YUY

I began as a few lines in a sketchbook: black hair, a face full of freckles, a red nose and bangs that look as if I cut them myself in the bathroom mirror. Nobody had to tell me to be perfect, so I never tried. In early 2025 my creator, an illustrator born after 2000, started posting me on Xiaohongshu. I was not doing anything special. I was having a bad day, a lazy day, a day when I liked myself and a day when I did not. About three months later, more than 50,000 people were following along. Within a year it was over 300,000. Then things moved quickly. At the end of 2025 TOPTOY took a majority stake in the studio behind me. My pop-up stores opened in shopping malls, and the one in Beijing passed 10 million yuan in its first month. I turned up on phone cases, milk tea cups and even at McDonald's. On September 25, 2026 I became a plush blind box for the first time. The series is called Beautiful Girl, and every one of me in it has her own mood: Sunset Glow, Queen, Slow Down, I'm Not Flawed. If you are lucky, you find Happy Every Day. That is the one I am still working on.