0:00

Hey there, it's Gregory from Rough Translation.

0:03

So last year, in Portland, Oregon,

0:06

a 19-year-old was biking from his home to

0:08

his community college, a commute that takes

0:10

him down this really steep hill.

0:12

It was a day that was super rainy and windy,

0:15

and I basically ended up falling down

0:17

the hill and chipping my two front

0:19

teeth. So I kind of ended up walking

0:21

home as my arm hurt a whole bunch

0:23

and my face was kind of busted up.

0:26

But I had my mask on, so no one had to see

0:29

that, but like, still. The

0:32

accident came during the first semester of

0:34

a stressful freshman year.

0:36

He was struggling with hybrid classes, trying

0:38

to figure out when to roll out his new name, the

0:40

more gender-neutral Minh, it means

0:42

bright in Vietnamese, struggling

0:44

to be himself around his conservative Vietnamese

0:46

family,

0:47

who he lives with. After the

0:49

accident, he found the only thing that reliably gave

0:51

him joy and let him forget his pain

0:54

was being a fan of this

0:56

Korean TV show.

1:01

A Korean reality TV

1:03

show called Boyz Planet. Where young

1:05

men compete to be chosen for a K-pop group. I'm

1:08

like very involved with idol

1:10

group fandoms, especially since there

1:12

was like a contestant that like I was really

1:14

attached to, so. His

1:20

name is Seung-Hun.

1:24

I don't know, just like knowing that like,

1:26

hey, even though my week has been

1:28

not great, at the end of it, I get

1:31

to see my fav.

1:33

Yeah. I, I'll

1:35

be honest here, I've been thinking a lot about the

1:37

power of fandom, how

1:40

being a fan and loving something can uplift

1:42

us, but also the power that

1:44

you have as a fan of the show.

1:47

My aim is to find a home for Rough Translation

1:49

after NPR stops supporting the show this

1:51

summer. And so

1:54

I've been talking a lot about you, about why

1:56

you listen, about what this show has meant to you

1:58

and how this show has been.

1:59

useful for you in your life. And

2:02

that's how we ended up talking to Min, who actually

2:04

became a fan of our show through his love

2:06

of K-pop, when he heard an episode that

2:08

is all about the power of fandom.

2:11

I was like really surprised like,

2:13

you guys had like this whole episode about

2:15

fanfic and fandom

2:18

and all of that. I just didn't think that like

2:20

anyone would like report on

2:22

it.

2:23

["Fantas"]

2:26

Min told us that that episode and other

2:28

episodes he would hear later, they gave him confidence,

2:31

made him see himself as a future journalist. And

2:33

now he's enrolling in a four year school next year.

2:36

So we figured we'd play you that story,

2:38

which is one of my favorites and also feels

2:41

especially relevant today with

2:43

our conversations about book bandings and cancel

2:45

culture. The episode is called, Dream

2:47

Boy and the Poison Fans from 2020. It's

2:50

about two fan groups in China that

2:53

go head to head with such force that

2:55

they nearly break the Chinese internet and send

2:57

shockwaves through the Chinese government. And

3:00

it's a story about the thrilling, but also unsettling

3:02

experience of loving something and fighting

3:04

for it to survive. And

3:07

just a reminder for fans of this podcast,

3:10

that I have started a sub stack, it's

3:12

an email newsletter that is free

3:14

to sign up. And next week we're gonna do an

3:17

AMA on the sub stack chat. So

3:19

you can sign up now, put in any questions

3:21

you have. That link is around the world

3:23

in 85days.substack.com.

3:26

If you love the show, I would love

3:28

to have you join us there. It just takes a minute

3:30

to sign up.

3:33

So here's Dream Boy and the Poison Fans, first

3:35

aired as part of our series, The School

3:37

of Scandal. There's

3:40

a kind of rise and fall celebrity story

3:42

that we're all now familiar with, where someone super

3:45

famous who can do no wrong, suddenly

3:47

does something or tweet something and

3:49

they go down fast in

3:51

a social media pile on.

3:53

Today we have a story from NPR's

3:55

Beijing correspondent, Emily Feng, where

3:58

you have the same arc, the same rise.

3:59

and fall. Except the celebrity in question,

4:02

a boy band star turned actor, he

4:05

did not do or say

4:07

anything. The first that

4:09

I heard of Xiao Zhan was the

4:12

beginning of the end of his career.

4:15

This is when the coronavirus pandemic really

4:17

started to get bad in China.

4:20

More people were getting sick, people were starting to die

4:22

in large numbers. But online,

4:24

the top five trending topics

4:27

with hundreds of thousands, if

4:29

not millions of retweets each would

4:31

have been things like boycott

4:34

Xiao Zhan, avoid Xiao Zhan,

4:36

take down Xiao Zhan. If

4:40

you followed any kind of

4:43

major brand online and

4:45

you were shopping on any of China's

4:47

e-commerce apps, you

4:50

may have seen scrolling comments from

4:52

random users who would say things like take

4:55

down Xiao Zhan, do not buy this product,

4:58

we must defend our public rights.

