The Chinese app where women socialize over their menstrual cycles

What do Chinese women want? In recent years, a wave of tech startups has emerged to answer this million-yuan question. From the beauty-focused photo-editing app MeituPic to the Pinterest-esque fashion app Meilishuo, companies have been vying for the attention of China’s lucrative female user base, hoping to tap into the country’s “she economy.” The intense competition is understandable: Chinese women comprise the world’s third-largest retail market — the size of Germany, France, and the U.K.’s markets combined.

The app Meet You — pronounced as “meiyou” in Chinese, which means “beautiful pomelo” — identified a very specific need: Chinese women wanted to talk about their periods. Launched in 2013 as a simple period-tracking app, Meet You has since transformed into a social media platform with over 300 million users. Today, it provides an array of services to Chinese women — not only keeping track of their menstrual cycles but also focusing on their general sexual health, fertility, and well-being.

On Meet You’s online marketplace, users are able to buy everything from sanitary pads to prenatal vitamin supplements to vibrators. (Meet You’s rival app Dayima features a “cycle purchase” function, which sends users a monthly supply of similar products right before their period begins.) Through the app’s health consultation service, they can sign up for HPV vaccines and make an appointment with a gynecologist. Meet You’s discussion forum offers different channels for various user groups — college students, single women, mothers-to-be, etc. — where they exchange tips on topics ranging from dealing with cheating husbands to period cramps and urinary tract infections.

Most recently, though, Chinese women have been turning to Meet You for another reason: to pray for their periods to come, in hopes of avoiding an unwanted pregnancy. In online groups, which can amass over tens of thousands of members, women repeat a simple prayer, for jieyima (接姨妈). The term, translated as “receiving an auntie,” is a euphemism for getting one’s period after being exposed to another menstruating woman. “Thank you, auntie goddess! Thank you heavens, thank you divine spirits, I finally got my period last night 🙏 🫰,” wrote a user in a recent jieyima group thread.