People’s Daily, the gift that keeps on giving, did a most glorious thing at 1:39 am today by “publicly condemn[ing]” a parody Twitter account, The Relevant Organs. “We have noticed that a Twitter account has been misleading people by stealing People’s Daily ‘s web address and National emblem of China to make false impression that the account is related to China officials or People’s Daily,” reads PD’s tweeted statement. “We hereby solemnly declare that this Twitter account is not related to or does not have connection with any Chinese official bodies, including People’s Daily.”

The Relevant Organs has been around since 2010 and literally no one thinks it’s related to “China officials or People’s Daily.” If English-language Twitter users were only as clueless as People’s Daily editors about satire, maybe that notice would have been necessary. As is – holy hayrick of cowdung, PD. (Is this a savvy play for more Twitter followers?) The China Girls blog has a small roundup of reactions from the Twittersphere, e.g., “oh my goodness i’m dying of laughter.” We’ve tracked some more reactions in the Storify below.

The best part is PD uses language parodied by its satirists. Note that The Relevant Organs’s Twitter tagline is, “China’s soft-power vanguard, rectifying your thought since 2010.” Here’s PD:

People’s Daily publicly condemns such theft and forgery conduct and demands the user of this account to make immediate rectification.

First of all, it’s users. Second…. PD is a bit out of its jurisdiction, isn’t it? In any case, it doesn’t look like The Relevant Organs is listening:

Investigating unauthorized @PDChina account. Initial data indicates 2,000 followers since May 2011.

— The Relevant Organs (@relevantorgans) April 25, 2014

We have over 5,000 years of history and 1.3 billion followers once you get rid of a bunch of girls. Which news source would YOU trust?

— The Relevant Organs (@relevantorgans) April 25, 2014

Smoking gun: So-called @pdchina “caught” us a year after our retirement. Much too fast for a real Party news organ. Rookie move, comrades.

— The Relevant Organs (@relevantorgans) April 25, 2014

Here’s PD’s full statement:

An episode of The Colbert Report last Wednesday used the words “ching-chong ding-dong” in an attempt to satirize / skewer Washington dunderhead Dan Synder. When the show’s Twitter account tweeted the joke the next day without context — “I am willing to show #Asian community I care by introducing the Ching-Chong Ding-Dong Foundation for Sensitivity to Orientals or Whatever” — a bit of hell broke loose on social media, resulting in Korean-American Twitter activist Suey Park starting the hashtag #CancelColbert. It reeked of so much faux outrage and willful ignorance that I did all I could to ignore it.

Something strange happened though: the story became about more than Colbert, Synder, Park, or hashtag activism. How do Asians fit within the scheme of liberal / white privilege? Are Asians and white Americans so intricately linked, socially and economically, that one could adopt the joke of the other without crossing the red line of race? Having lived abroad as long as I have, I don’t have a good answer anymore; in so many ways, this is purely an American question, reserved for those living in America. (Can you imagine what a good liberal in America would say if they found out that Chinese people in China call themselves “yellow-skinned”? Or this.) If I had ventured a comment over the weekend though, I suspect I would have sounded like I did last October when Asian Americans feigned anger at Jimmy Kimmel over a joke about “killing Chinese people.”

I’ll point out here that the two stories you should read, if you’re interested in this #CancelColbert story and haven’t already read, is “Gooks Don’t Get Redskins Joke,” written by Deadspin’s Tommy Craggs and Kyle Wagner, and “The Campaign to ‘Cancel’ Colbert,” written by Jay Caspian Kang for The New Yorker. Craggs and Wagner, who are both Korean-Americans like Park, assert that Park’s reading of Colbert’s joke is “problematic; it flattens out all meaning and pretends, in effect, that there is no ironic distance between Jonathan Swift’s satire and actual cannibalism, not to mention that it’s tighter-assed than life itself, as a funny white man once said.” Kang, generous nearly to the point of his own argument’s destitution, writes sympathetically of Park’s hashtag campaign:

#CancelColbert may have been silly and dumb and wrong in spirit, but it’s worth asking if those of us who find it distasteful know as much about the intentions of the hashtag activists as we think we do. If we take #CancelColbert at face value, we can easily dismiss it as shrill, misguided, and frivolous. But after speaking to Park about what she hoped to accomplish with all this (a paternalistic question if there ever was one), I wonder if we might be witnessing the development of a more compelling—and sometimes annoying and infuriating—form of protest, by a new group of Merry Pranksters, who are once again freaking out the squares in our always over reacting, always polarized online public sphere.

And all this is a longwinded way of introducing the below, which is Colbert breaking kayfabe on Tuesday’s The Colbert Report to tell his audience that he is, in fact, a satirist. Hopefully this is the last time we write about this story. It won’t be, I suspect, the last time we talk about racism, specifically what constitutes it.

Via Gawker:

“That ends that controversy,” Colbert concluded. “I just pray that no one tweets about the time I said that Rosa Parks was overrated, Hitler had some good ideas, or ran a cartoon during Black History Month showing President Obama teaming up with the Ku Klux Klan because, man, that sounds pretty bad out of context.”

