Chinese Whispers

Websites and alternative magazines thrive on making fun of the Chinese authorities.

It’s a Chinese form of “truthiness”. China’s Southern Metropolis Weekly magazine recently reported this shocking news: the central government created healthcare for the country’s 1.3 billion people, wiped out bribery and reduced the country’s wide income gap.

Migrant workers in the southern city of Guangzhou, notorious for its sweatshops, were “happy” and “respected.” Of course, it was political parody and all untrue. Virtually unheard of several years ago, such blatant satire is part of a radical shift sweeping Chinese culture as Internet use spreads and citizens increasingly evade censorship by couching criticism in sarcastic humor.

China has become so awash in a new wave of sarcastic—and often subversive media that the trend has spawned a name: ‘egao’, literally, “evil work.” The word (pronounced uh-gow) describes “a subculture that is characterized by humour, revelry, subversion, grass-root spontaneity, defiance of authority, mass participation and multi-media high tech,” said an editorial in the government-run China Daily.

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“The Internet has given people the chance to express themselves,” said Guo Xinghua, a sociologist at People’s University in Beijing. “Egao is a term for how average people are seizing back the discourse,” he said. Last year, the Chinese government issued a list of “Eight Honors and Eight Shames” as part of a campaign to promote morality within the Communist Party. The list included such instructions as “Love the country; do it no harm.”

Chinese Web users quickly posted their own lists on the Internet. One parody included the couplet, “Love your Mercedes and BMW; do not ride a bicycle,” which some readers considered an attack on rampant official corruption. The number of Chinese Internet users has quadrupled since 2001 and reached 137 million last December, according to the China Internet Network Information Center. One of the most popular recent examples of egao was Crazy Stone, a low-budget film shot in Chongqing that chronicles the exploits of bumbling thieves trying to steal a jade ornament. The movie targets Chinese officials in a scene where the main character realises the ornament has been stolen but decides against calling the police. “If we call the cops we’ll lose everything. They’ll just mess things up.”

Chinese “have to rely on satire to express many of our opinions,” said film editor Hu Ge. Hu helped make a 20-minute film parody that is considered by many as China’s first example of egao. “Partly the top cultural arbiters are angry because they can’t control the media any more,” Guo said. “The people are creating the culture for the first time.”

CRAIG SIMONS