Eating "River Crab" at the Harmonious Forum － 吃河蟹开和谐会

Over the weekend I posted this photo titled "eating river crab that wears three watches" to my Flickr account. People who don't read Chinese blogs are - understandably - asking why. Let me explain.   

At the World Economic Forum in Dalian last week Issac Mao and I were there in person when Premier Wen Jiabao broke major news with the announcement that he intends to build a harmonious society in China. Forum founder Klaus Schwab echoed Wen in his welcoming speech, calling for a "a new harmonious relationship among business, governments, society, and the environment."  While technology pundits attending the conference swooned over Chinese internet companies, the government launched a new purge of internet data centers, shutting down thousands of websites - a story which most business and tech reporters covering the conference appear to have been too busy swooning to check out. Meanwhile see this article from the New York Times about how American financiers are helping beef up the Chinese government's surveillance capabilities.

In celebration of so much harmoniousness, Isaac and I led some Young Global Leaders, Tech Pioneers, New Champions and other esteemed foreign guests out of their conference-center-and-hotel cocoon to a local seafood place. We drank some local beer and Dalian fire-water and got to talking about the Chinese blogosphere. We thought it would be funny to create a real-life version of a mashup-pun about internet censorship that has been cropping up all over the Chinese blogosphere lately.

In China these days, if your website gets blocked, your blog-hosting service takes down a politically edgy post you wrote, or your ISP deletes your site completely, you say: "I've been harmonized."   The word for harmony, harmonized, or harmonious (all the same word in Chinese) is pronounced "he xie" in Chinese and is written like this: 和谐.    For those without Chinese fonts on their browser:

However, there's a slight problem, which is that since this phrase is so often used sarcastically on Chinese blogs and forums, it has been flagged as a sensitive keyword by many of the blog and forum hosting platforms, increasing the chances that a post using this phrase could itself get "harmonized." So bloggers and chatroom denizens have switched the characters to another phrase, 河蟹, also pronounced "he xie" (with slightly different tonation)  which means "river crab:"

Thus, when bloggers seem to be writing nonsensically about "river crab," they're actually talking about censorship. 

Then somebody somewhere started this photoshop-meme:

A crab wearing three watches. 河蟹带三个表。  What? Because the Chinese blogger Wang Xiaofeng writes under the pen name 带三个表 （"dai sange biao) which means "wears three watches" ... which is a pun on 三个代表 ("sange daibiao") which means "Three Represents," a political slogan coined by former President Jiang Zemin.  Some blogger thought it would be funny to do a visual mashup combining "river crab" and "wears three watches." Now, if you do a Google search on the Chinese phrase 河蟹带三个表,  you'll see people giggling about this mashup-meme all over the Chinese Internet.

In a blog post about how WEF delegates got a first-hand taste of Chinese Internet censorship last week, Isaac explained another catchphrase in the Chinese blogosphere these days. The "Great Firewall" is usually refered to as GFW. But Chinese bloggers now call it 功夫网 "gong fu wang" (also GFW) - which literally translates as "kung fu web." So sometimes when you see bloggers talking about kung fu, they may actually be talking about censorship.

Despite the Chinese government's fear of its netizens, and despite the fact that the WEF failed to address how unfortunate it is that the conference's host government fears its citizens in this way, Isaac still believes it's good that such events are being held in China. He writes:

Anyway, it's very interesting topic that GFW meets WEF. Its the real world of how China meets the world. How totalitarian meets open society. And how reality meets future. The interaction of China and world may face more and more such mindset conflictions in the coming decade, but we can believe the universal value of humanity can eventually win the future.

Comments

[Charles Liu]

And we wonder why we have a trade gap with China? It's corporate irresponsibility to sell China cameras London and Paris already have, but it's okay for Chevron and BP to take the Iraqi's oil after our military dropped DU dirty bombs on them.

