friday 5 | recent hot chinese social media topics ::
:: below is a short list of recent topics from Chinese social media that have capturing the Interest of local netizens.
CCTV building naming controversy ::
The new CCTV building is nearing completion, and the search is on for a good nickname. Other recent architectural landmarks, like the Bird’s Nest (Olympic Stadium) and the Duck Egg (the National Theater) have decent nicknames, but the current name for CCTV’s new home, “Big Undershorts” (大裤衩, da kucha), is apparently not classy enough, according to rumors published in the media in mid-November. Netizens had a field day coming up with suggestions, from groanworthy puns – “Window of Wisdom” (智窗, zhi chuang), a homophone for hemorrhoids (痔疮) – to visual adaptations, like a series of drawings that portrayed the building as the legs of someone sitting on the toilet. More on Danwei.org.
oysters & beer ::
Employees from Netease’s online games division shot a short music video about eating oysters and drinking beer that became a minor sensation in late November. To some extent, a parody of lots of other popular online videos, it also harnessed the linguistic playfulness of the Chinese Internet to infuse Japanese, Korean, and English vocabulary into Chinese rap lyrics. Although various participants revealed on their blogs that the performers were all from Netease, it presented itself as an independently-produced short and actually seems to have first surfaced on Sina Video. A clever viral video, perhaps?
fickle online public opinion ::
Netizen sympathy can change in an instant if new information comes out that puts the situation in a different light. Take the case of Huang Jing, a consumer who was jailed on the charge of extortion for demanding 5 million dollars from computer maker ASUS after the company “upgraded” her laptop with a demo, not-for-sale chip when she brought it in for repairs. She initially gained netizens’ sympathy because of her prison term, the company’s high-handed tactics, and the fact that Taiwan-based companies like ASUS are viewed with suspicion as a general rule. Intel, the chip manufacturer, caught some flack too. But when it came out that Huang had used a fake name in her dealings with the company, and that she and her lawyer had drawn up detailed media publicity plans, netizens were quick to accuse her of manufacturing a scandal to further her own ends. Huang has since received state compensation for her wrongful imprisonment and is now suing the company in Beijing court.
Gong Li becomes a Singapore citizen ::
Gong Li was formerly the most famous movie star in China, but now she’s become a citizen of Singapore, where her husband is based. The resulting online reaction included loud accusations that she was a traitor and the citation of a poll showing that a majority of Singaporeans didn’t want her (which later turned out to be misreported), but was dominated by level-headed discussion of what citizenship really means and why the rich and famous often end up with foreign passports. A variety of online voices can be heard in this lengthy Tianya thread. Nationalists also got riled up over a photo-shoot that Super Girl Rola Chen (陈怡 Chen Yi) did in Japan in which she used Chinese and Japanese national flags as props. The pics in question.
blog censorship ::
ProState In Flames, the blog of a young journalist who reposts articles on all kinds of different topics, most of them poking fun at the establishment and some originally from dissident sources, got pulled from Bullog.cn, a BSP that’s somewhat anti-establishment itself. He immediately started blogging on iFeng.com, Phoenix TV’s blog host, and then re-registered on Bullog, minus his apparently sensitive archives. Newly released research by Rebecca MacKinnon looked into 15 major BSPs on the Chinese mainland: 108 articles on various “sensitive” subjects were posted, and the different hosts deleted between 1 and 60 of them. Chinese version of Rebecca’s research at Yeeyan.
// AjS
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