“I’m wearing the coolest shoes now, Feiyue,” The Vaccines lead singer Justin Young tells GQ. “Best travel shoe? Feiyue trainers. I live in them,” model Poppy Delevingne (who debuted her own Poppy x Feiyue range in 2020) admits to W magazine. “Feiyue! Nice!” tweeted K-pop megastar Lee Dong-hae to his millions of followers in 2012.

In nearly a decade since China’s “little white shoe” went global, it has counted mega-stars like Alessandra Ambrosio and Orlando Bloom among its fans, formed collaborations with international brands like Celine and Casio, and set up shops and billboards in London and New York.

In 2012, Feiyue established a flagship store in Paris and had just debuted in South Korea following a global media blitz. Many netizens at the time wondered at Feiyue suddenly becoming a thing on the international fashion circuit. The collective reaction was summed up by one commentator on Twitter, “Who told hipsters about Feiyue shoes? They’re strictly nostalgia items my parents’ generation buy.”

Outside a niche martial arts following—which long prized the shoes for their light weight and flexible soles—Chinese consumers had largely abandoned the cheap (once only 10 RMB a pair) and “backward” Feiyue by the 1990s. Domestic brands couldn’t keep pace with flashy foreign sportswear giants which had arrived to capitalize on a nascent consumer society after market reforms. Even while Feiyue-clad Shaolin monks graced the Olympic opening ceremony in 2008, sales had dipped to just 200,000 pairs a year, with only one retail store in Shanghai remaining.

The “rediscovery” of the humble Feiyue coincided with the guochao (国潮) or “domestic wave” movement that became prominent in 2018, a fad for domestic fashion and other trendy products with Chinese design elements.

The Feiyue fad has even infected the literary world. “My envious expression, watching [classmates] in their new [Feiyue] trainers. Running and leaping about happily; jumping high, jumping far. I’d think to when my mother would be able to buy me a pair of sneakers like those too; the kind of happiness that would make me not eat for three days,” remembered author Guo Baodong, better known as Bei Tu, in his semi-autobiographical short story “That Pair of Feiyue Sports Shoes” in 2018.

Similar stories of warm appreciation and budding sneakerhead consciousness can be found in Feiyue’s fan groups on Baidu Forums. Posters reminisce about the status attached to pristine white shoes, the care taken in avoiding getting them dirty, and their childhood PE classes. “When I was young, I often wore Feiyue shoes but I didn’t have much concept of the brand,” Beijing resident Mei Lin told TWOC, “[Feiyue] is my favorite, especially the classic white and blue with its childhood memories.”