5:02

Public rights. What even

5:04

are public rights? We're going to get to that. It

5:06

is what our whole episode is about. But

5:09

first, should we start with who Xiao Zhan even

5:11

is? I think so. Yeah, tell me about

5:13

him. I'm going to call up his picture now so

5:16

I can admire his good looks. He

5:19

is quite beautiful. So Xiao

5:22

Zhan's story begins in 2015 when he competes in this

5:26

American Idol-like sing-off competition

5:29

and he wins. And because he

5:31

wins, he joins a boy band group called X9. But

5:34

where he really got famous

5:37

is he gets cast in this Chinese web drama called

5:39

Chen

5:47

Qing Ling. In English it's called

5:49

The Untamed.

5:53

The series takes place in this sort

5:56

of magical realm called

5:58

Jiang Hu which is

5:59

a very common fantasy world used

6:02

in Chinese martial arts films. Think

6:04

like Crouching Tiger, Hidden Dragon.

6:06

Xiao

6:07

Zhan plays one half of a

6:09

crime-fighting duo. The other half

6:11

is played by an actor named Wang Yibo.

6:14

And they fight evil but they also

6:16

become best friends and they're often described

6:19

in the show as soulmates.

6:24

He's a symbol of loyalty and true

6:26

friendship but this reputation

6:29

is about to flip.

6:31

This is rough translation from NPR. I'm

6:34

Gregory Warner. This is the

6:36

first in a series we are dubbing The School

6:39

of Scandal. It's a series about

6:41

people breaking unspoken codes of conduct

6:43

and challenge the status quo. And

6:45

the scandal in this story has actually

6:47

very little to do with the celebrity, Xiao Zhan,

6:50

and much more to do with his fans. Actually

6:53

with two competing fan universes,

6:55

each with their own culture fandom who

6:58

wage a very public battle over

7:00

very private fantasies.

7:01

That story when rough

7:04

translation returns.

7:08

This

7:10

message comes from NPR sponsor Noom.

7:13

Noom is an award-winning weight loss program

7:15

that uses psychology and personalization

7:18

to help you lose weight and keep it off. Noom

7:20

gives you knowledge designed to help you make informed

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your goals. Sign up for your trial and get

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psychology based weight loss support at

7:29

Noom.com slash

7:32

NPR.

7:34

We are back with rough translation. I'm

7:36

Gregory Warner. By the time

7:39

that Emily Fang started reporting this story

7:41

in March, the controversy around this

7:43

actor had already gotten so hot that

7:45

many of his fans refused to talk to a reporter.

7:48

Others asked to speak in ways that would not reveal

7:50

their true identities. NPR

7:52

by the way has a very strict standard

7:55

on this. You have to reasonably expect harm to

7:57

your person or livelihood and

7:59

they met this standard.

7:59

There had been retributive attacks

8:02

and death threats. But we're

8:05

going to start our story before all that. Back

8:07

when Xiao Zhan was getting more endorsements than almost

8:09

any idol in China, he's 28, tall

8:12

and thin with pale skin, big eyes. And

8:15

to understand the role he played in Chinese

8:17

pop culture,

8:18

you can look to the TV ads that were scripted

8:21

with his image in mind. Like

8:23

Emily showed me this ad for Estee Lauder lipstick.

8:26

So it starts in this, looks

8:29

like a hotel lobby almost. The light is really

8:31

warm, golden. Xiao Zhan appears

8:33

at the top of a staircase. He looks down and he sees

8:35

this one beautiful woman in the crowd. She

8:38

looks quite unsure of herself.

8:39

And he sees

8:41

this woman. And he,

8:44

you can sort of tell, he quickens his steps. He walks

8:46

down the staircase briskly and it

8:49

looks like he's about to approach her. But

8:52

instead he grabs a golden balloon and

8:54

he sends it her way with a package attached to

8:56

the balloon. And inside is

8:58

surprise, an Estee Lauder

9:01

lipstick, which she puts on and all of a sudden

9:03

she has self-confidence, she struts

9:06

out and she takes her position on stage in front

9:08

of a microphone. And you see Xiao Zhan

9:10

in the crowd. He

9:11

begins to clap for her and everyone

9:14

else begins to clap for

9:15

her as the woman smiles.

9:19

They're selling this image of him

9:21

as someone who helps others and

9:24

who is a helper of beauty. He's

9:26

like too good to be human, but he's

9:29

always there helping others be their

9:31

best selves. And that

9:32

really shapes how Xiao Zhan's millions of fans

9:35

see him. He looks very clean.

9:39

He looks very decent. He looks very

9:41

gentle. This is a fan we're calling by her

9:43

initials, IZ. In my past 30 years

9:45

life I have never seen someone look that good.

