[Big read] From singing bowls to forest therapy: China’s 10-trillion-RMB healing economy

(Edited and refined by Grace Chong, with the assistance of AI translation.)

At 2 pm, just a few floors above the traffic and bustle of Guangzhou’s Zhujiang New Town, the outside world falls away.

Inside a singing bowl studio, Huang Juan, 38, lies on a soft cotton-linen mat with several others. The room is dimly lit by a single warm floor lamp, while the scent of essential oils drifts gently from an aroma stone.

“Om…” A sound therapist taps a singing bowl. Deep, resonant waves spread through the room, slowing the pace of everything around them. Shoulders that have been tense from days of overtime begin to loosen. The worries, messages and unfinished tasks occupying their minds seem to fade into the background.

Whenever work and life leave Huang feeling overwhelmed, she turns to meditation, singing bowls, yoga and other forms of healing to regain her balance. Over the past two years, such sessions have become one of her regular ways of managing stress and emotions.

“I don’t have to think about work or reply to messages,” she told Lianhe Zaobao (LHZB). “For this period of time, I belong entirely to myself.”

Niche businesses focused on mental and physical wellbeing, from singing bowl aromatherapy to mindfulness meditation, are quietly expanding across major Chinese cities. Wellness studios are opening in commercial districts, residential communities and cultural and creative parks, while China’s local lifestyle platforms are filling up with programmes aimed at office workers, including “sleep and relaxation” and “lunchtime recharge” sessions.

These services do not come cheap. A one-hour singing bowl therapy session such as the one Huang attends costs around 320 RMB (about US$47).

From optional activity to everyday necessity

As the pace of life accelerates and competition in the workplace intensifies, demand among Chinese consumers for psychological support and emotional release is rising. China’s healing and wellness market is expanding rapidly, with products and services ranging from sound therapy, sitting meditation and aromatherapy to Zen retreats and online energy courses.

Liao Ziran, a post-90s entrepreneur and partner at the Han She Essential Oil Experience Centre in Guangzhou, said in an interview that his business originally focused on traditional Chinese medicine (TCM)-based wellness. After recognising the growth potential of the healing industry, he shifted to aromatherapy last year and now specialises in TCM-based aromatherapy.

Liao’s centre holds aromatherapy wellness salons from time to time, attracting people from a wide range of backgrounds — not just office workers, but people of all ages.

He noted that China’s aromatherapy market is still relatively young compared with those in Western countries. Even so, this approach to everyday health management is being embraced by an increasing number of Chinese consumers.

Liao believes attitudes towards health and wellbeing have changed significantly in recent years. Chinese consumers are no longer focused solely on treatment aimed at “curing illness and dealing with emergencies”. Instead, they are increasingly turning to preventive care at home and paying greater attention to psychological issues such as anxiety and workplace stress.

Healing services centred on providing emotional value, he said, are well suited to the needs of people today.

In his view, healing is gradually shifting from an optional leisure activity to an everyday necessity for many people. “More and more people are willing to pay for emotional value and a sense of physical and mental relaxation,” he said.

Healing and wellness become a business

Liao’s TCM-based aromatherapy business is one branch of China’s expanding healing economy. In recent years, traditional industries have increasingly explored ways to incorporate healing into their offerings. Tourism and culture, health and wellness, technology and the arts are being combined with healing practices, giving rise to a diverse range of new businesses, including nature therapy, hot spring therapy, singing bowl sound therapy, digital therapy and art therapy.

The tourism industry has developed healing tourism products, while hotels have introduced sleep-enhancing rooms. Technology companies are developing bionic companion robots equipped with artificial intelligence (AI)-powered health and wellness systems. AI-based psychological healing products are also building services for people of all ages, catering to needs ranging from those of young people and office workers to older adults.

Forest therapy is one of the sectors being actively developed in many parts of China. This year’s No. 1 central document, Opinions of the Chinese Communist Party Central Committee and the State Council on anchoring agricultural and rural modernisation and solidly advancing comprehensive rural revitalisation, called for the active development of the forestry and grassland industries and the expansion of sectors including the under-forest economy and forest health and wellness. In recent years, provinces and regions including Jilin, Guangxi and Guizhou have also called for the development of the forest health and wellness industry.

A forest therapy base in Ruyuan Yao Autonomous County in Shaoguan, northern Guangdong, was officially opened in July. The project is a collaboration between the Tianjingshan Forest Farm and a local TCM hospital. Drawing on the area’s high-altitude forests and combining nature therapy with TCM-based treatments, it offers a series of forest therapy packages targeting common problems such as insomnia and high levels of mental and physical stress.

A person in charge of Tianjingshan Forest Farm told LHZB that the forest farm had long focused on forest tourism and nature education. Until recently, there was little awareness of forest therapy as a distinct industry. The forest farm then completed medical research into the impact of local forest ecosystems on human health. Combined with the growing number of people experiencing sleep problems, the findings helped spur the establishment of the therapy base.

The person said the project is still in its early stages, with most visitors coming from northern Guangdong and the Guangdong-Hong Kong-Macao Greater Bay Area. Judging from its food and accommodation business, the forest farm has seen a noticeable increase in turnover compared with the same period in previous years since establishing the forest therapy base.

The forest farm will continue to improve its plans for developing forest health and wellness, the person added. It will enhance visitor facilities and improve the overall experience, while expanding cooperation with medical institutions, including hospital sleep centres. It will also explore ways to incorporate distinctive local Yao medical practices and medicines into its forest health and wellness programmes.

More willing to pay for ‘emotional value’

China’s urban and rural consumption patterns are shifting from subsistence- and material-oriented spending towards consumption focused on personal development and services. Projects similar to the forest therapy base in northern Guangdong are being rolled out in many parts of the country. Also, as the healing industry grows, a number of provinces and cities have introduced plans to promote health, wellness and healing-related businesses.

