A murderous rampage in Zhuhai, Guangdong that left 35 dead and scores wounded was met with a now all-too-familiar refrain on the Chinese internet: “Xianzhong” is back. Zhang Xianzhong (张献忠, Zhāng Xiànzhōng), a Ming-era peasant rebel notorious for his mythical bloodlust, has become an online by-word for “revenge against society” attacks against innocents by disgruntled men. In 2021, CDT flagged “Xianzhong,” which literally translates as “demonstrate loyalty,” as one of the most censored words of the year—it remains as sensitive as ever.

Running tallies of Xianzhong attacks circulate on the Chinese internet. A non-exhaustive list of incidents from this year include: the stabbing of four Americans in a Jilin park, the murder of a Suzhou bus attendant, the killing of a Japanese boy in Shenzhen, a knife attack in a Yunnan hospital that killed two and injured 21, and a Beijing stabbing spree that injured five. The latest incident, in Zhuhai, is the only one to have elicited a rare direct public response from Xi Jinping. Xi stressed an emphasis on preventing issues at their source and called for the “harshest punishment” for the attacker, who allegedly was upset about the financial settlement of his divorce proceedings. 

While the extent of the real-life Zhang Xianzhong’s murders are a question of significant historical contention, in the popular imagination he has become a stand-in for senseless bloodlust with a political edge. The following graffiti is emblematic of his image in the popular consciousness; the artist imagines Zhang paraphrasing Mao Zedong’s famous quote on reactionaries and finishes with his apocryphal instruction to “kill, kill, kill”: 

While few praise “Xianzhong” attacks, they have become a meme connoting escape from the grinding pressure of everyday life. The below chart titled “A Psychoanalysis of Contemporary Chinese Society” is illustrative of popular attitudes towards “Xianzhong.” The X and Y axes are arranged from avoidant-to-conformist and passive-to-active, respectively, connoting one’s willingness to participate in Chinese society and desired level of effort in enacting that choice. In the avoidant-active quadrant is “run,” i.e. escape from China through emigration. In the avoidant-passive quadrant is “lie flat,” i.e. withdraw from the rat race and do nothing. In the conformist-active quadrant is “involute,” i.e. strive meaninglessly in a manner memorably described by The New Yorker as reminiscent of “Sisyphus spinning the wheels of a perpetual-motion Peloton.” In the conformist-passive quadrant is “chive,” i.e. allow oneself to be used and abused by the system. The only “exit” from the matrix comes from the Z axis, “Xianzhong”:

In February of this year, one Weibo user put it succinctly: “Involute, lie flat, run, or Xian … seems like things are rapidly trending towards Xian.” 

Fascination with Zhang’s reputed barbarism is not a modern phenomenon. The Qing-era poet Peng Zunsi wrote a four-volume book detailing Zhang’s brief and sanguinary reign in the mid-1700s, likely to posthumously discredit Zhang (and discourage any who might emulate him). Nearly two-hundred years later, Lu Xun read Peng’s book and wrote: 

In a way reminiscent of ‘art for art’s sake,’ he seemed to ‘kill for killing’s sake,’ though in fact he had ulterior motives. At first he had no desire to kill, nor did he want to become emperor. It was only after learning that Li Zicheng had taken Beijing and that the Manchus had “breached the Shanghaiguan Pass” that he was forced against a wall and so began to kill, kill … He felt keenly that there was nothing left for him on this earth except to destroy what remained for others. This is the exact impulse felt by the last emperors of foundering dynasties who, in the hour before their deaths, burned the books and baubles accumulated by themselves and their ancestors. He had soldiers but no baubles, so he began to kill, kill, murder, kill … [Chinese] 

These days, references to Zhang Xianzhong are highly censored on the Chinese internet. In the aftermath of the Zhuhai murders, both Baidu and Sogou blocked searches for “Xianzhong + Seven Kills,” a reference to the apocryphally-attributed poem referenced above in which he instructs, “kill, kill, kill, kill, kill, kill, kill.” Since 2021, searches for “Xianzhongnology” and “Xianzhong memes” have been tightly censored, as have searches for “Xianzhong incidents.” On Weibo, however, some posts referencing “Xianzhong” have not been taken down. 

Zhang Xianzhong is not the only late-Ming personage to become subject to censors’ scrutiny. In late 2023, the book “The Chongzhen Emperor: Diligent Ruler of a Failed Dynasty” was pulled from shelves across China after a cover blurb was identified as a possible reference to Xi Jinping. The blurb held: “Chongzhen’s repeated mistakes were the result of his own ineptitude. His ‘diligent’ efforts hastened the nation’s destruction.” The Weibo hashtag #Chongzhen was subsequently censored, indicating its  political sensitivity.