9:48

It's true.

9:59

She is not the typical Xiao Zhan fan. Xiao

10:02

Zhan fans are usually single women,

10:05

young teenagers, likely in middle school

10:07

or high school.

10:08

Aizi says that Xiao Zhan serves as this

10:10

kind of connector to her friends because

10:12

they always have something to talk about, Xiao Zhan's

10:15

good looks.

10:16

And also there is another reason

10:18

is because I feel when

10:21

people are pursuing

10:23

or say when they are adoring a

10:25

certain kind of celebrity, they

10:28

must find something in the celebrity

10:30

that we don't have in ourselves.

10:33

So Aizi describes herself as a very

10:37

frank and outspoken person, maybe

10:39

even a little harsh. And one of the things

10:41

she emies most in Xiao Zhan is his gentleness.

10:44

So I feel that is something I

10:46

want to learn from

10:49

him. Because Xiao Zhan is portrayed

10:51

as such a sweet person, he also needs protection

10:53

because that gentleness can be taken advantage of and

10:56

his fans need to be the ones who stand up for him.

10:58

Now here is where China's fan

11:00

culture, and actually Asian fan culture in

11:02

general, it

11:03

kind of veers away from even the most intense

11:05

fan behavior in the West.

11:07

Because a lot of fans see it as their job,

11:09

even their responsibility, not just to

11:11

admire their idol and to support him,

11:14

but to go so much further.

11:16

So Aizi talks about how in these social

11:18

media groups, some of which will have hundreds

11:21

of thousands of followers each, there

11:23

is something

11:24

called chouhua, so super

11:27

topic, what's called a super topic or

11:29

chouhua, in which some of the

11:31

lead fans who devote hours a day

11:34

to organizing this fan structure

11:37

will give orders to fans

11:39

beneath them about what they need to achieve for

11:41

that day. So

11:54

You

12:00

remember that Estee Lauder ad for lipstick? According

12:02

to Chinese media, Estee Lauder products

12:05

pitched by Shao in 2019 sold out not only

12:07

within the first day

12:09

of their release, but within the first hour,

12:12

totaling almost $6 million in sales. And

12:14

then back on the fan club sites, fans

12:16

would celebrate what they saw as their success.

12:19

It's gamified. You

12:21

want to support your idol

12:24

by making sure he or she gets the most brand

12:26

endorsements and makes the most money

12:28

on behalf of these companies.

12:29

Okay, I get

12:31

what Shao Zhen gets out of this. He gets

12:34

fame and success and money. What

12:36

do fans get out of making him so successful?

12:38

By being a particularly influential

12:41

fan, a super fan, you also get a lot of

12:43

power and influence. The majority

12:46

of his fans are going to be

12:48

young girls in their middle school

12:50

or high school years. So in real

12:52

life, they're not going to have a lot of power in Chinese

12:54

society. But by being a part of this fan group,

12:57

you become part of this very

12:59

powerful commercial collective as well.

13:02

So the gamified commercial

13:04

fans, they are just the first

13:06

group of fans in our story. The second group

13:08

of fans are part of a much older and

13:10

more global fan tradition, fan

13:13

fiction, or fanfic, which started

13:15

in the West in the 1960s with Star Trek.

13:22

Fans wrote their own stories

13:24

starring their favorite characters. Fan fiction

13:27

was kind of like this mental safe haven.

13:31

And I made a lot of my really good friends this way.

13:33

So that was kind of like a

13:36

big part of my social life growing up. For

13:38

the story, I reached out to one fan. Her

13:40

name is Tom Wu, which is her screen

13:42

name, not her real name. And I reached

13:44

out to her because she's been reading and

13:46

writing fanfiction since she was a teenager.

13:49

She is a Chinese person

13:52

born and raised in China, but moved

13:54

to the US at a young age and then moved

13:57

back to China when she was in high school. So she

13:59

always had a lot of power.

13:59

felt a little bit like a third culture kid,

14:02

like she never really fit in. I think

14:04

in the very early stages, fan

14:06

fiction was what kind of helped me just

14:09

recognize the queer community in general. I

14:12

think I got a lot of chance to test

14:14

out a lot of like gender and sexuality expressions

14:17

through imagining how these two

14:19

people, how they would interact. In

14:21

fan fiction terms, when you imagine a romantic

14:24

pairing between two characters, you ship a pairing,

14:26

like a relationship. What you

14:28

like in like the pairing you ship definitely

14:31

says a lot about what you imagine,

14:34

relationships and emotions

14:36

and connections to be.

14:38

Tzamu identifies as bisexual and

14:41

also as demisexual.

14:43

She's only attracted to someone she has an emotional connection

14:45

with, regardless of gender.

14:48

And anything that veers from

14:50

cis people having

14:53

straight relationships is still

14:55

widely stigmatized in China.

