humor

Translation: Sharp Eyes—A Year in Rural Surveillance

Surveillance in Chinese cities is ubiquitous, with highly visible security cameras trained on most every intersection, public space, and building, but over the past decade, it has been seeping into the countryside as well. In an...

Xi Jinping Invites You To A Video Call

A novel propaganda method—a “video call” from Xi Jinping delivering Lunar New Year’s well-wishes—inspired titters after China Central Television (CCTV) shared it on Weibo. The Weibo link sent users to a faux WeChat...

The Clash of the 2022 Year-End Retrospectives

Recent year-end retrospectives and New Year’s messages published by various Chinese media outlets—including People’s Daily, Xinhua, Southern Weekly, and NetEase News—have offered vastly different interpretations of 2022, the...

Netizens Decry The Display Of Their IP Addresses

Several of China’s largest social media companies including Weibo, Douyin, Toutiao, Zhihu, Kuaishou, and Xiaohongshu have announced that they will display users’ IP addresses. The measure, which will affect the majority of...

In Shanghai, The Jokes Are No Longer Funny

An essay tracing the evolution of Shanghai lockdown memes from giddy jests about Shanghai culture to gallows humor and gloomy meditations on the state of society was censored last week after going viral on Weibo. The essay,...

From CDT Chinese: Top Ten Memes of 2021

Editor’s Note: As we enter 2022, CDT has compiled a special series of features for our readers, offering a look back at the people, events, controversies, memes and sensitive words that defined the past year. Some of this...

Chinese Joke About Lawyers Turns Out To Be All Too True

There’s a Chinese joke about lawyers that goes like this:  “You know you broke the law, right?” “Which law?” “Why, teaching the law is illegal!” [Editor’s note: It reads better in the original Chinese] The joke became reality...

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