At the national level, China’s State Council General Office issued a work plan in January to accelerate the cultivation of new growth drivers in service consumption, identifying “emotion and experience-oriented services” as a new area of growth.

The 2026 government work reports of Chongqing, Hubei, Jiangxi and Guizhou all mentioned promoting new forms of consumption, including the “emotional economy” and the “self-pleasing economy”.

In February, Sichuan province issued implementation opinions on further promoting innovation and breakthroughs in the service industry. The document identified “developing psychological health and spiritual healing services” and “promoting self-pleasing consumption among like-minded groups” as two key directions for transforming and upgrading consumer-oriented services.

The 2026 Wellbeing Economy Blue Book, published by Yudao Research Institute, which tracks China’s healing and wellbeing economy, estimates that the market has already surpassed 10 trillion RMB, with more than 840 million people in China having a demand for healing services. Of these, 680 million are said to possess a suboptimal mental health status.

The report also notes that healing consumers are predominantly young and middle-aged, with women accounting for more than 60%. Women aged 25 to 49 account for as much as 79% of users, with those aged 30 to 39 making up the largest group, at 42%.

Poised for rapid growth, but not without pitfalls

Zuo Xiaolei, former chief economist of China Galaxy Securities, told LHZB that the rise of the healing economy is an inevitable result of changes in China’s consumption structure.

In the past, rising property prices, when housing was viewed as an investment, helped drive spending in other areas. But spending on physical goods such as food, clothing, housing and transport has a natural ceiling.

“Once basic needs are saturated, consumers naturally shift their spending towards services, experiences and the spiritual realm,” she said.

Zuo said that in the post-pandemic era, growing awareness of mental health and physical and mental wellbeing among Chinese consumers has fuelled a surge in demand. The abundance of online and television content featuring TCM, dietary health and Baduanjin exercises is one manifestation of this trend.

“Micro-dramas are also a form of emotional consumption,” Zuo said. Even when their storylines are relatively thin, AI-generated micro-dramas may help specific audiences relieve emotional stress and provide a form of emotional compensation. Data shows that China’s micro-drama market last year was already close to twice the size of the country’s cinema box office.

In Zuo’s view, the healing sector has considerable market potential, with people of all age groups having some form of demand for healing-related services. But the sector also needs innovation. If products and service models successfully meet the needs of their target consumers, the industry could be poised for rapid growth.

She also cautioned that the rapid expansion of healing-related businesses has brought problems including misleading claims and exorbitantly priced healing courses. Such problems are common in emerging industries and require regulatory oversight, along with better laws, regulations and industry standards. Otherwise, they could create a range of social problems.

Healing moves into the digital realm

Young people, particularly Generation Z, are driving a new wave of healing culture, with demand for stress relief and emotional comfort increasingly extending into both physical consumption and digital life.

In major Chinese cities, many businesses are reshaping their commercial models around emotional wellbeing. For young people, visiting cafes to pet cats and dogs has become a way to “recharge” emotionally. Online, meditation and sleep-aid audio programmes and mindfulness courses are attracting large numbers of young users, while stress-relief videos on short-video platforms draw substantial traffic.

On Douyin, a three-minute audio video featuring the sounds of activities such as cutting soap and squeezing cream has garnered more than 580,000 likes.

New professions related to healing are also emerging. Singing bowl therapists, aromatherapists, mindfulness meditation instructors and ASMR (autonomous sensory meridian response) sleep-aid streamers have become career choices for some young people.

Zuo pointed out that young Chinese consumers are particularly drawn to emotional consumption, which encompasses psychological, physical and emotional needs. The recent rise of trendy toy company Pop Mart is one example. The phenomenal popularity of Labubu, she said, reflects the brand’s ability to accurately tap into the emotional needs of young consumers today.

Paying to reclaim ownership of their emotions

Wu Changchang, an associate professor at the School of Communication at East China Normal University, said in an interview that traditional consumption follows a functionalist approach: consumers buy products primarily for their practical value. Healing-oriented consumption, by contrast, is a form of “self-permission” that allows young people to stop forcing themselves to tough it out.

Young people today are expected to maintain high levels of energy and performance at work, project a polished image on social media and habitually share the good news while keeping their troubles to themselves, Wu said. Their emotions are effectively commandeered by work, socialising and other aspects of daily life.

By taking part in healing retreats such as forest therapy or meditation and vegetarian retreats at Mount Putuo, or buying healing products such as Jellycat plush toys, they are, in essence, “paying to reclaim ownership of their emotions”.

“In times of material scarcity, emotions had to give way to survival,” Wu said. The previous generation’s response to pressure was to tough it out. Today’s young people, with a relatively secure material foundation, have begun to ask whether life is comfortable and happy. “Young people seeking healing does not mean they are weaker. The fact that society allows individuals to express their emotions is itself a form of progress,” he said.

Wu added that genuine healing is fundamentally about building a stable inner psychological order in everyday life, rather than relying solely on external consumption. While spending on healing can have positive value, consumers should also be alert to the problems that may arise as the industry develops.

Some healing courses may actually create new anxieties, he said, trapping participants in a vicious cycle in which “the more they seek healing, the more they feel there is something psychologically wrong with them”.

There is also a risk that emotional release becomes overly commercialised, with providers deliberately creating rituals around consumption and even turning them into simplistic value judgements such as “if you don’t seek healing, you don’t love yourself” or “if you don’t spend money, you have no outlet for your emotions”.

This article was first published in Lianhe Zaobao as “从颂钵冥想到森林康养 民众愿为情绪消费买单 中国疗愈经济火速冒起”.

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