number of users in the massage and foot care market reached 435 million, with an industry scale of approximately 585.9 billion yuan and nearly 10 million practitioners.

Today, the entire massage and foot care industry has diversified into leisure foot care, leisure massage, head therapy, ear cleaning, traditional Chinese medicine physiotherapy, foot treatment, and rehabilitation physiotherapy.

Specifically regarding demographics, Meituan data indicates that consumers aged 20-35 are the main user group for foot massage and therapy, accounting for about 75%, with those aged 25-30 making up 30%.

Compared to 2020, the trend of consumer youthfulness is significant; the proportion of consumers under 25 has grown from 10% to 25%.

In other words, young people support half the market of massage and foot care.

Breaking Away from Tradition: Innovating New Ways

The favor of young people has gradually upgraded massage and foot care into one of the preferred ways for mass entertainment and leisure, injecting new vitality into this traditionally relatively conservative market.

In the past, the concept of massage and foot care was quite broad, with service standards often conveyed top-down to consumers, leaving limited room for feedback and improvement.

From the consumer's perspective, choosing a specific service was like "opening a blind box."

For example, what exactly the store sign's "meridian activation" meant, and whether it required additional methods like medication, acupuncture, or cupping, was only known after pulling the curtain and experiencing it firsthand.

As "digital natives" of the internet era, young people are eager to share and communicate and are adept at searching for information.

Their focus on and pursuit of health, along with evaluations based on actual experiences, have in turn driven the industry towards greater standardization, quality, and youth orientation.

A search on Meituan shows that in generally fast-paced cities like Beijing, Shanghai, and Shenzhen, many massage and foot care stores now offer highly differentiated services, often focusing on physiotherapy directions.

These include specialized cervical spine therapy, lumbar spine therapy, posture correction, deep stretching, massage for stiff neck, and massage for acute lumbar sprain — precisely matching young people's health service needs with clear corresponding effects.

Demand breeds competition, and merchants are "competing" with diverse new ways.

Based on foot massage techniques, more and more stores are starting to provide a series of services like audio-visual entertainment, dining, and accommodation, showing a diversified development trend of "F&B +" and "KTV+."

This is particularly evident in tourist cities.

Meituan data shows that the proportion of massage and foot care stores offering dining or snack services in Changsha, Chengdu, Chongqing, and other places exceeds 30%, far higher than the national average.

Golden Impression, a cinema-style foot care brand from Chongqing, has been jokingly called the "Haidilao of the foot bath world" by netizens for being "too delicious," ranking high among tourists' recommended destinations.

Here, you can find "the best beef noodles in Changsha," as well as unlimited fermented rice dumplings, boiled dumplings in sauce, wontons in chili oil, spicy beef rice, and other specialty foods, plus cold and hot drinks like osmanthus milk tea, jasmine milk beer, snow-capped highland barley, and water chestnut and imperatae drink.

Moreover, some massage and foot care stores in tourist cities have added overnight services and entertainment facilities like ultra-high-definition 4K cinema screens.

Group packages range from less than 100 yuan to over 300 yuan, suiting different budgets. During holidays like May Day and National Day, massage and foot care shops have become new choices for tourist accommodation.

A post-95 media professional mentioned that since experiencing Golden Impression, she has developed a habit of "massage while traveling." If she gets too tired during a trip, she finds a "similar store" locally.

"You can relieve fatigue through massage, eat and drink your fill, and casually choose a movie or TV series to pass the time or even stay overnight — absolutely delightful."

It can be said that emerging consumer concepts have reshaped the supply side of the foot massage industry, and also enabled a number of foot massage brands with both financial strength and operational innovation to achieve rapid expansion.

Zhenpin Foot Therapy, with over 35 stores in Wuhan, and Shuimuhe Foot Therapy, with over 20 stores in Xi'an, have both grown into well-known local chain brands.

Together with other similar brands, they expand beyond tradition, showing a growth trend of百花齐放 (a hundred flowers in bloom).

Boosting Online: Embracing New Opportunities

However, China's foot massage industry has a high degree of fragmentation. Although merchants have increasingly moved towards chain operation, intelligence, and diversification over the past thirty-plus years, nationally chain brands remain relatively rare compared to industries like catering and hairdressing.

The business model combining online and offline has opened a window for merchants.

As of the end of 2023, the number of foot massage stores listed on Meituan approached 500,000, providing a main online operation platform for these offline scattered shops.

For consumers, the process of filtering and accessing services is shortened; from the merchants' perspective, the efficiency of attracting customers is improved.

The post-95 media professional's experience serves as a reference.

Apart from friend recommendations, all her consumption decisions regarding foot massage stores are made through Meituan — searching target brands, browsing nearby stores, comparing prices and ratings, ordering and paying online, and then verifying offline.

"Convenient, intuitive, time-saving, and basically without stepping into a pit."

Quan Dinghong, founder of Zhenpin Foot Therapy, mentioned that half of its stores are located in shopping malls, and the well-established online store system on platforms like Meituan helps consumers quickly find the stores within the malls.

Meanwhile, the accumulation of user reviews and transaction assets on the platform helps improve supply-demand matching.

Operational tools like live streaming, short videos, and group buying further boost the growth of transaction scale.

Meituan released data showing that in the second half of 2023, the number of leisure and entertainment merchants participating in live streaming exceeded 50,000, with over one million live streams conducted.

Brands like Zhenpin Foot Therapy, Kangyue, and Ganzhi Blind Massage have all explored live streaming projects on Meituan.

Kangyue even formed a dedicated live streaming team. Chen Jie, Executive Director of Kangyue, said that live streaming cooperation with Meituan generated an additional 20% to 30% efficiency for their stores.

Ganzhi Blind Massage brought their daily work into the live studio, using vivid scenes like blind masseuses setting up stools and hawking on the street to attract local precise traffic and drive transactions.

"In 2023, through Meituan's live streaming and daily shelf construction, we achieved new operational breakthroughs, gained higher-frequency transactions and more loyal consumer groups, laying a solid foundation for expanding to new cities and opening new stores in 2024," said Xiang Ming, CEO of Ganzhi Blind Massage.

Zheng Yuanyuan, a chain brand with 8,000 stores poised to become the first 10,000-store foot health chain, is also innovating its marketing methods.

Recently, consumers who order through Meituan or Dianping can get a free burger combo after verifying their purchase in-store.

According to data released by Zheng Yuanyuan, this campaign attracted over 240,000 consumers to redeem in-store, with a redemption rate reaching 88%; among them, over 160,000 were new online customers visiting Zheng Yuanyuan stores.

Thus, consumers and merchants of massage and foot care are tightly and efficiently connected.

If the young people who love foot massage bring significant traffic to this industry, then amidst the variable of competition, whether traffic can become "retained traffic" for merchants and further create incremental value remains a challenge they must face.

The participation of internet platforms further extends the boundaries of massage and foot care as a health service, allowing this new wellness fashion trend to blow towards farther horizons.