First, we need to collectively realize — then get over the fact that — People’s Daily has a Facebook page. Then we can get to this story, first tweeted by Bill Bishop with the question, “People’s Daily fall for fake news again?”

Turns out, yes. Very fake.

@niubi it's fake: http://t.co/5SdDt5hNzj

— Austin Ramzy (@austinramzy) January 10, 2014

From the above Snopes link:

On 9 January 2014, the Lightly Braised Turnip web site published an article (complete with photo) positing that a squid grown to the gigantic size of 160 feet through mutations caused by radioactivity had been discovered on the California coast near Santa Monica…

By later that day, links and excerpts referencing this article were being circulated via social media, with many of those who encountered the item mistaking it for a genuine news article. However, that article was just a bit of fictional humor (a follow-up to an earlier fictional item about a giant oarfish supposedly discovered off the California coast) spoofing recent alarmist reports about dangerous radioactivity reaching the U.S. from Japan’s crippled Fukushima nuclear power plant, and the photo was an altered version of a picture depicting a dead whale found in Chile back in 2011.

As always when Chinese state media falls for satire, we have to ask whether the people behind it are trolling us, or the editors. I’ve heard from credible sources that the person behind People’s Daily’s “Kim Jong-un Named Sexiest Man Alive” stunt was indeed a foreign copy editor who knew exactly what he was doing.

We’re not so sure this time. After all, this story first gained legs when people in the US were duped. Native speakers don’t always get it right, as we are well aware.

And of course, this isn’t nearly as egregious an error as media reporting that Kim Jong-un fed his uncle to dogs, which began with a Chinese satirist — one whom BJC contributor Xiao Yi wrote about in December 2012.

Keep your chin up, People’s Daily. We’re enjoying your work with pandas, scantily clad “beauties,” and the Diaoyu Islands.

POSTSCRIPT: People confused about People’s Daily’s Facebook page:

Fool me once, shame on you. Fool me twice, shame on me. Fool me three times, shame on… you, I guess. Fool me four times, shame all around. Fool me five times, does your mother know you’re doing this? Fool me… I’ve lost count. Stop fooling me!

Xinhua has done it again: reporting fake news as real news. As Forbes explains:

Xinhua News Agency, the Chinese government’s mouthpiece, translated verbatim a New Yorker magazine satire and published it as real news on its International News Online section. The New Yorker piece, written by satire columnist Andy Borowitz, says Bezos’ purchase resulted from an unintentional click of the mouse, and that he has been negotiating with the Post’s customer service department to retract it. Not realizing the news’ satirical nature, People’s Website, operated by another Chinese state newspaper, People’s Daily, also reprinted  the Xinhua translation.

I don’t know which of these first three paragraphs from Borowitz’s story didn’t tip off the Chinese news editors that this was NOT A REAL STORY, but perhaps this is where we simply tip our hat and give credit where it’s due:

Jeff Bezos, the founder of Amazon.com, told reporters today that his reported purchase of the Washington Post was a “gigantic mix-up,” explaining that he had clicked on the newspaper by mistake.

“I guess I was just kind of browsing through their website and not paying close attention to what I was doing,” he said. “No way did I intend to buy anything.”

Mr. Bezos said he had been oblivious to his online shopping error until earlier today, when he saw an unusual charge for two hundred and fifty million dollars on his American Express statement.

Or is this the place we remind you that Xinhua just published screenshots from a porno, thinking it depicted a real execution? They’re not — how do we put this nicely? — very, um, savvy over there.

Or has Xinhua slyly opened a humor/troll section without telling anyone?

The Borowitz Report has gotten Chinese media before (it’s because it’s hosted on The New Yorker, of course). In April, 21st Century Business Herald was snared by a piece of satire that claimed Kim Jong-un wanted to declare war on Microsoft.

Bezos’ ‘Accidental’ Purchase Of The Washington Post? It’s Just A Joke, Xinhua (Forbes, h/t Eric Fish)

Ken Tanaka, one of the directors of the funny skit “What Kind of Asian Are You?,” which we featured here last week, has sent us a follow-up that features actors Stella Choe and Scott Beehner reading YouTube comments. If you think you already know how this is going to go, you’re more or less correct.

You sound anti-white to me.

That’s racist.

Her character, on the other hand, was deliberately vindictive…

…more racism!

Yes, indeed.

And an outtakes video:

Amulet Mok, you cheeky bastard. If that is your real name!

You ever have that very moment when every single cell of your body was aroused and your body was open for anything?

Oh dear.

And all of a sudden, the guy just stopped right then and there because he found you lying there like a starfish?

What we have here, of course, is a worthy successor to Alessandro, who we wrote about on December 5, 2012, in a post titled, “Be Afraid, State Media: Alessandro Is Still Out There.”

But why linger in the past? Let’s hear more from Amulet Mok:

Me too. I had to beg the guy to continue to take my virginity. I wish the ground could open and swallow me up. I was 23 and thought I was too old to be a virgin.