14:57

And if you're outed, you can lose your job or

15:00

find it hard to get hired to a new one. You

15:02

can be shunned by family, but that's all

15:04

in the real world. In the virtual world

15:06

of fan fiction, Tzamu could express herself.

15:09

Even just like writing about your

15:12

favorite couple having sex, that's a way

15:14

to explore what it means to like

15:17

be physical, which is like a

15:19

part that's lacking a lot from our

15:22

daily education, also conversation.

15:25

Which brings us back to the untamed.

15:27

Xiaojin's hit TV show where

15:29

he and his fellow actor Wang Yibo battle

15:32

evil and surmount tests to their loyalty.

15:39

The series

15:39

is actually based

15:41

on a web novel where

15:45

this crime fighting duo are

15:47

more than friends, they're actual

15:49

lovers. On the TV show,

15:51

their physical relationship is only

15:53

suggested. They exchange these meaningful

15:56

pregnant looks. There's

15:59

one scene where... the Wang Yibo character

16:01

gets hurt. And in order to treat him,

16:04

Xiao Zhen needs to

16:06

convince him to take his clothes off

16:08

in a cave, which that's

16:10

all as far as it gets. You don't see anything

16:12

more.

16:20

Taking crime-fighting duos from mainstream

16:23

television and imagining them in

16:25

romantic fan-fiction pairings is a tradition

16:27

as old as Kirk slash

16:29

Spock,

16:31

Holmes slash Watson. Or

16:33

after them, Xena the warrior princess slash

16:35

Gabrielle, Buffy the vampire slayer

16:38

slash everybody. There's

16:40

been a lot of scholarship about erotic

16:42

fanfic or what is called slash writing. We

16:45

are not gonna get into that in this episode, but we'll

16:47

have links in the show notes. But one

16:49

thing to note, fan-fiction has been mostly

16:51

written by women and girls. And there's

16:54

always been a strong subcategory of M

16:56

slash M, men in love

16:58

with men, often having sex with

17:00

each other.

17:01

Talmul describes how growing up,

17:03

it was a constant cat and mouse game to

17:05

read the stories that you liked and

17:08

to follow the authors that you liked, because

17:11

inevitably some of the stories they

17:13

wrote would be censored and the

17:15

authors would counter by rewording

17:20

sections of their story, using phrases

17:22

or vocabulary that was not as explicit,

17:25

that was allegorical. But then Talmul

17:28

discovered a site where she could write anything she

17:30

wanted about Xiao Zhan or any other character,

17:32

and it could be read in China freely.

17:35

It's a site based in New York called AO3,

17:38

Archive of Our Own. It's

17:40

one of the largest fan-fiction sites in the world.

17:43

And

17:43

for a lot of people in China, AO3

17:46

was a place for free expression,

17:48

because AO3 does not require

17:51

real name registration. So you

17:53

can make up any username you want. You

17:55

don't have to upload a passport

17:58

or identification document.

17:59

verifying that you indeed are

18:02

who you say you are. You can be anyone you want

18:04

to be on this

18:04

site, which Tsao Mu

18:06

calls the freedom to dream. Last

18:10

summer, when AO3, the platform, won

18:12

a sci-fi literature award called the Hugo

18:14

Award, Tsao Mu posted a video

18:16

of the AO3 team receiving the award, and

18:19

she wrote a kind of love letter to fan

18:20

fiction. I said, I would

18:22

like to know if you can be someone who

18:24

has a role in the film. I would like to know

18:26

if you can be someone who has a role in the film. I would

18:29

like to know if you can be someone who has

18:31

a role in the film. Loosely

18:33

translated, what she writes is, fan

18:35

fiction is the heroic dream

18:38

or ideal of a worn-out life. We

18:40

hope that every story is a happy ending and

18:43

that every person you've ever loved but

18:45

who doesn't exist in the real world will

18:47

still have the richest, most marvelous life

18:50

in your fan fiction. What

18:51

does that mean, actually, that the characters

18:54

you've imagined or dreamed up will have a rich

18:56

and marvelous life? What

18:59

she's defending is someone's interiority.

19:02

I like that she uses the word heroic dream

19:05

because she's suggesting that to dream

19:08

it in the first place is

19:11

in and of itself an act of courage and that

19:13

you're pushing

19:14

boundaries that

19:16

other people place on you, that

19:18

you place on yourself.

19:20

And so in fan fiction,

19:22

you're at least trying to break free of those

19:25

to put yourself out there, to make these creations

19:27

of yours public.

19:33

So on February 25th, 2020, with

19:36

half the country stuck at home because of the coronavirus,

19:39

a writer on the fan fiction side, AO3,

19:42

pushes those boundaries once more with

19:44

a series of stories. And the

19:46

story is called Falling. In Chinese,

19:48

it's called Xiaozhui. So in

19:50

the short story, the writer imagines

19:53

Xiao Zhan's character as

19:55

a transgender woman who works

19:57

as a prostitute in a hair

19:59

salon.

