Political cartoons have emerged over the years as the Chinese media have become more commercial, and the Internet and microblogs have exploded.

“This has dramatically changed the environment for cartoonists,” says David Bandurski, a researcher with the University of Hong Kong’s China Media Project. “They now have a really good platform to find an audience.”

Bandurski follows 20 to 30 cartoonists on social media, but suspects there are many more. He says the Communist Party still has ultimate control over media here, but the digital revolution and decentralized power have created openings for freer expression.

“This is what we call chaos,” he says, “and in this chaos, there is a lot you can do.”

And some things you can’t.

One Chinese cartoonist, Hexie Farm (蟹农场), has teamed up with China Digital Times to produce a series of weekly cartoons which are published exclusively on CDT.

© Scott Greene for China Digital Times (CDT), 2012. | Permalink | No comment | Add to del.icio.us
Post tags: cartoon, chinese communist party, hexie farm, Internet, netizens, online public opinion, satire
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Monday marked the official observance of Learn From Lei Feng Day in China, a holiday initiated by Mao Zedong in 1962 which turned a dead young soldier into a folk hero, and the central government has revved up the propaganda machine to commemorate the 50th anniversary of the death of “China’s most famous Communist do-gooder.” From The Wall Street Journal:

Best known for helping little old ladies cross the street and offering to darn his fellow soldiers’ socks, the life of onetime People’s Liberation Army soldier Lei Feng is one of the Communist Party’s oldest set pieces. With the 1963 publication of his diary (in which enthusiastic paeans to Mao and the Communist Party feature prominently), he became a posthumous propaganda sensation, with the Party urging citizens to “learn from Comrade Lei Feng.” Now, as China confronts the excesses of its economic system — including growing concern over public corruption and fears about diminished public morality — the government is working harder than ever to make Lei Feng in vogue.

Efforts to resurrect Lei Feng’s ghost are everywhere: Last week, the education ministry released a bulletin urging schools to host activities promoting the soldier. That inspired one group of 1,000 college students to dress up in vintage military garb and stand outside Shanghai metro stations and extol his virtues. Some preached the importance of good manners inside the metro cars; others offered hugs to strangers. Thousands of students Monday across the country likewise participated in “Lei Feng is in my heart” campaigns, drawing pictures, penning essays and singing songs.

A state-run Xinhua news agency article published last week declared that contemporary China is like a symphony – a single “harmonious society” – and that Lei Feng is akin to its “first violin.”

CCTV’s news web site created a special page devoted to the spirit of Lei Feng, and a Xinhua News called Lei Feng “China’s icon of altruism”‘ in a celebratory profile last week:

“Where do we come from? What are we? Where are we going?”

These questions, raised by french Post-Impressionist artist Paul Gauguin (1848-1903), are widely considered to represent the human race’s deepest meditations on the meaning of life.

According to the article, elite members of the human race, including Russian writer Leo Tolstoy (1828-1910), German philosopher Arthur Schopenhauer (1788-1860), the ancient Chinese poets Qu Yuan and Chen Zi’ang, who both wrote more than 1,000 years ago, asked similar questions, but never found the answer.

“Lei Feng, an ordinary soldier, has given a perfect answer,” the lengthy article maintained.

The Wall Street Journal article adds that Internet users have expressed their cynicism at the CCP’s immortalization of Lei Feng, however, and The New York Times reports that China’s netizens have responded to state media coverage of Lei Feng with snickers:

One posting on Sina Weibo, the country’s popular microblog service, seemed to sum up the sentiment that it is party officials, not ordinary citizens, who should be studying Lei Feng’s selflessness. “Your children have migrated overseas but you ask me to learn from Lei Feng in China,” said the posting by the sharp-tongued blogger who goes by the name Notebook and has two million followers. “I have cancer because of the poisonous milk I drank but you ask me to learn from Lei Feng.” The post was deleted by censors on Friday.

Even Ren Zhiqiang, one of China’s wealthiest property developers, could not help himself. Apparently invoking a line from Lei Feng’s official diary that schoolchildren once memorized, “My only ambition is to be a rustless screw for the great cause of revolution,” Mr. Ren called the legend a naked propaganda tool “for turning all citizens into screws that can be willfully placed anywhere.”

“That way, there is no need for democracy, human rights or freedom,” he wrote.

Dai Qing, a muckraking journalist and lapsed Communist Party member, said that many Chinese were offended by the patronizing message of moral righteousness. “Would I help a senior citizen or a child in need?” she said in an interview. “Of course I would, but not because I was told to do so by a government movement. Empathy is a minimal requirement of human decency, not one that should be directed by a political party.”

