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The internet is like a giant compost heap — constantly absorbing new bits and pieces and growing them into something new.

Boasting some 300 million users, the Chinese language internet is no different. Everyday more crap is shoveled on: mind numbing press releases/reports which crush readers under statistic after statistic about the square meterage of an upcoming mall and it’s “theme.” Sometimes it seems like every festival, every holiday, every sale, no matter how slight, needs to have some theme attached to it. For example, the upcoming 13th Fashion Ningbo (Ningbo International Fashion Festival) rather needlessly, it seems to me, has the theme of “Innovation, Promotion, Integration, Development.”

The internet is too cool for themes, it has memes. A word I still feel silly using, perhaps because it was invented by Richard Dawkins (in 1976). Here’s what Wikipedia has to say on the subject:

A meme (pronounced /ˈmiːm/, rhyming with “cream”[1]) is a postulated unit or element of cultural ideas, symbols or practices, and is transmitted from one mind to another through speech, gestures, rituals, or other imitable phenomena…Supporters of the concept regard memes as cultural analogues to genes, in that they self-replicate and respond to selective pressures….Memeticists have not empirically proven the existence of discrete memes or their proposed mechanism.

I’m no memeticist (then again, who the hell is) but nonetheless I’m going to get all meme-y on a recent Chinese internet phenomenon. (It turns out some actually people are memeticists. Get your amateur memetology, and your professional dickology, on by joining the Jia Junpeng discussion here — the pics are good).

The root of the phenomenon (I guess memes, unlike genes are constantly created and evolve much more quickly) was an anonymous post on a Chinese World of Warcraft forum on July 16th. The post’s title and content were the same “贾君鹏你妈妈喊你回家吃饭” — “Jia Junpeng, your mother is calling you home to eat.”

The idea is that the post plays on the large number of Chinese essentially camping out at internet cafes playing role playing games. My first time in China, 2005, I didn’t understand why the lettering on the keys on the bottom left side of the keyboard in the little internet cafes across from Guiling Normal University was always worn off. Not being a role playing gamer, my friend had to explain to me that these were the navigation keys for many of these games. In fact, some Chinese youth have become so addicted to these games that one even died of exhaustion in an internet cafe after gaming for three days straight, and internet addiction rehab camps have become a new, and controversial, industry in China. (Despite being a nascent industry electroshock has already been outlawed and several rehabees have been beaten to death)

Within hours the forum was flooded with posts. A Chinese-scale flood — according to Wikipedia (the only dictionary to use the world “amazingly”?):

Amazingly, after only six hours, it attracted more than 400,000 viewers and 17,000 replies, most of which were posted by young people. Some who posted replies pretended to be Jia’s relatives, teachers or friends. Netizens who replied to the post even changed their user names to be “Jia Junpeng’s aunt”, “Jia Junpeng’s grandpa”, “Jia Junpeng’s sister” etc. formed a huge Jia family. They doctored photos and started cyberhunts, posting several thousands of replies per second.

Much like a phrase in a rap song that gets flipped each time a new rapper uses it, the Jia Junpeng thing was the post that launched a thousand variations. Many thousands. The number of comments on that forum has already surpassed 350,000 and the Chinese internets have seen thousands of variations and takeoffs, in the forms of phrases or hilarious photoshopped images bearing the phrase. ChinaSMACK has some really hilarious ones. There have also been some great music videos combining the images with songs. Check them out here and here. More pics here.

The origin of the meme is still unknown. A website marketing company in Chongqing has claimed they did it as a viral marketing campaign although it’s not at all clear who this campagin was for or if the company, was actually responsible for the meme and did in fact, as they claim, hire 800 people to register 20,000 IDs and post comments on the thread.

There have been many evolutions/mutations of the Jia Junpeng meme (Adam Schokora did a good roundup here) and, as China ramps up for the 60th anniversary founding of the PRC celebration, inevitably, at least one of them has a 60th anniversary bent.

台湾！你母亲过六十大寿你还不回家 — Taiwan! your mother is celebrating her 60th birthday, you still haven’t come home — original here.

台湾，你妈妈60大寿，喊你回家吃团圆饭 — Taiwan, your mom is 60, she’s calling you home for a reunion meal. The signs in the first picture read “Taiwan, the motherland is calling you home to eat.” The other photoshopped pictures essentially say the same thing. More good pics.

Chinese netizens are getting really into this and (in my opinion) starting to flog the dead horse a bit. The original post on this page contains a response from ‘little brother’ Taiwan which includes Okinawa as another brother and ends with the phrase “Mother, I want to come back, Mother!”

Another poster extended the metaphor: “Naughty child, your eldest brother and second older brother [Hong Kong and Macao] have all returned, how come you haven’t come home yet? Are you finally going to return to your original family?

Even Obama’s been involved. In the pic below he’s letting everyone know that “The American people support Taiwan going home to eat.” Always fair and balanced, Chinese netizens even got Chavez in on the act.

This content of this post is a bit incongruous given the pink page it’s housed on,  amidst loads of animated gifs:
National Day is coming quickly.
Taiwan.

Your mom is turning sixty.

She wants you to come home to eat.

If you don’t come home to eat.
Your mom will be angry.
Your mom will beat your ass.

This post titled “Taiwan, your mom will turn 60, she wants you to come to eat” takes the cake for torturing the metaphor, After going on about what a naughty, wretched child Taiwan is (you’re killing your poor mother) it wraps up on this somewhat bizarre note.

This year on October 1st, a reunion banquet for your mother’s birthday will be held at a Beijing Hotel. Your brothers and sisters are all waiting for you. The reunion hotel’s facilities are all first class, all food can be ordered with  a wireless system. Young Taiwan, I know you’ve seen many aspects of the world. Come home and take a look, look at the facilities of this hotel. You know our mother is also rich; mother is now the third richest person in the world. Come home child! It’s bitter outside, you’re tired, return home! Mother will always be there to support you.”

Even if she’s gonna tan your hide first.

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This entry was posted by fred dintenfass on Sunday, September 27th, 2009 at 9:36 pm. It is filed under Generale and has these tags: China, china media. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed. You can leave a response, or trackback from your own site.