Erling Haaland's 王老吉 (Wanglaoji) Advert Explained: What 怕上火喝王老吉 and the 'Ha-Ha-Haaland' Pun Really Mean

In June 2026, one of the strangest, catchiest things on the Chinese internet was the sight of Erling Haaland — the towering Manchester City and Norway striker — grinning into a phone camera, greeting fans in Mandarin, and singing a herbal-tea jingle. The clip went so viral, and his accent was so unexpectedly smooth, that a chunk of viewers were convinced the whole thing was AI-generated. (The brand later released behind-the-scenes footage to prove it was really him.)

The brand is 王老吉 (Wáng Lǎo Jí), China's most famous herbal tea, and on June 8 Haaland announced he'd become the global ambassador for its international label, WALOVI. If you've seen the "哈～哈～哈兰德" jingle bouncing around Douyin and want to know what any of it actually means, here's the breakdown — slogan, pun, and the bit of Chinese health culture that makes the whole joke work.

Who is 王老吉, and why a footballer?

王老吉 (Wanglaoji) is a brand of 凉茶 (liáng chá) — literally "cooling tea," a category of Cantonese herbal infusions brewed from medicinal plants and drunk to stay healthy in hot, humid weather. The brand traces its roots back nearly two centuries to 19th-century Guangzhou, which makes it one of China's oldest continuously marketed consumer products. Today it's sold in its instantly recognizable red can.

So why hand the keys to a Norwegian center-forward? Timing. With the 2026 World Cup approaching and Wanglaoji pushing its international WALOVI brand abroad, signing a globally famous athlete is a textbook case of 恰到好处 (qià dào hǎo chù) — "exactly right, perfectly judged." A summer tournament, a beverage you drink in the heat, and one of the most recognizable faces in world football: the casting lands right on the beat.

It's also a clear example of 入乡随俗 (rù xiāng suí sú) — "enter the village, follow its customs," the Chinese equivalent of "when in Rome." Rather than dub Haaland or stick him in a silent glamour shot, the campaign has him speak Mandarin and sing the brand's own jingle. A foreign star meeting Chinese audiences on their own linguistic turf is exactly the kind of gesture that plays well online — and exactly why the clip traveled.

What does 怕上火喝王老吉 mean?

The line Haaland delivers is the brand's signature slogan, one most people in China can recite from memory:

怕上火，喝王老吉 pà shàng huǒ, hē Wáng Lǎo Jí "Afraid of getting heaty? Drink Wanglaoji."

The tricky word is 上火 (shàng huǒ), and it's the cultural key to the entire ad. Translated literally it's "rising fire," but it does not mean getting angry. In Traditional Chinese Medicine (TCM), 上火 is the idea that your body has an internal balance of heat and coolness, and that certain triggers — spicy hotpot, greasy barbecue, fried snacks, staying up late, sweltering weather — push you into a state of "excess internal heat." The symptoms people blame on 上火 are real and familiar: mouth ulcers, sore throat, acne breakouts, constipation.

The remedy, in this worldview, is something cooling — which is precisely what 凉茶 is for. So the slogan isn't selling a soft drink; it's offering a fix for a specific condition. That's the brand promise distilled into one idiom: 对症下药 (duì zhèng xià yào) — "prescribe the right medicine for the ailment." You feel the heat creeping in (怕上火, "afraid of getting heaty"), so you reach for the cooling tea. The genius of the slogan is that it markets a beverage as a targeted cure, and the genius of the campaign is sending a foreign superstar to deliver that very Chinese promise.

The "哈～哈～哈兰德" pun, explained

The earworm half of the ad is the jingle, and it runs on a bilingual pun that's hard to catch unless you know Haaland's Chinese name.

In Mandarin, Erling Haaland is 哈兰德 (Hā Lán Dé) — and the key is that first syllable, 哈 (hā). On its own, 哈 is the sound of laughter ("ha!"), and it also riffs on the chant his fans already sing — the "Haaland Song," all ha, ha, ha. The campaign welds that to the brand, so the hook lands as "哈～哈～哈兰德" rolling straight into "哈王老吉" — turning his name into the act of cracking open a can.

The verses then slot the slogan into the exact moments you'd want a cooling tea:

天热就哈王老吉 — when it's hot, "ha" a Wanglaoji 烧烤就哈王老吉 — having barbecue? "ha" a Wanglaoji 怕上火喝王老吉 — afraid of getting heaty? drink Wanglaoji

Each scenario — heat, grilled food — is a classic 上火 trigger, so the song is really just the slogan's logic set to a beat: identify the heat, reach for the cure. Pair that with Haaland repeating his own name as a verb, and you get something engineered to lodge in your head. Which is exactly what happened.

Why did people think it was AI?

Two reasons the "is this real?" debate took off:

1. The Mandarin was better than expected. Tonal Mandarin is notoriously hard for native English/Norwegian speakers, and Haaland's delivery — while accented — was clean enough that, decontextualized in a short clip, it pattern-matched to the slightly-too-smooth quality of AI dubbing and lip-sync tools that flooded feeds in 2025–26.
2. The whole thing is gloriously absurd. A 6-foot-4 Premier League striker earnestly singing a herbal-tea jingle in Chinese sits right in the uncanny valley of "surely someone generated this."

The brand's response — releasing 花絮 (huāxù), behind-the-scenes footage from the shoot — was itself smart marketing: it extended the story by a full news cycle and let everyone re-share the clip a second time, now with "it's actually real" as the hook.

The bigger picture

Strip away the meme and there's a real strategy here. For most of its modern life, Wanglaoji's growth came from blanketing China's distribution channels. The Haaland deal points somewhere else: brand and cultural export, positioning a centuries-old Cantonese herbal tea as a global beverage with a recognizable international face. The World Cup is the launchpad; the WALOVI label is the vehicle; the viral jingle is the awareness engine.

For a language learner, the ad is a tidy little package of real Chinese culture: the TCM concept of 上火, the 凉茶 tradition built to counter it, a slogan that's pure 对症下药, and a foreign star doing 入乡随俗 by meeting Chinese audiences in their own language. Not bad for a herbal tea ad you can't get out of your head.

哈～哈～哈兰德.