The editor of the state-run Global Times applauded the satirical spoofs that have appeared online, writes Danwei, which has a long tradition of reporting on Lei Feng and translated the following comment posted by Hu Xijin to his Weibo account along with the spoof photo above:

The louder the volume of the government campaign to study Lei Feng, the more such spoofs will be enthusiastically circulated online. This is the sigh-inducing balance of contemporary China’s public debate. When I see such Photoshop images, my heart just feels uncomfortable. But I know that the fact that such photographs appear is a sign of China’s progress. Making everything appear ugly is not just a way of thinking but has become a way of existing. Its importance to China is like that of the waste water pipes and sewers that even a city of light cannot do without.

© Scott Greene for China Digital Times (CDT), 2012. | Permalink | One comment | Add to del.icio.us
Post tags: Global Times, Hu xijin, Learn From Lei Feng Day, Lei Feng, Mao Zedong, propaganda, satire, sina weibo
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“Hexie” literally means “river crab” but is also a homonym for “harmony,” a term employed by government propagandists to justify a crackdown on dissent. The cartoonist, who does not publicly reveal his real name, also launched the Dark Glasses: Portrait campaign to show support for activist Chen Guangcheng, who has been held under a particularly stringent form of house arrest in Shandong with his family.

Starting this month, Hexie Farm will be teaming up with China Digital Times to produce a series of cartoons, which will be published each week exclusively on CDT. CDT will translate the cartoons when necessary. To launch the series, we asked Crazy Crab a few questions about his life and work:

1. Can you give us some idea of your childhood and upbringing? What was your family like, what kind of work did your parents do, and what kind of area did you grow up in (rural, urban, etc)?

I grow up in a military family, both of my parents served in the army when I was small. Originally from north China, our family lived in southern China at that time. It was a poor area, my classmates were either countryside children or from army families. I enjoyed walking to school barefoot in summer, like a village kid. When I was in the secondary school, my family moved back to a small city in the north part of China.

2. Your work is clearly heavily influenced by George Orwell. When did you first read Orwell? What other writers or artists have had an important influence on you?

I cannot remember when I first read Animal Farm, probably after university. I like reading comic books. Some cartoonists, such as Charles Schultz, Bill Watterson, Gary Larson, Quino have a great influence on me.

3. When did you first begin drawing political cartoons?

I started to draw Hexie Farm since late 2009.

4. Who do you consider to be your primary audience? What has the reaction been to your drawings among your contemporaries/friends/colleagues in China?

Most readers of my cartoons are from China. My colleagues and old friends in fact do not know my drawings, except two of my best friends, but they all pretend that they do not know me on the Internet. I think they are protecting me as well as themselves. However, since I started to draw Hexie Farm, I feel that I have more and more friends day by day. People have forwarded and reposted my cartoons even knowing their accounts would be deleted for doing this. I enjoy exchanging my ideas with them on the Internet. They encourage me to draw and they also try to support me. When I say thanks to them, they reply “to not stop cartooning is the best thanks”. From a certain perspective, Hexie Farm is not only my own work, it survives until today because all of the support from these friends on the Internet, most of them I even do not know, and I have never met any of them.:)

Here is the first cartoon in Hexie Farm’s CDT series: To Kill the Spirit of Tibet. It was inspired by Francisco Goya’s “The Third of May 1808,” which commemorates the Spanish resistance to Napoleon’s armies.

© Sophie Beach for China Digital Times (CDT), 2012. | Permalink | 2 comments | Add to del.icio.us
Post tags: cartoons, hexie farm, satire
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Translation by Jiangze Min.

1. You should only wear a Mao suit in the following three situations: (1) the most formal black tie parties, for example when a queen has invited you to a state dinner; (2) meeting with high-ranking generals, provided that if you have a seat on the military commission, the material of your suit should be pure valitin in the summer and pure wool in the winter. The color should always be army-green; (3) when covered in a red flag as you lay on your back in the farewell hall of Babaoshan receiving the sympathies of those from inside and outside the government.

2. Hu Yaobang wore a Hong Du custom-tailored suit when he visited Japan in 1983. That introduced the world to the brand-new image of China’s new generation of leaders. Today, Western suits have become the dress code for the politicians of the Celestial Empire. The bosses of the current empire especially like suits with two buttons on the front and no slits–an understated and competent look. It’s for sure that the underlings will emulate their superiors.

