China's Most Notorious Premium Ice Cream Is Being Revived — by a Frozen-Sausage Company

Zhong Xue Gao, the premium ice cream brand that became the face of overpriced indulgence in China and then collapsed under debt and ridicule, is being brought back from the dead. Its new owners will present the revived label at the China Ice Cream Industry Expo in Tianjin this week, from September 16 to 18 — the brand's first public appearance since its trademarks, patents and copyrights were auctioned off in the spring.

The road back began with an insult directed at someone else. Luo Yonghao, the entrepreneur and livestream-selling celebrity whose opinions reliably make news, posted this month that a rival budget ice cream "tastes far worse than Zhong Xue Gao. I miss Zhong Xue Gao." Within days, records on the national bankruptcy-restructuring information platform showed the brand's 508 intangible assets — 492 trademarks, eight patents, eight copyrights — had been transferred for 21.1 million yuan to their auction winner. By Monday, National Business Daily reported the revival was confirmed, and "Zhong Xue Gao has come back to life" was climbing Weibo's hot search.

The buyer is not a luxury outfit. Corporate records point to Wang Yaqing, who in August quietly founded a new Changsha-based Zhong Xue Gao food company, capital of one million yuan, and whose other bet is "Royal Tiger" (皇家小虎), a budget frozen-food giant whose sausage and egg-tart lines have led national sales for five years running, with retail sales past four billion yuan in 2025. The brand that once sold ¥66 bars is now owned by a man who made his fortune selling the cheapest items in the freezer aisle.

For readers who missed the original drama: Zhong Xue Gao's tile-shaped, tile-priced bars made it the emblem of "ice cream assassin" (雪糕刺客) — the summer 2022 phenomenon of unmarked premium ice creams hiding among ordinary ones in convenience-store freezers, "assassinating" shoppers at checkout. A viral video of one of its bars refusing to melt under a lighter lit the fuse; a clipped quote from its founder — "it's just this expensive, take it or leave it" — did the rest. Sales collapsed, the company drowned in unpaid bills and enforcement orders, and by 2024 its founder was broadcasting his debts.

Luo, for one, wants the record corrected. In a follow-up post on Monday he argued both scandals were unjust: the lighter test was "pseudo-science hysteria," he wrote, and the infamous quote had been maliciously clipped — the founder was talking about what his raw-material supplier charged him. Another commentator was less sentimental, speculating that Luo's Original complaint had been groundwork laid ahead of the revival. The affair has even turned into a debate on Zhihu about brand crisis management, framed around the two companies' opposite playbooks: silence versus a full-throated defense.

The revival lands in a very different China from the one that made the brand famous. The premium-consumption wave Zhong Xue Gao rode has given way to value hunting, and its new parent company sells on price. Whether a label that died of arrogance can live as a value brand is the question the Tianjin expo is about to start answering.