This QQ Zodiac kids’ safari hat is just what’s needed on an adventure. It's got venting grommets up top, buttons on the side to flip up the brim, and an adjustable neck strap. It's adorned with a zodiac animal on the front and a Yun Hai logo on the back.

From Lisa:

Every year we draw a new mascot for Yun Hai based on the Chinese zodiac. We use the letter Q for the creature’s eyes, referencing the Taiwanese word for a bouncy, chewy texture: “Q.”

In 2025, I failed to complete the QQ Snake assignment, for reasons only partially explained. So, like QQ Horse, QQ Snakes rises, summoned into existence by my completionist heart.

In trying to draw a snake, RETROACTIVELY, I kept coming into forms that felt defensive (ready to strike), exoticized (sumptuously coiled), or politicized (god forbid I accidentally make a don’t tread on me flag). I looked into Eadweard Muybridge again, who created the photo study called The Horse in Motion, and found that he had also studied the motion of the serpent. Unlike the yang horse, the yin snake are hard to read, a bit arbitrary in its position, and doesn’t seem to have any kind of need to go anywhere at all.

I took from it that a snake was a line in space. Wherever its head has gone, so too its tail. I had a thought about the continuous relationship between past and present, as I drew the zodiac animal in the end of the snake year. And I thought about how transformation need not be directional, but creeping.

I wondered what I might do with a line, and, very directly, I hid a Y and an H into QQ Snake's body, representing Yun Hai. I started with the tail, and curved up and around and up and down again into the head. I added two wide open bright eyes, your standard forked tongue, and two nostrils, in homage to my sister’s hognose snake named Agnut.

I started to think of words as also having motion; start at the tail and move towards the head, ready for what’s next.

We put QQ Horse and QQ Snake on a new series, internally dubbed Zodiac Workwear, that more than hints at my Texas roots (I’m a kikker at heart), but also doubles as Practical Wear for Every Situation.™ The horse, fittingly, is emblazoned onto denim, and the snake onto khaki.

Also available on work shirts and baseball caps.

• Illustration and design by Lisa Cheng Smith.
• Embroidered in NYC by General Wearon a Newhattan kids’ safari hat.

Specifications

K1510 Safari Hat, Khaki by Newhattan.
Around 55 cm circumference.
Embroidered by General Wear.

100% cotton

Features:

• 3” wide QQ Snake embroidery on front
• 1.75” wide Yun Hai logo embroidery on back

About Yun Hai Selection

Yun Hai Selection is the house brand of Yun Hai Taiwanese Pantry.