3. The more high-profile a leader is, the simpler his shirt will be. They will not usually wear shirts from France or gaudy silk fabrics. A top-class leader will never be seen in cuff-links. In the summer he can wear a short-sleeve dress shirt. As for undershirts, forget Clark Gable; all the big-shots wear wife-beaters under their shirts.

4. Tailored dress coats fall under a different dress code. While there are not many different styles to choose from, the design, material and workmanship must be exceptionally fine. As far as color, navy blue and black are preferable. For tailored dress coats, those made by Hong Du reign supreme. In the fall and winter, by all means avoid wearing leather jackets. Trench coats and long wool coats are a much safer choice.

5. Shanghai’s APEC summit is already over. Unless you want to be mistaken as a waiter, please cross off your fashion list the Chinese suit designed by Ms. Yu Ying.

6. Hiking your pants up to just below your man boobs was in style for the big shots from the first and second generation after the founding of China. The high point in this style came with Jiang Zemin, the “core of collective leadership.” Confucius said, “When studying Chairman Mao, study his thought, not his fashion sense.”

7. Since Deng Xiaoping passed away, you can only wear your Neiliansheng cloth shoes inside your home. If you are venturing out to survey the countryside, you can consider wearing a pair of New Balance running shoes. If you are holding your own umbrella when it’s raining, then you will really give the full effect.

8. In the selection of belts, one must take care. If you are going for a simple, austere look, then an officer’s belt is a good choice. Big-shots also like top-of-the-line imports, but be certain to avoid eye-catching materials like alligator skin. Also, don’t choose a buckle with a logo that is too obvious.

9. It’s best to not wear a watch, and you should certainly never wear more than three watches. Only wear brands that are safe: domestic brands such as Beijing, Seagull, Shanghai, and Feiyada are all politically correct choices. However, the brands seen most frequently are Longines La Grandes Classique, Omega Constellation, and Rado Integral. But remember if you wear one of these watches to rotate it so that it faces the inside of your wrist.¹

10. You can’t be a true big-shot if you haven’t lost a fair amount of hair. But even if all you have left are three stray, white hairs, you still have to remember to: (1) die them black, and (2) use hair wax to keep them in their proper place. It’s also an open secret that many choose to wear wigs. Should you be interested, I know this amazing guy near Shanghai’s Bund who can return your youthful charm.

11. As appropriate, use men’s cosmetics to cover your liver spots.

12. What big bosses eat is a state secret. If everyone under heaven knows what and how much you eat then either you are a lightweight big-shot or a dead big-shot.

13. At each meal big bosses usually have three or four different dishes and a soup. The guy in the kitchen doesn’t work in isolation–there are of course the nutritionists, the special organic farms that only supply to the government and the secret service–they all make a contribution.

14. If a leader smokes in public you can tell that he is a lightweight big-shot from the provincial level or lower. When there is a TV camera, one must never place a package of cigarettes on the table. The safe thing to do is to open the outer package and place the cigarettes on a small plate.² Lower level guys might brag that they smoke two packs of 328/329,³ but the heavy-weight big-shots have basically given up smoking.

15. When big bosses attend events they will only symbolically drink a little alcohol. At the same time, the best tea leaves in the Celestial Empire all seem to end up in the Capital of the Emperor. A secretary’s job is to always keep at her fingertips the big-shot’s special thermos.

16. On occasion, eat at a cafeteria for students or laborers. There you can get a boiled egg, a scallion pancake, five steamed rolls and a bowl of rice porridge–all for only four yuan.⁴

17. Occasionally, go to the old historical areas from the revolution and make dumplings with those still active there. If you can even go to the kitchen and personally fry some candied jujubes, then people will really think you are a reincarnation of the kitchen god.⁵

18. Besides cars with a license plate beginning with Beijing V022,⁶ the nicest cars from the various government offices are usually a few modified Nissan Civilians and Toyota Coasters (like the civilians with license plates beginning with Beijing V017). When big-shots that hold positions higher than the provincial level go out on business they are accompanied the entire time by level-two or higher guards, while great and small details relating to security, transportation, fire-safety and other details are seen to with great care. Even the hotels where these dignitaries lodge are under strict military orders to guarantee a continuous supply of electricity. It’s pretty hard to copy this grand spectacle, but for some lightweight big-shots it’s at least easy for them to soup up a mid-sized bus.

