Shannon Brandao
Shannon's excerpt from the article: "NYT [excerpt]: Mr. Wang starts each video with a greeting, 'Hello, I’m Wang Gang,' speaking Mandarin Chinese with a Sichuan accent. He combines his farm boy persona with professionalism while working behind his wok stations, #cooking dishes like a farm-style breakfast and Mapo tofu. His following has grown to tens of millions on Chinese #socialmedia sites, plus two million subscribers on his #YouTube channel.
He calls himself a 'grass-roots head chef,' according to his intros. 'I’m grateful for every experience, thankful for this era and sincerely hope that my videos can assist everyone, enabling them to step into the kitchen and fall in love with cooking.'
'Thankful for this era' is the politically correct way to say that rather than attribute his success exclusively to his personal talent and efforts, he sees it as part of #China’s success as a nation. That shows Mr. Wang’s awareness of the rules for staying out of trouble.
Some nationalist bloggers pointed out that Mr. Wang had posted egg fried rice videos around the same time in the past. They said he also posted the recipes around Oct. 24, Mao Anying’s birthday.
The fact is that Mr. Wang has posted various fried rice recipes over the years, and he isn’t the only one to come under attack for it.
The Weibo account of The People’s Daily, the official newspaper of the Chinese Communist Party, was criticized for reposting Mr. Wang’s video of egg fried rice on Oct. 24, 2018. Around the same time in 2021, the Weibo account of a state-owned telecommunications company posted the dish; its account was suspended. Last month, two elementary schools in southeastern Zhejiang Province held an egg fried rice contest with 1,000 participants on the same day that Mr. Wang posted his recipe. The schools were attacked by nationalists on social media and deleted their posts.
The consequences can be much worse. In 2021 police in southern Jiangxi Province detained a man for 10 days after he posted a comment on Weibo saying, 'Thank you, egg fried rice.'
Mr. Wang’s experience shows the lengths China will go to in restricting free speech.
...Hu Xijin, the former editor of The Global Times, the Communist Party tabloid, advised everyone to avoid the topic of egg fried rice entirely. 'In the future, especially around the anniversaries of the martyr Mao Anying, public discourse should avoid touching on the topic of egg fried rice,' he wrote on his social media Weibo account.
Some people pushed back at the suggestion. Banning any mention of egg fried rice in October and November, they noted, is both ridiculous and outrageous.
Mr. Wang deleted the video recipe and apologized.
'As a chef, I will never make egg fried rice again. Nor will I shoot videos about it,' a sour-faced Mr. Wang said in his apology video, ending it with a deep bow. But he had to delete that video, too. Commentators said his tone was reluctant and sarcastic.'"
#news