Eating Melons
来自China Digital Space
Chī Guā | 吃瓜
Consuming the latest gossip, from a distance. Incidents become "melons," which are then "eaten" by those following along on the internet. As opposed to "[surround and watch]," which implies the application of scrutiny to events of public interest, "eating melons" connotes the private enjoyment of drama, a la "sipping tea" in American parlance. The phrase has its roots in 2016. Netizens combined the idle melon-eating crowd of China's internet peanut galleries with an official formulation of ignorant public to create the
After Nobel laureate Liu Xiaobo died in police custody in 2017, state media outlet Global Times wrote that it would stay up all night "eating melons with the public," in apparent glee.
After tennis star Peng Shuai accused former Politburo Standing Committee member Zhang Gaoli of sexual assault in 2021, Weibo users adopted "eating melons" and "gigantic melon" as stand-ins for discussions about Peng's plight in a vain attempt to evade censors. The terms were subsequently censored, temporarily. Although many took illicit joy in the cheeky discussion of "melons," others were dismayed by the corruption of language inherent in the phrases' adoption. "When a heart-wrenching accusation becomes a meme like 'a melon we commoners can’t eat,' they’ve already won," wrote on Douban user.
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