19. Don’t even think about imitating Gary Locke’s clumsy colonialist performance!  In the Celestial Empire, even middle-weight big-shots get VVIP treatment. The Central Advisory Commission has the Beikong34–the Air Force’s private jets–at the ready. For long journeys China Air has four teams of two 747s (all-passenger models B2472 and B2477). And don’t forget the special trains. Every time Chinese New Year rolls around, the Ministry of Railways will arrange DF11Z trains for officials, but first these big-shots have to go to the crammed waiting halls and interact with the masses. If you are in the process of moving up the ranks, you can even occasionally ride your bike around. Next time though, don’t send a police car to go in front of you to clear people out of the way. If you’re going to do that kind of performance then the important thing is to come across as being natural. I’d recommend that you place a bunch of student party members into positions and then swerve in and out of them making the letters S and B.

20. If a number of top-level big-shots enter a room together they must walk in formation. Walking with vigor and good posture is only the beginning. True skill is shown by those who are neither too far ahead nor too far behind, neither too fast nor too slow, neither too close nor too far.  For every three minutes on stage one must spend ten years in training. This is not something the 60s generation can just pick up in an hour and a half.

21.  Having a college diploma doesn’t score you points anymore. What you need now is a PhD, even if it’s from a Communist Party school. If you’ve studied abroad that’s even better, but if you’ve studied abroad in the U.S.S.R., that also doesn’t score you any points. If the precious sons and daughters of the dictators are not studying in London it’s probably because they are in Switzerland.  If you’ve gone to a big-name U.S. school that is even better. If you’ve done graduate work at the Kennedy School of Government then you can come back and lecture about intra-party democracy.

22. Your memory at times must be exceptionally keen (please see item 24). When giving reports and receiving visitors you must insert at least two statistics in every three sentences you speak. When giving speeches one must be able to go without notes and be charismatic and natural. One must also stand with jaw clenched while fighting back tears.⁷ One should also be able to say “I came late.”⁸ If you can memorize a few poems or famous lines in Chinese or English and share a few proverbs, then there is no keeping you from making the headlines.⁹

23. It’s also important to have some talents. Besides being able to lead people in singing red songs, one must also be able to speak intelligently about classical music, use the Internet and use an iPad. One must be photogenic and have vivid body language. Broadcast journalists especially like these types. During the Two Sessions, whatever you do, don’t pick your nose, don’t sleep and don’t steal glances at the female attendants.

24. You must be willing to scold ordinary journalists and journalists from literary magazines. At the same time you have to engage in cheerful conversation with foreign journalists and with Sally Wu Xiaoli.  When in the company of foreigners talk about political reform. When visiting Taiwan talk about closeness to the people. When you encounter misery upon your return, talk about stability. You must be able to talk tough and manage people’s hopes. More importantly, you must be able to selectively forget.

25. You must return letters to elementary school students. You must write to middle-school teachers.  You must personally visit scholars of Chinese history and culture. Word will spread that you have done these things. As far as penmanship, you really only have to be better than Mao’s grandson, but your acting skills must be on par with Oscar winners. Regardless of whether you come from a poor or a wealthy family, you must constantly tell people that you are a son of the Chinese people.

26. But the most bad-ass of the big bosses is the one sleeping in the crystal coffin.

¹ Controversy over officials’ watches was stirred by a blogger who identified the expensive watches worn by government officials.

² As was the custom of Deng Xiaoping.

³ Each costs about RMB 280.

⁴ When Wen Jiabao visited a college campus a student gave the food prices listed above.  Wen Jiabao appeared pleased and informed the student that food prices were stabilizing.  Netizens mocked the exchange because of the absurdly low prices and for the claim that food prices were stabilizing.

⁵ This is a reference to various man-of-the-people things that Hu Jintao did when he visited the southeast.

⁶ License plate prefix reserved for members of the Politburo.

⁷ This is a reference to when Hu Jintao and Wen Jiabao met at an airport tarmac after the Sichuan earthquake.  The account of the two leaders being teary-eyed upon meeting one another was derided by netizens.

⁸ It has been noted that Wen Jiabao has often apologized for being “late” when visiting people affected by natural disasters. More recently, Wen Jiabao apologized for being late when visiting the site of the Wenzhou train accident, citing illness.

⁹ This is another reference to Wen Jiabao, who is fond of quoting literature.

© Anne.Henochowicz for China Digital Times (CDT), 2012. | Permalink | One comment | Add to del.icio.us
Post tags: Deng Xiaoping, Jiang Zemin, satire, Wen Jiabao
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“When the situation is getting tougher, the humor is getting stronger. That has been always the case,” said Xiao Qiang, who runs China Digital Times, a website that follows news and web trends in China. He said in this past year, as Chinese authorities have tried to step up control in the wake of pro-democracy revolutions in the Middle East and Northern Africa, China’s online humor has, if anything, gotten sharper.