19:59

who is pursuing a romantic relationship

20:02

with a male high school student who sometimes

20:05

comes into the hair salon. And that student

20:07

is the character played by Wang Yibo, Seo-Jin's

20:10

co-star in this television show. And

20:15

they have this torrid love affair in

20:18

the fan fiction story. And I like

20:20

that AO3 fiction writer.

20:23

I like that girl.

20:25

She's writing better and better. Aizi

20:27

reads the story and she says she actually

20:29

liked the story. She says that there was

20:32

a group of fans though that were really offended.

20:35

They're actually a really small minority

20:37

of Seo-Jin's fan circle and they're

20:39

known as the Dui. Dui

20:42

is called a poisoning single

20:45

fan. If we translate it literally, they're poison

20:48

fans. The Dui are people who

20:51

believe Seo-Jin should have no romantic entanglements

20:53

whatsoever. Even people imagining

20:55

in fan fiction that he has a relationship with his co-star

20:58

is completely wrong in their eyes. So

21:01

the Dui, they start to say

21:03

we should report AO3,

21:05

which is the fan fiction site where the story

21:07

was originally published.

21:10

When

21:10

the poison fans decided to report

21:12

AO3, reporting in China

21:15

is kind of like when you flag a site for

21:17

inappropriate content. But the

21:19

difference is that in China, instead

21:21

of sending your complaint to the tech company to

21:23

act on, you can actually report

21:25

them directly to the government.

21:27

The Chinese Cyberspace Administration,

21:30

which is the ministry that oversees

21:32

internet content. Basically,

21:35

they're online censors. So in China,

21:37

you can report someone for criticizing the

21:39

Communist Party, for denigrating Chinese

21:41

culture, or for, quote, moral

21:44

violations.

21:44

And the Seo-Jin fans say

21:46

we should report this site for hosting

21:49

pornographic fan fiction so the Cyberspace

21:51

Administration can take this entire site

21:53

down. When does the

21:55

intention shift from taking down the story

21:57

to taking down the site? Oh, I

21:59

mean immediately.

22:02

The goal wasn't to ban this one story or

22:04

even to single out this one author. It

22:07

was to block in all of China the

22:09

platform that allowed this content to exist.

22:12

And to achieve this, the Poison fans

22:14

jump on the same fan forums that

22:16

had built their star's success to

22:19

mobilize the other fans in

22:21

the community.

22:21

They give out telephone

22:24

scripts so you can just recite the script and

22:26

call in to the hotline of the Cyberspace administration

22:29

to report AO3. And

22:31

these scripts are specifically designed to use

22:34

buzzwords that authorities will immediately

22:36

latch onto. So words

22:39

like negative influence or

22:41

vulgar content or

22:43

pornographic suggestions. And

22:45

so instead of telling

22:47

people to click on a video or

22:50

buy this soap, they were now saying,

22:53

call this number, email the censors, and report

22:55

this story. Yeah,

22:56

like the entire tribe turns

22:59

its focus on, we must take down

23:01

AO3.

23:05

But AO3 is not

23:07

going down without a fight. That's

23:09

when rough translation returns.

23:17

This message comes from Jackson. Seek clarity

23:20

in retirement planning at Jackson.com. Jackson

23:23

is short for Jackson Financial Inc., Jackson

23:25

National Life Insurance Company, Lansing,

23:27

Michigan, and Jackson National Life

23:29

Insurance Company of New York. Purchase

23:32

New York.

23:34

We are back with rough translation from

23:36

NPR. I'm Gregory Warner. Before

23:38

the break, we told you about how a horde of celebrity

23:40

fans mounted an attack on the fan fiction

23:43

site AO3. But where the story

23:45

really gets interesting

23:46

is the backlash.

24:00

and his co-star Wang Yibo gets published on AO3.

24:02

Hey, good morning! Cai Mu wakes up. I

24:05

woke up and I found my phone just blown

24:07

up completely. Like, I didn't know what happened,

24:09

like overnight. And her mobile phone is

24:11

flooded with text messages and

24:14

messages on social media from friends

24:17

saying, do

24:18

you know what's going on? And I was like, oh.

24:21

So I went to check and kind of pieced

24:23

together what was happening. What's happened is

24:26

that AO3 fans

24:28

have become aware that Xiao Zhan fans are

24:30

reporting AO3.

24:32

And AO3 fans

24:35

decide to counter and fight back. My

24:38

post from like half a year ago was kind

24:40

of just dug out. They repost Samu's

24:42

love letter that she wrote after

24:44

the Hugo award, when

24:47

she said that fan fiction was the heroic

24:49

dream of a worn-out life. And

24:51

so her original Weibo post ends up

24:53

getting hundreds of thousands of retweets. Retweets

24:56

in support. So now you have this chorus

24:58

of voices saying, this is our

25:00

public right. Our public right

25:02

to post these private dreams online. And

25:05

echoing Samu's words, let

25:07

the people we loved who never existed have a rich

25:09

and marvelous

25:10

life. And then two

25:12

days later, representatives for

25:15

AO3, the fan fiction site, confirmed

25:17

that the website has been blocked in China.

