Commercial influence

The camping craze has bolstered the sales of equipment. Shen Zhengni, marketing manager for mountain sport at Decathlon China, says the sales of tents and other equipment in China have seen two-digit growth over the past two years.

Customers are mostly from top-tier cities like Beijing, Shanghai, and Shenzhen and Guangzhou, Guangdong province.

Last year, the camping market in China reached 74.75 billion yuan ($11.14 billion), a year-on-year growth of 62.5 percent, a report by iiMedia Research shows. The report notes that the growth of the camping market will also boost the sales of related furniture, electrical appliances, apparel and foods.

"Though camping has been popular in China since 2020, it is still a rather new outdoor activity, and most Chinese consumers are on the beginner level," says Shen. "We believe the camping consumers' group will continue to grow."

While optimism for the camping industry is high in China, some have expressed concern that overcommercialization may prevent people from truly experiencing the joys of the outdoors.

"If camping represents a kind of spirit, then it must be solitude and simplicity," writes Song Mingwei, former editor-in-chief of the Chinese magazine Outdoor, in a recent commentary for the Economic Observer, a Chinese newspaper.

"The presence of too many barbecue pits have made some campsites look more like a restaurant. Much of the fancy food placed on picnic mats is simply for the sake of photos meant for social media. There are more ugly sides than good ones to the recent rise of the camping craze in China.

"I often doubt that consumers in over-commercialized campsites can feel the joy of what true camping offers－chirps of birds, murmurs of springs and rustling of leaves－the sound of nature."

Huang Xinyi contributed to this story.

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