On China's Twitter, Children of the '80s Take the Stage
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Were the Bard alive today, he might find China’s blogosphere a welcoming, albeit cacophonous, place. Netizens have rushed to the defense of Liu Lili, a sassy young woman educated in New Zealand who found herself besieged from the host and judges of a popular reality show after declaring she “enjoyed reading Shakespeare.”On January 13, Tianjin Satellite Television aired the latest episode of “Only You,” an “Apprentice”-style reality show where twelve Chinese company managers, sitting in twelve thrones encircling a stage, interview and evaluate one job applicant at a time. Successful applicants are offered jobs on the spot, while unsuccessful ones go home.
Liu’s 15 minutes on stage are painful to watch. She introduces herself as an English-language B.A. with three years’ study at a New Zealand prep school and an affinity for Shakespeare. The show’s host, Zhang Shaogang, is icy from the start. Liu, trying to maintain her composure under Zhang’s withering gaze, discusses why she enjoys poetry with heroic couplets, breaks momentarily (and perhaps purposefully) into English, then explains her decision to return home because “China was changing so much.”
Host Zhang pounces on guest Liu as soon as the word “China” escapes her lips. “I almost never talk that way with my friends. … This is our own country. … We [just] say, ‘here.’” If Zhang’s reaction is rooted in patriotism, it is not the kind most Internet commenters recognize. Netizens, quite used to using the word “China,” derided Zhang in posts on Weibo, China’s Twitter. One wrote, “From now on, ‘Team China’ will be called ‘Team Here’…we were wrong all these years!”
The interview actually worsens from there, as Liu, smiling and standing erect, trades barbs with the host and judges, fends off prying questions about her family, and at one point calls out a male judge for interrupting a female judge. Liu maintains her composure until she is interviewed backstage, where she breaks into tears and declares herself “too angry to speak.”
The interview has touched a generational nerve, prompting over 1.9 million posts on Weibo as of this article’s publication. One January 14th poll showed74% of netizens supporting Liu Lili with only 11% siding with Zhang Shaogang, although rumors of some supporters “defecting” have circulated since Liu pulled down her Weibo account while continuing to refuse media inquiries.
Zhang clearly stepped beyond the role of an objective host, but his reasons for doing so are the rub. Many online commenters accused the “ungentlemanly” Zhang of “grandstanding” and wrote he was “shamed into anger” because he did not understand Liu’s reference to “heroic couplets” and could not follow her English. But Zhang admitted as much on the air, saying it was Liu’s attitude that mattered, not whether he personally understood her allusions.
By standing up for herself, however inartfully, Liu flipped the Confucian script. An unknown young woman applying for a job is supposed to show deference when thirteen older, mostly male bosses evaluate her credentials while sitting in gold-painted seats. Liu saw it differently, and this incensed her host.
To be sure, Liu was unashamed of her status as a “Sea Turtle,” slang for a native Chinese who studies or works abroad but then returns to the motherland. “Sea Turtles” are largely admired in China; they were either gifted or moneyed enough to make it abroad, but loyal enough to return home, perhaps with extra swagger in their step. Netizens were unperturbed by Liu’s time in New Zealand.
Indeed, on camera Liu did not seem terribly different from any other “post-80.” The term refers to young Chinese people, born after 1980, who tend to be less conformist than preceding generations and more comfortable expressing their individuality. In one Weibo poll, only 5% of respondents felt the televised conflict “resulted from cultural differences,” while 49% agreed the host and bosses were “imposing their values and experience on another.” This suggests there was a schism, but it was generational, not cultural.
Liu seemed to recognize that being young, a job applicant, and a woman did not make her a supplicant. An aging population means workers are scarcer and less fungible than before. Inflation pinches, but it has also spurred workers to demand better wages and lifestyles. Meanwhile, China has become less patriarchal as its workforce leaves the hard-labor countryside and floods into its cities.
These larger trends may explain why netizens, generally a younger crowd, defended Liu’s behavior. While some found her “too radical” or “fake,” another exhorted her to “keep your personality, and trust you will find your happiness.” Many expressed empathy even if they felt that Liu overreacted. One wrote that “many people our age have not experienced doubt and criticism,” while another observed that “everyone is sounding off…because you don’t dare challenge the authority in front of you, so Zhang has become your ‘punching bag’.” Another netizen used a harsher term for Zhang: “Obsolete.”