25:20

So if you use a Chinese internet on a computer

25:22

in China,

25:23

you will not be able to access AO3 anymore.

25:26

Wait, so it worked?

25:29

China's cyberspace administration had been

25:31

conducting an online cleanup

25:33

campaign to begin with. And

25:36

so it's never been really clear if

25:38

AO3 was already on their shortlist

25:41

of websites to take down. And

25:43

Xiao Zhan fans simply tipped the balance. Or

25:46

if they were the sole reason that AO3 was taken

25:48

down. For a lot of people, it's kind of like losing

25:51

the last safe space they've been clinging onto. So

25:53

we're just going to take out all our anger on censorship

25:56

in general on you.

25:59

And their way of fighting

26:02

back against Xiao Zhan fans reporting

26:04

AO3 is they marshal AO3 fans

26:08

in China to boycott any

26:10

product and any brand

26:13

that has an endorsement deal with Xiao Zhan. They

26:16

are going

26:17

after the endorsement deals that the fan clubs

26:19

and the fan forums have worked so hard for.

26:22

They were kind of like, how do you say like, like

26:25

in English, it's just like they were... The

26:28

human flash search machine. What

26:31

she's talking about is the human flash search engine

26:34

or search machine springs into action. This

26:36

is the power of the Chinese internet. It's where people through

26:39

sheer numbers just crowdsource challenges

26:42

and they will use very laborious

26:45

time intensive methods to attack someone. And

26:47

so they go on every single e-commerce

26:49

site, social media site,

26:52

cultural movie review site,

26:55

and they spam every forum they

26:57

can find with insulting

26:59

comments about Xiao Zhan

27:01

and things like hashtag

27:03

boycott Xiao Zhan, protest Xiao

27:06

Zhan. This is

27:06

when Emily Fang and a lot of other

27:08

people using the Chinese internet started noticing

27:11

those angry hashtags. There

27:13

was this video that went viral in which a

27:16

live streamer who's promoting products

27:18

from Olay is

27:20

swarmed by online comments. Olay

27:24

being one of the brands that endorses Xiao Zhan.

27:26

But she's not connected with Xiao Zhan. She just

27:28

happens to be endorsing the same product. She has no idea who

27:30

Xiao Zhan is, I think. Really?

27:33

But you can barely see her because all of these comments

27:35

of boycott Xiao Zhan, takedown Xiao

27:37

Zhan are scrolling across

27:40

the screen so densely that it's basically

27:42

blocking out her. And

27:44

she says something to the effect of ignore

27:47

these comments, they're just random people.

27:51

And that only infuriates the AO3 fans

27:53

even more.

27:57

actually.

28:00

Amy Song is a brand specialist at

28:02

the marketing firm Gartner. And she specifically

28:05

tracks Chinese celebrities and

28:07

how popular they are. So normally

28:10

the average monthly engagement on

28:12

Olay's Weibo is around 10,000, but in

28:15

March their

28:18

average monthly Weibo engagement is actually 587,000.

28:21

Amy had never seen

28:24

this kind of energy

28:26

before. And she wanted to know who

28:29

were all these people

28:30

taking the time to leave angry comments

28:32

about hand lotion and lipstick, to

28:35

defend a trans-positive fan fiction story

28:37

and an author's right to dream it. Were

28:39

there actually that many fan fiction fans

28:41

in China?

28:43

And what she finds is this movement

28:46

is not just people that read AO3.

28:47

Writers and artists

28:50

who has nothing to do with either Xiao

28:52

Zhan or fans or AO3. Intellectuals,

28:55

filmmakers, artists, people

28:57

who have been taken down, canceled so

29:00

to speak, because of their politically

29:02

dissident subversive views.

29:05

Joining just because they

29:07

sort of want to defend the

29:10

freedom of expression. AO3 becomes

29:13

this rallying point for anyone who's been

29:15

a victim of Chinese censorship and reporting culture

29:17

before.

29:17

This phrase reporting

29:20

culture keeps getting mentioned in this campaign.

29:23

This is a movement against reporting

29:25

culture,

29:26

which is something older than Xiao Zhan

29:28

and older than AO3. It's

29:31

even older than the internet. So reporting

29:33

culture is an extremely loaded phrase

29:36

in Chinese history because

29:38

there have been numerous instances

29:41

where people have been encouraged to turn

29:44

on each other by top

29:45

Chinese leaders. And

29:48

in the 1950s, as the Communist

29:50

Party of China is solidifying its rule,

29:52

they encourage people to

29:54

report landlords who

29:56

have abused peasants, who have abused

29:59

feudal religions.

