Pray for jade
来自China Digital Space
qí cuì 祈翠
#dailyprayerforjade Please please please (Source: Weibo via CDT Chinese)
Coded wish for Xi Jinping's demise that appeared in February 2020 after he claimed to be "personally" directing the effort to fight COVID-19.
The character cuì 翠, meaning jade or jade-like color, is intended to be read component by component: Xi's surname (习), repeated, on top of the archaic verb zú 卒, meaning "to die." Some riffed on this by writing Chairman Xi (Xí Zhǔxí 习主席) as the roughly homophonous Xí zú Xí 习卒习 (i.e. "die, Xi, die"). CDT Chinese has a compiled collection of posts tagged in the Weibo "super topic" #dailyprayerforjade (#每日祈翠超话#).
The term became a sensitive word on Sina Weibo shortly after it was coined.