Oh yeah, we even made up a "Kurstan" government to sign whatever Iraq oil concession we wanted:

http://news.google.com/news?q=kurdistan+oil+contract

Somebody sue the oil companies doing business with our ruthless regime, please.

[Qingdao]

Excellent post; I wish more people would at least attempt to EXPLAIN the complexity we call China, instead of simply repeating their dreary opinions.

[gigi]

nice post! i couldn't stop laughing when i see the crab wearing three watches. very nice explaination to those who don;t understand chinese.

[mahathir_fan]

The opinion of the flip side as usual....

I think this sweep of "new purge of internet data centers, shutting down thousands of websites" ought to be put in its proper context.

My understanding from reading the news is that, China, as the world's largest democracy, is currently in the midst of an election. See:

http://www.chinadaily.com.cn/photo/2007-09/11/content_6098180_2.htm

which shows voters exercising their rights as Chinese citizens to vote.

It is not uncommon in some countries to issue internet "gag" orders during election periods.

This is justified by them because postings of a malicious nature could severely in the short term jeopardize a candidate's chance of winning an election. Even if the candidate would later sue for defamation, or the truth would later be revealed, it may be too late to save the election.

Of course, this does not mean that campaigning over the internet is banned, just the discussion forums /blogs are banned. Candidates running can still use their websites for campaigning purposes. The gag order serves to protect all candidates seeking office.

This is in contrast to say the media gag order recently on NameWee's Negarakuku that bans any reporting on the incident to calm down angst among certain groups.

See: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Negarakuku

"On August 21, 2007 the Internal Security Ministry issued a gag order on all mainstream media to cease reporting on Wee."

So as long as the purge is just temporary and during an election period, I think there would be a substantial majority of people who would believe it is justified as a temporary measure to protect China's democracy. This is especially so given the grassroot nature of China's democracy, producing literally tens of thousands of candidates running for offices.

[Rebecca MacKinnon]

MF you never cease to crack me up.

[Lyn]

Fantastic post! Please keep posting on emerging online language and image mash-ups. These are SO important.

[even]

funny!

[Anon123]

@mahathir_fan. And here I was thinking the proper context was having a solitary authoritarian party cracking down on dissidents as usual.

Thank you for showing me the light though.. a party of the people, by the people.. ROFL.

[Chestnut]

Just like to point out that the crab in your first photo is actually a salt water ocean-dwelling crab, not a river crab (He Xie).

Good post, Chinese internet lingos never cease to impress me.

[Naruwan]

Watching your words has a long history in China. Back in the Ming Dynasty, you had to be exceptionally careful what words you used in memos to the Emperor lest you offended him and ended up in "Word Jail" (文字獄). He also had people publicly flogged or even put to death for using certain characters, or even homonyms of certain characters, which he deemed to be veiled mockery of his imperial highness.

[hdp]

Further proof, as if we needed any, that Chinese are devoid of humor.

[funny videos]

wow, great article, the Chinese government has been censoring sites for a long time. Even YouTube. How gay.

[ultra]

Rebecca,
Excellent post, I can't help laughing all day thinking about this post. But please don't mind me nitpick, I think your pronounciation is wrong...

和谐 & 河蟹, should be prounced "her xie", with different intonation, not "he" xie.

[seriously funny]

one thing we can all agree on, is censorship is BS! great article

[Gareth BFG]

gigi - you are being sarcastic aren't you? Otherwise something is horribly wrong with your head...

[cath]

It does`t matter what you say, the Chinese government has been controlling the mass media for a long time. I don`t know why you still stay in China, if you don`t like it very much. Funny thing is, there are so many foreigners who complain about China a lot, BUT, surprisingly, they still `SUFFER` in China. Here is a suggestion for you. Go back to you country, and enjoying make Growngate Second!

[WCHAO37]

For folks that stumble on to this page - you may want to view the China Daily BBS, and this thread:

http://bbs.chinadaily.com.cn/viewthread.php?gid=2&tid=601313&extra=&page=1

Is P.R. China infested with River Crabs?