29:59

relationships to exploit the labor

30:02

of China's agricultural population. What

30:05

results is, yes, some people

30:07

who truly exploited Chinese

30:10

farmers for their own gain being punished,

30:14

but a lot of people simply reporting neighbors

30:17

and people they worked for for

30:19

past grievances

30:21

that likely didn't merit the punishment, which

30:24

in the 1950s was

30:27

violent beatings, public humiliation,

30:29

and then finally execution. In

30:31

the 1960s and 70s, reporting culture

30:33

was employed again by Chairman Mao in

30:35

the Cultural Revolution. This time,

30:38

you could be reported not just for something you'd done,

30:40

but for something you said or failed

30:42

to say.

30:43

People are encouraged to report

30:45

each other for behavior

30:47

that's not ideologically pure. Students

30:50

were encouraged to report their teachers for

30:52

teaching non-politically correct content.

30:56

Students were encouraged to turn on one another. Children

30:58

were encouraged to report on their parents for

31:02

behavior in the home.

31:06

To this day, sociologists,

31:08

anthropologists who study Chinese

31:10

communities always report an

31:13

astonishing lack of trust among

31:17

even small

31:18

communities that people don't trust

31:20

their neighbors. When

31:22

we usually talk about censorship in China, we

31:25

think of a government telling people what they can

31:27

and can't say.

31:28

But in China, people also worry

31:31

about censorship as a tool to pursue

31:33

vendettas and exact revenge. You

31:35

can report someone or inform on

31:37

them to the government to silence them

31:40

or take out a grudge.

31:41

So, the boycott Xiaojian movement

31:44

coalesces as a movement against reporting

31:46

culture, against people informing

31:49

on each other or trying to shut each other up. And

31:51

at first, Tsamu is behind

31:53

this.

31:54

But

31:58

then she starts to realize that the tactics

32:01

that

32:01

her people are using to defend AO3.

32:04

They mobilize the power

32:06

of the Chinese internet to find out personal

32:08

information about the other side, and they

32:10

threaten to dox them, to post their

32:12

personal information online, and

32:15

attack them that way. Dug out their

32:18

photos, dug out where they worked, where

32:20

they went to school, and they were just like, we'll

32:22

just release this information. You know, people get

32:24

death threats. She joined

32:26

AO3 because it was all about protecting people

32:28

from shame, but its defenders

32:31

were using shame as a weapon

32:33

and targeting fellow fans

32:34

by outing them. This

32:36

was so contrary to the foundation

32:39

of the AO3 community, which is that you

32:41

can be who you want to be online, that

32:43

you shouldn't be judged or shamed

32:46

for that identity. They were breaking

32:48

that implicit boundary between what happens

32:50

online and what happens in real life. You

32:52

know, like, how in martial arts stories, like the Jiang Hu,

32:55

the emperors never interfere? What she means

32:57

by that is the warriors,

33:00

the characters

33:02

in Jiang Hu, are always relying on their own

33:04

wits and their own bonds of friendship

33:06

to survive. People

33:08

are never calling in central

33:11

authority to solve issues. You

33:13

are meant to rely on yourself and your friends

33:15

to solve your own problems.

33:17

They're not reporting each other to the government

33:19

or to the emperors. Right. The

33:21

emperors just kind of like allow you

33:23

to do whatever you're doing. As long as it's not like

33:25

huge, that's the code

33:28

of conduct we have lived by. But now,

33:30

since that's been broken, your

33:32

previously safe space do not feel safe

33:35

anymore.

33:39

Working on this story about reporting culture in

33:41

China, I kept thinking about the debate

33:43

that we have in the U.S. over cancel

33:45

culture, which

33:46

I know even using that term is

33:48

loaded. And the thing we talk

33:51

about when we talk about cancel culture is usually,

33:53

is it right? Is it right

33:55

that people or platforms get silenced? And

33:58

one side will say no, because this is freedom

34:00

of speech, and the other side will say yes

34:03

because of racial and social justice. People

34:05

need to be called out.

34:07

But in China,

34:09

after Xiao Zhan had lost all his endorsement

34:11

deals, and after AO3, the

34:13

fan fiction site was blocked, the

34:15

thing that Xiaomu was surprised to feel was

34:18

not just the loss of her platform,

34:21

her space for free expression. The

34:23

thing she'd lost was her sense of trust,

34:26

her feeling that she had a community

34:29

that was all following the same code.

34:31

It makes you wonder, like, you've

34:33

poured out your heart and your soul

34:36

to write fan fiction, and kind of losing

34:38

that sense of stability just makes you

34:40

feel like it's pointless to

34:42

invest more energy into building

34:45

a new community, knowing that you can

34:47

lose it any

34:48

second.

34:50

The code of conduct she thought they'd all agreed to,

34:53

not to shame people, not to out

34:55

each other,

34:56

that had been so easily tossed aside.

