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Chenchen Zhang 🦋 chenchenzh.bsky.social Profile picture
Chenchen Zhang 🦋 chenchenzh.bsky.social
@chenchenzh
migrant & researcher. director @durham_cccs, co-editor @Geopolitics_Jl, co-host @shichapodcast. she/her. transitioning out of X.
Nov 22, 2024 • 4 tweets • 3 min read
y'all know that Chinese people were excluded from using public parks in Shanghai's foreign concession. did you know some people defended this both in that era and now?
Yang Changji, a prof at Peking uni, wrote in 1913 that the Chinese are unhygienic & don't have 'public virtue' and therefore it's not unfair. Guess who's Yang? he was Mao's father-in-law (Yang Kaihui's father) and one of his most respected teachers.Image this kind of 'excessive self-reflection' continues to be alive in public discourse today. writer Yu Jie suggests that Chinese exclusion is justified because of their uncivilized behaviour.
tbh I think the internalization of colonial discourse among the 1910s intelligentsia is far more forgivable and relatively more progressive than it is now. like, in the 2020s??Image
Dec 9, 2022 • 4 tweets • 3 min read
a viral article posted by 荡秋千的妇女 recounts "82 details" from 3 years of zero covid
it struck me how, from the very beginning, people experiencing the pandemic in China knew that this would be a struggle of memory
they keep saying: remember this. do not forget. ImageImageImageImage article link
gelatinous-sprite-fb3.notion.site/1fd113c627d649…
some people who did nothing but trying to record and remember what happened were arrested
Chen Mei and Cai Wei of Terminus2049
Zhang Wenfang, who posted a weibo on the national mourning day to remember the suffering Image
Dec 5, 2022 • 7 tweets • 2 min read
“you're unlocked. How about the Uyghurs and Kazakhs"?
"close concentration camps"
from Chinese feminists this is a great article well worth a read
she reflected on how, after looking up who exactly the victims were, she felt uncomfortable about the protesters' use of "compatriots"/tongbao. She gathered courage to chant "close the
theinitium.com/article/202212…
Dec 4, 2022 • 4 tweets • 2 min read
this sculpture outside Tencent headquarters if you haven't seen it already to clarify, 跟党一起创业 is a slogan of the Shenzhen municipal party committee
As others noted (I wouldn't say "a block away" but across the street), the sculpture isn't Tencent property. It should be part of the Shenzhen bay chuangye plaza.
Dec 4, 2022 • 4 tweets • 1 min read
apart from the fact that the elimination strategy once "worked", we should also not forget that China was not the only country using it. Western media also marvelled at photos of packed stadium in New Zealand and TW's Halloween party scene in 2020. The strategy aimed to eliminate transmissions rather than "flatten the curve". It was employed with success in other countries in 2020 even though the Chinese govt liked to tell a misleading story that it's a uniquely better "China model".
Dec 3, 2022 • 6 tweets • 2 min read
so restrictions are easing. messaging is changing. official comms no longer mention "dynamic zero". and that's thanks to the extraordinary popular resistance. The courage and actions of fearless students, workers & citizens who risked everything to openly say no to the devastating & unsustainable policy & went beyond that.
Yes there were signs of easing before the protests, but I can't imagine things could turn so quickly if it were not for the protests, for the fact that protesters not only demanded an end to zero covid but
Nov 28, 2022 • 6 tweets • 2 min read
friend's reflection on the Dam Square vigil in Amsterdam where there was clash b/w Han and Uyghur attendees. sharing with permission.
"China is a Han supremacist state. Han people's solidarity with Xinjiang has to be built based on this realization" Image Beyond the demand to end zero-covid, there are great variations in their attitude towards the regime and awareness of the persecution of Uyghurs among the protesters. some are more radically critical of the regime while others may just want a pre-pandemic
Nov 28, 2022 • 4 tweets • 1 min read
some details of the Urumqi road protest on 26 Nov told by participants
"I saw mostly stylish young people. very good looking, very pretty. but also very angry, very sad".
someone played a song by Russian Uyghur singer Murat Nasirow.
someone held three papers with number 10 written in Uyghur, Chinese, and Arabic numeral.
the person later asked if he could hug the police. ignored by the police, he asked strangers on the other side of the cordon to hug him, and they did.
the atmosphere was relatively peaceful before the order to clear up came
Nov 28, 2022 • 4 tweets • 1 min read
someone mentioned "foreign hostile forces" in Liangma river
the crowd responded in fury: "the foreign force you talked about - are they Marx and Engels"?