“Because especially when it comes to political and social matters, where there’s always a sense of repression there, speaking truth to power requires a lot of courage, and there’s risk involved,” Xiao said. “But humor can smooth that out.”

When two high-speed trains collided last summer, a former journalist named Liu Dongdong took a Chinese rock classic and rewrote the lyrics to create a satirical critique of government mismanagement – of the hi-speed train project, and of the accident.

The song quickly got millions of hits.

“These days in China, people are under a lot of pressure, and sometimes they feel helpless,” said Liu Dongdong. “I hope doing these songs helps relieve some of that pressure – and maybe even gets a little attention from the authorities so they do something about the problems.”

As a sidebar to the report, Magistad writes on her blog about her interview with satirical singer Chuanzi, who found the singer’s behavior, often at the behest of his professional handlers, to be completely incongruous with his sharp and witty work:

“I’m poking fun at the difficulties in our life, the difficulties we need to face,” he said. “By poking fun, we gain a certain amount of momentum or a certain amount of power to change our lives. But the system, I don’t think we can change… I think I’m a very small potato. I think I’m too weak by myself to change things. But if we stick together – we artists – it’s possible to change the society, and even the system, and to push it forward.”

[...]

Chuanzi’s agent was becoming agitated. She took her mobile phone and stepped out of the restaurant. She came back, and pulled Chuanzi aside. When he rejoined the interview, it was like a politically correct clone had taken his place. I asked what needed to change in the system to bring about the social change he desired.

“I think this is a question for the State Council (China’s main governing body) and the National People’s Congress (China’s legislature) to resolve,” he said. “We ordinary people have no right to speak on this.”

Read more about Chuanzi via CDT, including translations of two of his recent songs, Zheng Qianhua and People of July.

[This post was updated on Jan. 10, 10:10 pm PST to include Magistad's radio report.]

© Sophie Beach for China Digital Times (CDT), 2012. | Permalink | One comment | Add to del.icio.us
Post tags: art censorship, chuanzi, freedom of expression, online culture, political humor, satire
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The following screenshot taken from CNN’s video clip shows what the guard looks like:

And below are some examples of the meme:

(“Let there be light” is one of the “Free Chen Guangcheng” campaign slogans.)

(Above is a photo of the first news conference held by the Ministry of Railways after the deadly Wenzhou Hi-speed train crash. Wang Yongpin, the former Railway Ministry spokesman, is on the right.)

(The photo above shows a news conference held for a fatal school bus crash in Jiangsu province on December 12–less than two month after the Gansu preschool bus crash that killed 18 kids and 2 staff. )

(A photo of  Wukan protest)

(Lu Xingyu, holding the pink poster on the right, is a second-generation rich and she is in charge of a charity called “China-Africa Project Hope.” A scandal had broke up since netizens started to question the legitimacy of the organization.)

(A township official was dismissed after he suddenly hugged Song Zuying (on the left) while she was performing on the stage. There was a heated debate among netizens over whether the dismissal was reasonable.)

© sandra for China Digital Times (CDT), 2011. | Permalink | No comment | Add to del.icio.us
Post tags: Chen Guangcheng, satire
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Was the piece intended to stir the pot and provoke debate? Absolutely. If a piece is not provocative, it doesn’t get published, it doesn’t get read, and it has no impact.

The primary point though of the piece is that our “economic security” is more important than our traditional view that military might trumps all. You can’t pay for military might without adequate economic security and a healthy economy. You can’t support allies without a purse full of coins and a treasury filled with gold. Is it not true that senior U.S. military leaders have said and fretted aloud that the single greatest threat to the existence of the American Republic is our national debt and spend-like-a-drunken-sailor-on-leave ways? No offense to sailors intended ….

Could we do a deal with China for debt and resolution of Taiwan’s status. Absolutely. Should we …?

No, that was a “modest proposal” along the lines of the master of satire Jonathan Swift’s solution for poverty in Ireland. Satire is not a joke, it is an extremely useful way to provoke new, original thought and debate.

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Post tags: new york times, satire, Taiwan relations, United States
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The cartoonist, who does not publicly reveal his real name, also launched the Dark Glasses: Portrait campaign to show support for activist Chen Guangcheng, who has been held under a particularly stringent form of house arrest in Shandong with his family. “Hexie Farm” appears in a recent list of terms that have been banned on Sina Weibo search, but the cartoons are still widely dispersed online. Some of his cartoons have been translated and posted on CDT, including this one mocking Fang Binxing, the Father of the Great Firewall. More of his cartoons can be found here.

