Pho noodles and pandas: How China’s social media users created a new language to beat government censorship on COVID-19

VPN
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Pho noodles and pandas: How China’s social media users created a new language to beat government censorship on COVID-19

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VPN = Vietnamese Pho Noodle

That actually made me laugh

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At this rate the whole language will be banned over there

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Similar to you tubers being demonetized for saying coronavirus or having it in the title so they call it the cerveza sickness.

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Annoying as it may be, they are still beating the system.

TBH Chinese colleagues are visibly worried about saying certain terms/words IRL…

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There is no war in Ba Sing Se.

Edit: Thanks for my first silver kind stranger! I’m in Western Washington and I’m afraid that soon they won’t ‘lettuce leaf’.

Edit Two: Wow, my first gold! And after four years of lurking. Thank you, Twinkle Toes!

Edit Three: Reddit we did it! Thank you kind stranger for taking this post Platinum! Now I can buy out my uncle’s cabbage cart business and he can finally retire.

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Ah yes sometimes when a new internet word came out I have to learn about it‘s real meaning.

VPN = 梯子 ladder
Xijinping = 他 him
Government = ZF
Country = 郭嘉 GJ
Fancy ass CCP members = 赵家人

My favorite is 赵家人，meaning people from Family Zhao, it‘s from Lu Xun‘s novel “Story of Q“, Q‘s last name was Zhao, so one day he told his master Mr.Zhao, got a huge slap on the face, saying 你也配姓赵？Meaning how dare you thinking you deserve to have this last name?

A way to mock people, don’t get this stupid loyalty to CCP, to them we are not the same, we are just 韭菜 Chinese Chives

Edit: one more I would like to add. We used to call Xi Voldemort but later just called him “him“.

Two years ago I think, when constitution was changed. One person on Douban said, geeze I want to shave his nephew‘s head so bad! A traditional slang said if you shave your head during lunar January, your uncle will die. A pretty smart way to curse someone.

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Chinese people have been doing this since the 12th century and probably before. Art made for the king for example would have the moon partially behind a mountain to say that the emperor is a pussy.

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And someone snitched on them. Nice.

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Please never forget may 35th.

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Youtube seems to be censoring Coronavirus related content too. Lot of Youtubers have been calling it other things like human malware to combat the censor. If you use the words they demonetize your video and think it also won’t show up in search. I did an experiment and made a video on Coronavirus and it does not show up in search at all even if I type the title verbatim. I have not been striked yet though. My channel is too small to be monetized so they normally strike me instead if I do something wrong.

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What a snitch. Now everyone knows their secret

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always impressive how people can adapt to this bullshit to get round it.

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As a Chinese, believe it or not, I have never seen anyone used ‘Pho’ or ‘Vietnamese Pho’ for VPN. Government has no problem with anyone to use the word ‘ladder’. (I mean pho is not even popular in China)

The use of ‘He’ is just like the use of ‘He’ here in the west. You use this word for anyone you don’t want to say the name directly.

Although many words are banned on the Internet in China, people find easy words or letters to replace the banned words, that’s for sure and will never change.

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So, internet slang is supposedly a way to beat China’s all knowing censors but somehow these censors can’t figure it out and censor the slang words.
Righttttttt.

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Aaaand, this article exposed everyone on Chinese social media.

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Pho is out here saving lives.

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I’ve never read an article that used the word netizens so much.

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Similar patterns emerge both in black culture and mafia lingo in the states.

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Not saying the whole article is fake or inaccurate, but when it says a post that a parent complaining kids bad at learning got censored because learning = Xi and system thought it says “xi bad”, makes no sense to me.
Chinese doesn’t called or addressed anyone with last name only . It’s always either

  • last name + first name
  • last name + title
  • last name + first name + title
  • or just first name itself

Never last name only because most Chinese last name is one syllable and it’s just sounds so weird and never been a thing. plus the way to say Xi is bad with “习差” is not just grammatically wrong and also makes no sense at all . In English it sounded like a hint “Xi bad => Xi Jin Ping is bad” but totally not the same case in Chinese. If u say that in front of any Chinese they would not understand until you explained. It’s just not how chinese language works.

Also if u just google/baidu “学习差” which is “bad at learning” which has the keywords that literally translated into “Xi bad”, you can find thousands post on Chinese internet.
Now other contents of the post makes some sense to me”. just NOT this “bad at learning” censoring.