The Great Facebook Expression Bag War of 2016
If you’ve been paying attention to Kpop news recently, you may have heard about the incident last week wherein Chou Tzuyu, a Taiwanese member of the Kpop group Twice, stirred up some geopolitical drama by waving a Taiwanese flag during an online broadcast. Sensitivity around Taiwanese independence is always a heightened issue around the general election, so she found herself facing cancelled appearances and pulled endorsements until she (possibly with pressure from her label, JYP) apologized publicly in another online video published on Weibo (think Chinese Twitter).
This is already pretty complicated, but the story is just beginning. Like Twitter, Weibo can be a bit mobby, and so many of the responses to Chou’s apology expressed disbelief about the sincerity of the act and demanded more repercussions for JYP. One of the people who joined in on the fun was Lin Gengxin, a Chinese actor, who reposted the video with the comment: “The apology was so sudden that she didn’t even have time to memorize her script,“ a reference to the fact that Chou is reading from a letter.
This is far from the rudest comment on Weibo, but Lin’s high-profile made him a target for Taiwanese people angry about the apology in general. They started taking to his Facebook page—remember, Facebook is blocked in mainland China, but not Taiwan—to shame him for making fun of a 16 year old girl. When Weibo users caught wind of this, they became outraged as well and issued rallying calls to “vault over the Great Firewall en masse and defend the honor of our fellow countryman”. The result, probably best witnessed in the 58k+ comments on one of Lin’s in-costume Facebook selfies, is an epic flame war riddled with insulting image macros and internet yelling that has been termed “The Great Facebook Expression Bag* War” by the Chinese internet.
(* 表情包, literally “Expression Bag”, refers to one’s collection of image macros gathered from around the internet for use on Weibo and WeChat—like a reaction GIF folder, except GIFs aren’t as big on the Chinese internet.)
According to Chinese bloggers and posters, the whole incident has been an impressive show of strength for Chinese “expression bags”—blog posts and status updates alike marveled that the Taiwanese were so behind on this core internet skill. But this assertion showcases the subtle cultural divides between the two linguistically-compatible countries—the mainland Chinese posters are expecting their Taiwanese counterparts to understand and participate in image macro microtrends developed on platforms like Weibo and WeChat, which Taiwanese users just don’t use.
A macro from Team Taiwan starring new president Tsai Ying-wen: “Quick, look! It’s a dumbass!”
Team China image macro with a “Expression Bag Made for Chinese People” watermark, emphasizing China’s stance that Taiwan is a province.
An exchange between the two sides: top, a Taiwanese poster mocks the low-production-value of Chinese image macros by photoshopping “Made in Taiwan” onto his own selfie; below, a Chinese user photoshops his face into another image macro with the caption “Let dad teach you: expression bags aren’t made like that.”
My favorite story from the war, though, shows that the increased dialogue may be a good thing despite the trollful nature of the exchange. A bunch of Chinese users looking for the Facebook page for Taiwanese media outlet “Sanli News” accidentally stumbled onto a different FB page for "Sanli Entertainment News”. Some of these lost souls fell in love with the Taiwanese social media editor for that page, who helpfully tried to direct and console them.
“First time vaulting over the Firewall and I get lost” “There’s a first time for everyone.”
tl;dr Actor makes fun of Kpop star who waved a flag, Chinese users circumvent a government-imposed firewall by the thousands to perform patriotism via image macros on Facebook.
Editor’s note: While we sympathize with how fun it can be to take part in a massive, meaningless internet fight like this, Multi Entry’s opinion about international politics in general is that 1) all borders are oppressive, 2) colonialism’s legacy on the world is a traumatic one, and 3) war is a garbage way to spend money.
After the fourth person poked me about it on WeChat, I wrote up an English summary of “the Great Facebook Expression Bag War” of 2016 for Multi Entry. January, y’all.
















