How to scrape RedNote (Xiaohongshu) with Python in 2026 — the auth/signing problem and how to handle it

RedNote (Xiaohongshu, 小红书, sometimes "Little Red Book" or just XHS) is the platform a lot of Western teams realized they needed to monitor in 2024-2025, when the TikTok regulatory mess in the US sent millions of users — and brand attention — toward Chinese platforms. It's now China's #1 lifestyle and product-discovery network, with 300M+ monthly active users and a search-driven discovery model that makes it different from every other Chinese social platform. The problem: there's no official publ