Empty Chairs On the Cover of Southern Metropolis Daily Interpreted as Nobel Tribute
As has been reported, the term “empty chair” (???) has become a banned word in Chinese cyberspace following Friday’s Nobel prize ceremony during which imprisoned Peace Prize laureate Liu Xiaobo was represented by his empty seat. Some bloggers who have used the term have had their accounts blocked, and a campaign to post images of an empty chair on blogs and microblogs have seen the posts censored and images removed; some accounts have even been deleted for posting the image. But is this game of coded resistance only between a small group of online activists and Internet censors?
With “empty chair” as a hot term in Chinese cyberspace, the Guangzhou-based Southern Metropolis Daily, one of China’s most popular and outspoken newspapers, chose an ambiguous cover image, which generated an online sensation of interpreting its symbolic meaning.
The front cover of the December 12th Southern Metropolis Daily featured a headline, “2010 Asian Para Games Are Ready to Start Tonight in Guangzhou,” but the background of the photo shows three empty chairs and five cranes. In Chinese, “he” (crane) is a homonym for “congratulations” and the first character of “peace.”
Many netizens compared the picture of the cranes to the images on Liu Xiaobo’s actual Nobel chair. Here are those images and some of the netizens’ comments from a pro-free speech online forum, translated by CDT:
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Three empty chairs – Liu Xiao Bo
Five “cranes”. — “Crane” (in Chinese) sounds the same as “Peace”. Meaning Peace Prize, also symbolizing those being forbidden to travel abroad to attend the Peace Prize Ceromony.
The man with a hat stopping cranes — representing a dictator banning democracy activists from attending the Nobel Peace Prize Ceromony.
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agree with the interpretation above.
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The Ministry of Truth will be really pissed off this time, haha!
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Hahaha, this is like a conceptual art.
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Interesting
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If this image really means this, I disagree with this act. First of all this is too risky (more serious than the other time Xiaoxiang Morning Post did their coded title.) and it will not have much effect. (The truth is not many people will understand it.)
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Actually, anyone who knows the event of the empty chair will understand this.
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Supporting Southern Metropolis Daily!
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The staff of Southern Metropolis Daily are real newsmen. Salute!
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Damn awesome performance art.
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- Southern Metropolis people are really talented.
The following comments are from a netizen’s post of this image on Flickr.
phpmUdw4H:Empty chairs appeared on today’s front page image of Southern Metropolis Daily. This really makes people wonder.
Das Lied von der Erde: is this intentional or unintentional?
grahamiao: very smart move.
???: Intentional.
Li Hxaohan: absolutely intentional.
51zjjob: This is Southern Metropolis Daily.
cnmgcdr: If only one-tenth of the media under this regime was like Southern Metropolis Daily, the regime would have collapsed.
lanwuyou: Congratulations. Empty Chair. It is so obvious.
Fabregaswong : hahaha
qqxk ????: Congratulating the empty chair??? This is fatalistic. I love Southern Metropolis Daily. Very talented. But I am extremely worried how long [the paper] will last?!!
hvnwnd: [you] should worry about how long the government will last.
And more articles, blogposts and micro-blog posts about this front cover image by Google Search:
In responding to a call from a reporter from the Hong Kong newspaper Ming Pao, a Southern Metropolis Daily staff member named Ms. Zhang explained over the phone that the photo was taken during the rehearsal of the opening ceremony of the Asian Para Games. ”There is no other meaning [in the photo]. We hope there is no over-interpretation of the photo.“