The Italian magazine Post Internazionale interviewed Hexie Farm:

Hexie Farm is inspired by the allegorical novellas by George Orwell, 1984 and Animal Farm, but also inspired by the creator of The Far Side, Gary Larson, and by the Argentinian cartoonist, Quino. How can Hexie Farm, in a “great, glorious and correct era of harmony”, awaken the political and critique consciousness and change the course of events?

There are lots of political cartoons published in Chinese media every day. Unfortunately most of them are boring and meaningless. These cartoons never criticize the Party or the government, they do not question the system, and they do not make people think. This situation reflects the existence and consequence of censorship. You can criticize a local officer for his taking bribery, but you cannot criticize the government when it abridges people’s rights. This is one of the reasons that I started drawing Hexie Farm. I want to show the picture to the world by depicting the one Party dictatorship and censorship. I want to combine the history and reality together in my drawings, and figure out how ridiculous the logic behind the Party’s politics is. And I also hope my audience will get a new perspective and start to think differently when they read my cartoons. The cartoons turn bloody stories into hilarious black humor and sometimes even make readers laugh loudly. I am in fact sometimes confused about this effect. But I believe laughter is our strength, the Party has tanks, and we have laughter.

Here is another of Hexie Farm’s works:

“The Politburo members in the mysterious stability maintenance dance.”

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Post tags: cartoonists, Chen Guangcheng, satire
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No government in the world pours more resources into patrolling the Web than China’s, tracking down unwanted content and supposed miscreants among the online population of 500 million with an army of more than 50,000 censors and vast networks of advanced filtering software. Yet despite these restrictions — or precisely because of them — the Internet is flourishing as the wittiest space in China. “Censorship warps us in many ways, but it is also the mother of creativity,” says Hu Yong, an Internet expert and associate professor at Peking University. “It forces people to invent indirect ways to get their meaning across, and humor works as a natural form of encryption.”

To slip past censors, Chinese bloggers have become masters of comic subterfuge, cloaking their messages in protective layers of irony and satire. This is not a new concept, but it has erupted so powerfully that it now defines the ethos of the Internet in China. Coded language has become part of mainstream culture, with the most contagious memes tapping into widely shared feelings about issues that cannot be openly discussed, from corruption and economic inequality to censorship itself. “Beyond its comic value, this humor shows where netizens are pushing against the boundaries of the state,” says Xiao Qiang, an adjunct professor at the University of California, Berkeley, whose Web site, China Digital Times, maintains an entertaining lexicon of coded Internet terms. “Nothing else gives us a clearer view of the pressure points in Chinese society.”

So pervasive is this irreverent subculture that the Chinese have a name for it: egao, meaning “evil works” or, more roughly, “mischievous mockery.” In its simplest form, egao (pronounced “EUH-gow”) lampoons the powerful without being overtly rebellious. President Hu Jintao’s favorite buzz word, “harmony,” which he deploys constantly when urging social stability, is hijacked to signify censorship itself, as in, “My blog’s been harmonized.” June 4, the censored date of the 1989 massacre of pro-democracy protesters, is rendered as May 35 — or “535.” There are also more complex forms of egao, like Hu Ge’s 2010 film spoof, “Animal World,” in which a rare species of Internet users is “saved” from “compulsive thinking disorder,” i.e., the urge to think freely.

Satire is sometimes a safety valve that government might grudgingly permit. Better a virtual laugh, after all, than a real protest. But being laughed at, as Orwell found during his stint as a colonial police officer in Burma, can also be a ruler’s greatest fear. And the Chinese government, which last year sentenced a woman to a year of hard labor for a sarcastic three-word tweet, appears to suffer from an acute case of humor deficiency.

© Sophie Beach for China Digital Times (CDT), 2011. | Permalink | One comment | Add to del.icio.us
Post tags: GMH Lexicon, Hu Yong, online culture, satire, Wen Yunchao
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Update: Another related joke is also circulating among Chinese microbloggers. It goes like this:

Q: What if President Fang microblogged a “help” message on his cellphone from the toilet for his “404 problem”?

A: The Men’s Room would be locked tight within 20 minutes.

Read more about the Great Firewall and Fang Binxing via CDT.

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Post tags: cartoons, Fang Binxing, Great Firewall, satire
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