In the sector of Mandopop, the pop sung in Mandarin, making fun of Beijing can break a career. Malaysian rapper Namewee and Chinese-Australian singer Kimberley Chen, both of whom live in Taiwan, made it their selling point.
Days after the syrupy pop-like song was released last month, Beijing censors kicked them off the Chinese internet, blacklisting them in the world’s main Mandarin market. But the title has become a hit elsewhere in Asia and in the Chinese diaspora on the planet. Why does this seemingly harmless ballad bother the Chinese authorities so much? Decryption in four political messages to read between the lines.
Little rose
Brittle sounds like a rosewater ballad but the authors accompany it with a clearly political warning: “be careful if you are a fragile rose”. A reference to the expression “little roses” pointing to the army of nationalist Internet commentators in China who wage war on anything they perceive to be an affront. Pink dominates in the clip, including for Namewee and Chen’s clothes. A giant panda, an explicit reference to China, dances in dungarees in a pink lattice print. The heady chorus asks forgiveness from a person who is fragile and accepts no criticism.
NMSL
In an empty pink pool, Namewee is seen fighting with the giant panda and singing “you tell me NMSL when you get angry”. The acronym, ubiquitous in online feuds between Chinese nationalists and their targets, comes from “ni ma si le” (“your mother is dead” in Chinese).
Last year, he was hijacked during a pitched battle on the net between Thais and Chinese after remarks by a Thai celebrity about the coronavirus. Thai netizens had created a series of viral memes caricaturing Chinese nationalists as automatons instantly typing “NMSL” as soon as they spot a subject of disagreement online.
Apples and pineapples
Namewee explains that the character of his song “swallow the apple and cut the pineapple”. The first fruit refers to the pro-democracy Hong Kong newspaper Apple Daily, closed after its assets were frozen and its leaders arrested in the name of a national security law.
The second alludes to Beijing’s recent decision to ban pineapple imports from Taiwan, an island with its government but claimed by China, as the harvest approaches. Taiwanese and Japanese consumers alleviated the ban by buying the surplus.
Bat soup
The song evokes the Chinese and their “desire for dogs, cats, bats and civets”. The giant panda in the clip offers Namewee a pot of soup with a stuffed bat floating in it, a clear allusion to the widely denied idea that bat consumption is the cause of the coronavirus.
The origin of the pandemic remains unknown and has been more difficult to pin down, according to the World Health Organization, due to China’s official opacity. But the cliché of the “bat soup” has often been used against Chinese and Asian communities around the world during the pandemic, in racist attacks and slurs.
It was one of the elements raised by the Chinese state media when this song, judged “malicious” by the state-owned daily Global Times, has been blacklisted.