Traveling with Textbooks: Are Textbooks the New Props for Photo Shoots?

Trend, not just study

A new social-media motif is emerging in China: students and young travelers posing with heavy schoolbooks as if they were fashion accessories. Short, staged shots of people clutching textbooks in train stations, cafés and scenic spots have been filling feeds. It has been reported that users on Xiaohongshu (小红书) and Sina Weibo (微博) are sharing these images as part nostalgia, part aesthetic performance.

Why carry a textbook on holiday?

Why would anyone lug algebra and history volumes on a weekend getaway? For many, textbooks are visual shorthand for youth, discipline and formative years — especially in a culture that places high symbolic value on exams such as the gaokao (高考). Reportedly, the look also taps into a broader “study-core” aesthetic popular on Chinese platforms: sepia tones, retro covers and carefully arranged desks that signal sincerity and effort in a single frame.

Commerce and critique

It has been reported that some sellers and prop suppliers have noticed demand and begun marketing vintage-style textbooks and study props to influencers and tourists. But not everyone applauds. Critics say the practice aestheticizes struggle and turns educational artifacts into stage décor, while others worry it flattens real academic achievement into consumable imagery.

What it reveals

Whether a passing fad or a lasting motif, the textbook-prop trend reveals how social media reshapes everyday objects into cultural signals. Is this harmless nostalgia — or the commodification of a life stage? The question hangs in the captions and comments, where the debate continues in images as much as words.