Chinese media, advertising, and urban life.

This article was contributed by Iacob Koch-Weser.

With over 500 million users and counting, the cell phone has become the sine qua non of social life in contemporary China. Unlike the car, the Internet, and the café, its influence extends beyond the bourgeois elements of major cities, suffusing the social fabric of center and periphery, urban and rural, and wealthy and poor alike. In a sense, the country is swimming with the tide of globalization - it comes as no surprise that the Chinese media has loudly applauded Raul Castro’s permission of cell phone use in Cuba, an “opening up” policy that provokes some nostalgic reflection on China’s recent past.

Yet what sets the cell phone medium apart on the Mainland is the prominence of the written over the spoken. The text message has taken on a Chinese life of its own, imbued with what Marcel Granet once called the “cosmo-magical effect” of the character. In recent weeks, the wildfire proliferation of “Boycott Carrefour!” messages has provided new evidence of this; people in the remotest hinterlands where mobilized to support the boycott, even though they had never shopped at Carrefour or come across a Frenchman. The speed and scale exceeded even the Japanophobe messages of spring 2005.

More intriguing, however, is the growing popularity of satirical text messages. These texts crystallize the power of the vox populi: the age-old craft of catchy verse, combined with the earthy humor of the disempowered cynic. Two messages circulated widely in recent weeks illustrate this point.

Circulated on May 1st, the first message sets out to prove that “nobody can mess with China”. It concludes with an appeal to boycott Carrefour over the May 1st holidays. Yet the bulk of the text reads more like a scathing satire of Chinese society (original Chinese at bottom of post):

Bin Laden says: “China is the only country in the world where you absolutely cannot cause trouble! That’s because al-Qaeda once sent seven terrorists to launch a surprise attack on China, and the result was this:

When the first terrorist went to blow up a grade splitting bridge for road traffic [where one road goes on top and the other below], he got dizzy and fell over;

When the second terrorist went to blow up a bus, he couldn’t get on because it was too crowded;

When the third terrorist went to blow up a supermarket, he found that his remote detonation device had been pick-pocketed;

When the fourth terrorist went to blow a government building, he was beaten madly to pieces by security guards, who exclaimed: “We’ll teach you to demand wages and appeal to the authorities for help!”;

The fifth terrorist successfully blew up a mine and killed and injured several hundred people, yet after his clandestine return to al-Qaeda, not a single news report about the incident appeared in the media for six months, so al-Qaeda punished him for the “crime of spreading lies”;

The sixth terrorist attempted to blow up Guangzhou, yet when he exited the train station, his explosive material was forcibly stolen by the “Galloping Band” (feiche dang) of motorcycle thieves, which left him traumatized for quite some time;

The seventh terrorist went to blow up Tieling - the base of China’s steel industry - yet the sad appeals of Zhao Benshan [famous actor and comedian from northeast China] discouraged him.

Recently, a female terrorist was sent to blow up Henan, but she was hoodwinked and made a prostitute!

On May 1st, don’t go to Carrefour! Let the world know that China can’t be messed with! Happy Holidays!

It is hard to tell whether the author is truly proud of China and in support of the boycott, or is in fact ridiculing patriotic fervor because it obscures domestic issues, such as poor infrastructure, rampant crime, and strong-armed governance. The satire genre leaves plenty of room for interpretation.

Sent around in early March, the second text message disparages the blatant discrepancy between words and deeds in China today. Many Chinese (by implication, mainly middle-aged men in cities) berate the “wicked” social habits that they themselves partake in:

People these days, man! None of them tell it like it is. They say the share markets are drugs but toy with them; they say money is the source of wickedness but dig for it; they say beautiful women are jailbait but covet them; they say it doesn’t pay to be on top but are all climbing; they say smoke and booze harm the body but can’t quit the habit; they say heaven is beautiful, yet none of them are destined to go!

In today’s society, the poor eat meat, the rich eat shrimp, and the leaders and cadres eat wangba [double meaning of “tortoise” and “bastard”]. The men want to be tall and the women skinny; lowly dogs dress up, while the becoming shed skin.

In the past, women saved their first time for their husbands; now they only leave the first child for their husbands. In the village, the cock cries at dawn to wake the people; in the city, the men call on chicks at night. In the Old Society, the female performers sold their art and not their bodies; in the New Society, the actresses sell their bodies and not their art.

If you really want to up your salary, then in your heart you must love the Party all the more. You can reward your children with gifts, but then you’ll incur the jealousy of your wife. You might dare to taste seafood and goose’s claw, spend your free time shopping at the mall, and court pretty ladies who make your heart skip a beat; but when consumer prices rise like fucking mad, there is nothing left of all that!

This message — albeit vulgar and crass in tone — conveys the anomie of urban life in 21st Century China. To most readers, the onslaught of parallel sentences simply provides a good laugh over dinner or during a long commute home. After all, the desire for mirthful catharsis is universal, and there is nothing like Seinfeld or Letterman on the Mainland to do the job (and what’s more, contemporary xiangsheng performers don’t nearly match the laugh factor of their predecessors, see this article on Danwei).

Beyond that, however, these messages can enrich our understanding of the Chinese zeitgeist. As postmodern literary studies focus increasingly on the production and consumption of low-brow materials, the text message deserves its rightful place in the field.

(Original Chinese messages below.)