"Was it foreign force that set fire in Xinjiang? Was it foreign force that toppled over the bus in Guizhou"?
"Are you all here because foreign forces asked you to"?
everyone: "No"!
"We can't even access foreign internet! how can forein forces communicate with us? there's only domestic force that forbids us from gathering"
Nov 28, 2022 • 4 tweets • 2 min read
the right to mourn is often not denied as such but monopolized by the state, which sought to seize ownership of the pain through rituals of national mourning as we saw in the beginning of the pandemic. The encouragement of officially sanctioned mourning, which confirms established order and dominate ideologies, was accompanied by suppression of other ways of grieving, private or public, that were seen as threatening the existing order through the very power of mourning.
Nov 26, 2022 • 6 tweets • 3 min read
"CCP, step down"!
incredible scene from Urumqi Road, Shanghai haven't seen anything like this
Nov 25, 2022 • 6 tweets • 3 min read
fire has been many Chinese people's worst fear since the spring of 2020, that is, since many people's homes are forced into periodic quarantine with metal bars and barriers
from the bus in Guizhou to the fire in Urumqi
the worst thing you can imagine happened and will happen my people are absolutely fed up with it ImageImageImageImage
Oct 30, 2022 • 4 tweets • 3 min read
Zhengzhou Foxconn hires around 300k workers and makes half of the world's iPhones. amidst covid lockdown chaos & food shortage, videos on douyin show many migrant workers from within Henan province are returning home on foot... as no public transport is available due to lockdown pictures also show local residents near the highway set up free supply stations to help Foxconn workers. without help from the govt or Foxconn, all they can rely on is the kindness of strangers.
Oct 29, 2022 • 4 tweets • 1 min read
Li Shulei, new boss of the propaganda/publicity department of the CCP, reflected on racial inequality, American exceptionalism & nationalism during his time at Harvard. quite an interesting read. so Chomsky came to give a talk about the usual criticizing US hegemony stuff. A classmate of his, a navy officer, said "we had lecture from former president Ford and then Chomsky. This shows what a great nation we are, tolerating different voices. As a serviceman I'm dedicating my life to defending our great nation". Li reflected that
Oct 28, 2022 • 4 tweets • 2 min read
at a department event several Chinese students asked me "what can I do (to make a change)". I'm moved by the q & honestly I don't know. I'm not in a position to tell people to "do something" or to get rid of completely justified fears about their future and their family's safety. What I can say is keep asking questions, keep challenging previously taken for granted ideas, don't be afraid of voicing your thoughts no matter how insignificant it may seem, and know that you're not alone. Didn't Lu Xun say "despair is as hollow and deceptive as hope"?
May 1, 2022 • 8 tweets • 3 min read
she lived in a telephone box for a month, taking good care of herself & her dog. airing the duvet in the sun & walking the dog on good days. all the residents living in nearby compound were curious but they couldn't go out. one resident flew a drone to say hi to her. she was a little surprised seeing the drone, but then happily said hi back.
"she's living a good life, not tired at all" was the impression of the residents.
then the police came to harass her. police car followed her when she was walking her dog.
"Do you want me to die"?
Apr 8, 2022 • 4 tweets • 2 min read
most, if not all, of Hu Xijin's and Shen Yi's weibo posts have the hashtag V光计划, what's this?
it's a weibo campaign that aims to "encourage content creation". top 3 bloggers of the month (per engagement rate) get a reward of 2000 yuan. you might think ppl like Hu or Shen are well paid enough in their regular jobs to not care about this trivial reward.
Weibo relies heavily on the "big Vs" and my guess is they may have additional contracts with the company, and get paid handsomely depending on the traffic (making it to this ranking list)
Nov 25, 2021 • 7 tweets • 2 min read
history is always reimagined to serve the present
during the so-called century of humiliation (1840-1945 or 49) the US wasn't a prominent embodiment of imperialism at all. both KMT and CCP had good relationships with the US during the 2nd Sino-japanese war, when the "beautiful country" was an ally against 🇯🇵 imperialism.
before the civil war broke out, Mao met with Marshall and told him that he was sincerely grateful for American efforts to help achieving peace & democracy in China
(Niu Jun, the cold war & the origins of Chinese diplomacy) Image