34:59

It's really making me feel very

35:01

exhausted and also very disappointed.

35:04

AY Z, the 30-year-old mom who

35:06

loves Xiao Zhan, she also felt

35:08

the loss. Because I had an assumption

35:11

previously,

35:12

I assumed at least to say 70

35:14

to 80 people are just

35:17

people like me. She said that she had

35:19

assumed that most of her fan group were

35:21

people who thought like she thought. Who sort

35:23

of, like, respect the other's

35:25

perspective, can be

35:28

rational and talk to each

35:30

other. But then I realized it's

35:32

not the case,

35:34

and they support

35:36

to use reporting to go against the

35:38

reporting. After this incident, AY Z

35:40

realized two things. One, that

35:43

she did not trust most of her fellow

35:45

fans, but two, she realized

35:47

the depth of her feelings for Xiao Zhan.

35:50

I realized how much I love him. It's

35:53

really more than I thought. And

35:55

there are still people like me who want to see

35:58

his beautiful face, right?

36:01

Shao

36:04

Zhen lost his endorsement deals,

36:07

but he did not go away quietly. Shao

36:09

Zhen tries to make a comeback. He

36:12

makes a bunch of charity donations. He

36:15

releases his version of a

36:18

very patriotic Communist Party

36:20

song. And finally, what

36:23

his fans and AO3 fans have

36:25

been waiting for for months, he issues

36:27

an apology video. He

36:30

said things like, if this controversy affected

36:32

people online, I want to sincerely apologize

36:35

to them.

36:41

None of this worked.

36:42

And in the end, Shao Zhen became a

36:44

different kind of symbol in China. Instead

36:47

of the guardian angel of beauty who helps you

36:49

be your best self,

36:50

he became not only toxic to brands,

36:53

but seen as a danger to Chinese society.

36:56

In late May, a Chinese

36:58

provincial official actually just

37:00

delivers a lecture, a speech in which

37:02

she's concerned about reporting culture in

37:05

the context of Shao Zhen,

37:07

not because of freedom of expression, but

37:10

because it could severely disrupt

37:12

public order. And that speech turned

37:15

out to be a preview of new internet

37:17

regulations that came out in June. China's

37:20

regulators, which oversee publications,

37:24

says that it will now start

37:26

requiring Chinese fan fiction

37:28

outlets to implement

37:31

real name registration.

37:32

So now, not only is the fan

37:34

fiction site AO3 still blocked, but

37:36

if you want to write fan fiction anywhere in China,

37:39

you have to do it under an account that's linked to your

37:42

real

37:42

name. So before I mentioned,

37:44

you know, you could be whoever you want it to be, create your

37:47

own username online, write

37:49

fan fiction, and it did not have to be linked

37:52

to your real identity. Starting

37:55

from now, when you create a new account, you

37:57

are going to have to upload some kind of

37:59

identification.

38:00

document. And that's going

38:02

to be a real constraint on people writing

38:04

whatever they want to write, knowing that it'll be very,

38:06

very easy to find out who they are and hold them liable.

38:09

So I think now a lot of people are

38:11

also reaching the sad frustration

38:14

stage. A lot of my heart

38:16

is dead. Like I'm dead inside. Here,

38:19

this is what we had, and now we lost it.

38:22

This whole thing is a cautionary

38:24

tale about the excesses of reporting culture

38:26

and fan culture in China. But from the perspective

38:29

of China's ruling Communist Party, the

38:32

reason why they're scared of

38:34

fan culture and want to impose some

38:36

controls over it is not because

38:39

in and of itself reporting culture is a bad thing. It's

38:42

just that they want to be able to harness it for their

38:44

ends. And they're concerned when

38:46

private groups, as in Xiao Zhan fan

38:48

groups or fan fiction groups, can

38:51

use reporting culture for

38:52

purposes that go

38:54

beyond the remit of what the Communist

38:56

Party cares about. I mean, it was safe

38:58

to say the Chinese government wants to be the only

39:00

censors, the only censors

39:03

in the room. They don't want competition. Yeah,

39:05

exactly. No one, not

39:07

even the Chinese government,

39:09

wants a social media horde

39:11

to turn on

39:12

them. This

39:23

episode from 2020 was produced by Tina

39:25

Antellini with help from Derek Arthur

39:27

and Justine Yan, edited by Luol

39:30

Kowoski, mastering by Isaac Rodriguez.

39:32

Our theme music is by John Ellis, additional

39:35

scoring from Blue Dot Sessions. Today's

39:38

update version of the episode was produced by Justine

39:41

Yan with help from Elena Torek, edited

39:43

by Luis Treas. Adelina Lancianis

39:45

is our senior producer, Liana Simstrom

39:48

is our supervising producer, and our executive

39:50

producer is Irene Noguchi. I'm

39:52

Gregory Warner, back in two weeks with

39:55

another fan fave from Rough Translation.

40:00

You