Inside the Pop Mart store located in Shuncheng Shopping Center, Kunming, Yunnan Province, one can often see Thai tourists holding shopping bags and a labab hanging on the tour guide flag.

To purchase limited-edition trendy toys, Thai tourists almost go to every Pop Mart store in Kunming to “shop up”. Thai tour guide Jammani Nopamak joked. After Labab became a global hit, many offline stores found it hard to get a box. Thai fans also flocked to Chinese e-commerce platforms and online communities, snapping up blind boxes through Taobao and Douyin live streaming.

The online rush to buy Chinese blind boxes is a microcosm of the “mutual pursuit” of cross-border e-commerce between China and Thailand. At the 9th China-South Asia Expo, such “mutual pursuit” was presented more comprehensively.

Despite the continuous rainy days in Kunming, it still couldn’t dampen consumers’ enthusiasm for shopping. Entering the Southeast Asia Pavilion, the Thai exhibition area was bustling with people. Over 70 enterprises brought a wide variety of products. Thai products such as inflatable jelly bags and grass cream attracted people to rush to purchase.

Among them, the Thai inflatable jelly bag merchant was particularly popular. Li Jiawan from Wenshan, Yunnan Province, saw a post about this merchant participating in the exhibition on Xiaohongshu. The next morning, she and her friends came here especially and bought six bags at one go. I bought it online before, but at that time the logistics system was not yet perfect. It was much more expensive than buying at exhibitions. Li Jiawan said.