On September 15th, an account named "Ordinary Citizen4937" was created on Weibo, and immediately posted a Weibo post: "I will go on a hunger strike on October 1st." Then this account apparently randomly followed a large number of accounts until its operations were restricted.
At first, no one paid any attention to this account and the Weibo post, until a few followers suddenly wanted to check the timeline of this new follower with a profile picture of a youtiao and a banana. Changes began to happen because some users behind these accounts seemed to sense some kind of emotion from this short Weibo post and decided to repost it under the influence of this emotion. There was even an account that expressed the intention to take the same action, and they reposted and commented: "I will join too."
There is a theory that states that there are only five degrees of separation between any two people, and if it exceeds that, then the right path hasn't been found.
This Weibo post received a new round of exposure and attention, and at this time, opposition and questioning voices also began to emerge. Those voices were nothing new, but like mosquitoes gathering in the late summer evening, they were annoying and even infuriating; perhaps, that was exactly the effect that the sources of those voices wanted to achieve.
One discussion wrote:
The blogger has sinister intentions, but I like it.
Another discussion said:
Definitely those damn Hong Kong and Taiwan trash, licking the asshole of your American daddy! Get lost! Get lost! Get lost!
There was also a discussion that said:
Doing this on National Day~ Although the reason was not mentioned, everyone knows the reason, it's definitely to express a certain 【meaning】. Open the door, check the water meter.
Another newly opened Weibo post wrote:
Seems interesting, count me in. // I will go on a hunger strike on October 1st.
After receiving 89 reposts and 64 comments, the term "hunger strike" was banned on Weibo, the Weibo account "Ordinary Citizen4937" that posted the above Weibo post, as well as the account that reposted it, all disappeared, and the traces of the related Weibo posts were widely erased on this platform.
Of course, since the time of the First Emperor of China during the era of book burning, when Chinese was not yet called Chinese, Chinese has been censored for over two thousand years, and it has its own resilience in the face of censorship.
In the negligence of automated programs and the intentional or unintentional neglect of staff, the hashtag #DoNotEatDuringNationalDay# suddenly topped the Weibo trending list within 24 hours after the term "hunger strike" was banned. Three minutes later, the trending hashtag was taken down. Less than half an hour later, the hashtag #NationalDayWithoutEatingNoodles# squeezed into the sixth place on the trending list, while the hashtag #NoBreadOnOctober1st# ranked tenth.
Less than five minutes later, the Weibo trending list was edited and fixed:
- General Secretary's National Day speech
- Make a birthday cake for the motherland
- Happy birthday to China
- Happy National Day
- Me and my motherland together photo contest
- Where to go during the long holiday
- Stay at home and cook delicious food during National Day
- Sing for the motherland
- General Secretary's visit to the military
- Hometown delicacies
But even without the trending list, the discussions continued and spread beyond Weibo, to WeChat Moments, infiltrated Fanfou, which is no longer open to new users, and were fervently discussed on Baidu Tieba, Hupu community; of course, these discussions also crossed the Great Firewall and merged into Twitter, Facebook, and Reddit, and appeared in the form of articles on Medium, Matters, and various blogs. Traditional Chinese users also followed suit and participated, expressing their protest against the Chinese Communist Party through a hunger strike on October 1st. Obviously, in places without speech censorship, the expression of opinions is much more direct and simple.
However, as always, there are always some seemingly inexhaustible little pink accounts that spend almost all their time outside of sleep on cursing and launching verbal attacks. There are also some accounts claiming to be rationalists who appeal not to be misled by public opinion, because a hunger strike will inevitably lead to insufficient energy supply, which will cause anemia, and if it is severe, it may even lead to death, so a hunger strike is equal to death, not to mention the political risks involved, so it is better not to go on a hunger strike, or at least not to announce that one will go on a hunger strike.
However, perhaps because rational behavior itself implies a political stance, the more popular rational discourse seems to be the "scientific hunger strike method." The hunger strike tutorial image with the mysterious title "The First Hunger Strike for Young People" has been downloaded and saved on many devices and will be followed and practiced by many people.
Time waits for no one, and it doesn't even bother to distinguish between saints, sinners, and mediocrities. The result is an inevitable grassroots spontaneous distributed hunger strike protest that will take place in people's bedrooms and living rooms, where power is often out of reach.
Following the tradition of "agree with 1, disagree with 2" in recent years, people began to use these natural numbers to express their opinions. And under the overwhelming number 1, some government officials couldn't help but comment: "Not eating on National Day is anti-party and anti-country! Extremely shameful!" But in fact, it seems that not many people care, because most people no longer consider it a shameful thing. If anything is truly shameful, they would mostly say it is poverty, infiltrated by capital.
Soon after, a proposal came from somewhere, saying that supervisors should be dispatched to every household on October 1st. If there are hunger strikers, their credit scores should be deducted, turning them into second-class citizens or more accurately described as "second-class leeks." But obviously, this proposal is difficult to implement effectively, because even if pink volunteers are added, it cannot guarantee that every family will be assigned a police officer or supervisor.
Then naturally, a new proposal emerged: street offices should organize residents in their jurisdiction to eat longevity noodles on National Day, both to celebrate the motherland's birthday and to ensure that everyone eats at least a mouthful of food; if it is difficult to implement, people should be sent to supervise each household and personally witness that everyone eats at least a mouthful of food. This proposal seemed more practical, as one supervisor could check two buildings in a day; however, due to the need for supervisors to supervise each other, it still required two supervisors per group. But it can be imagined that due to travel and the need to catch up on sleep during the holiday, the actual effectiveness of this approach is difficult to guarantee.
However, the Chinese people, who have accumulated a wealth of experience in surveillance, naturally found a solution. The final measure was WeChat check-ins: first, establish an effective accountability mechanism to ensure that schools, companies, and institutions all have dedicated responsible persons; on October 1st, everyone should take a video of themselves eating food and send it to the relevant responsible person. These videos will be centrally archived for the investigation of hunger strikers (except for those who are fasting due to illness) or those who did not send the video. As for the punishment that these identified individuals will face, the announcement did not specify, only giving the powerful deterrent of "consequences at your own risk."
This mechanism shifted responsibility to companies and schools, using the leeks' rice bowls and studies as a deterrent, so it was obviously effective, especially when leeks find it difficult to communicate effectively and trust each other.
On October 1st, Weibo and WeChat were filled with posts sharing rich and delicious food from various places and the joy and happiness of people enjoying them.
Some people picked up their phones, opened the video recording function, and after silently mouthing the words "forced to eat" in front of the camera, they began to eat and drink bitter-tasting foods with painful expressions, such as bitter melon, bitter tea, grapefruit peel, sugar-free coffee, Chinese medicinal herbs... A Kuaishou account named "Ordinary Bowstring Sound4938" even conducted a live broadcast with the theme of "Positive Energy Food," saying that the purpose of this live broadcast was to celebrate the motherland through performance art. Then, wearing a white short-sleeved shirt with the words "forced to eat" handwritten on it, she ate half a lump of dog feces in front of the camera before being banned and having her account deleted. Later, unconfirmed reports claimed that the lump of dog feces was real, and she/he eventually swallowed the entire lump of dog feces.