We’ll pause here to remind everyone that this article, “Never sleep with a virgin,” appeared in state-sponsored Global Times. If you’re enjoying this so far, you most definitely will not enjoy these other GT pieces:

• US protectionism hard obstacle to tackle
• HK showing recognition of opportunities mainland offers
• Public opinion empowers Weibo’s effect

Continue, Mr. Mok:

In a country where the majority of men all fancy of taking a girl’s virginity to boost their ego, many women were surprised that their virginity freaks out many foreigners.

With you so far.

The average age of losing your virginity in China is 21.9. So if you are going to sleep with a 30-year-old virgin, before you do anything, you have to ask yourself this question, “How on earth did she end up a virgin at 30?”

Not the most polite thing to print, but go on…

When it comes to deflowering a virgin over 25 or 30, the potential for a guy to freak out is high.

Um.

It is known that many women’s first time is an emotional experience, a combination of blood, panic, guilt, pain and tears. And most of the time it is guaranteed to be bad sex. All pain, no orgasm.

Oh…

Still, many of my foreign friends chose to ignore reality and take the plunge. It is because Chinese women are “smart, sweet and smoking hot,” one of my friends explained. Soon he found out that the “smart, sweet and smoking hot Chinese woman in her late 20s” he devirginized turned into a clingy lover and stalker. He freaked out and left her.

Skipping ahead just slightly — however it pains me to skip the line, “Sometimes a devirginized woman could be as toxic as the smog in Beijing” — here’s a fun little dig at pollution alarmists:

We now know many foreigners are planning to leave the capital due to the pollution, but I wonder how many of them are thinking about leaving thanks to the women they bedded.

Annnnnnnd the finale:

Condoms are just like women, they can be very annoying sometimes, but you can’t have sex without them.

Headshot.

In case this article doesn’t survive the night, we’ve screenshotted it:

Never sleep with a virgin (Global Times)

As Barack Obama’s failure to close the Guantanamo Bay detention camp continues to anger his liberal base, interested observers outside the US are beginning to take their potshots at the reeling POTUS. The Chinese news media, for instance, has decided to lightly prod the American president with a little humor — not with its own humor, mind you, but with The Daily Show’s.

Watch the above, or this, or this (different Chinese news stations, same Daily Show episode). It all seems to have begun when CCTV, China’s central broadcast station, ran with the Daily Show clip, according to SCMP. And while the segment is unquestionably funny, Chinese netizens, who are generally fans of Jon Stewart, are laughing for another reason — at their domestic news outlets.

“There are so many problems happening domestically that you choose not to broadcast every day, but instead choose to smell the farts of other countries,” one person posted in the video’s comment section.

“This is our country’s mainstream media … They just want to divert our attention to problems [of other countries] away from poisonous ginger, tainted milk, gutter oil and undrinkable tap water … We are so lucky,” another said, sarcastically.

Others pointed to CCTV’s blatant and “low-blow” attempt to humour audiences with an American political satire show when few of the sort was on offer domestically.

“At least they are free [in the US] to criticise their president openly on television,” one netizen observed on China’s biggest microblogging platform Sina Weibo.

Ah, yes. Chinese media, without the trust of its viewers, can basically never win.

On the other hand, holy crap Jon Stewart, first Egypt, now China (and soon, Iran)… the man might be the most globally recognized American comedian currently working.

CCTV ‘misses irony’ in using Jon Stewart satire to mock US on Guantanamo Bay (SCMP)

The lovably gullible editors at 21st Century Business Herald must really hate the genre of satire now. Just last month, this Guangzhou-based business weekly, one of the largest in the country, fell for a spoof on the website The Daily Currant claiming that Paul Krugman had gone backrupt. Very recently, they bit the bait again, this time dangled by The Borowitz Report.

SCMP’s Patrick Boehler reports:

Problems with Microsoft’s latest operating system Windows 8 led to a delay in North Korea’s widely dreaded missile test, the satirical American news website The Borowitz Report said on Thursday and it was obviously a joke.

It’s not obvious enough — despite the fact that this joke is actually kind of old, and Kim Jong-un uses a Mac.

Go on, though.

The Chinese daily 21st Century Business Herald fell for the spoof. On its Sina Weibo micro-blog, it reported the Borowitz prank, including its imaginary quote from the state-run Korean Central News Agency saying that the regime “was working with Windows 8 support to resolve the issue.”

Well, at least they didn’t fall for something patently absurd, such as Kim Jong-un declaring war on a company or something.

It also fell for another dubious quote from a “source close to the North Korean regime” saying that Kim Jong-un was considering declaring war on Microsoft.

Jesus. Keep Nigerian princes away from these dupes, yeah?

21st Century Business Herald has deleted its original Sina Weibo post. Meanwhile, we think we should tell our friends at China Daily Show and Ministry of Harmony to pitch them some stories. Surely, eventually, they’ll begin to get it.

Chinese weekly falls for spoof: ‘North Korean missile test delayed by Windows glitch’ (SCMP)

If you’re looking for analysis on why China loved Jon Stewart’s digs at Kim Jong-un (above), head over to the Washington Post, where Max Fisher writes:

When the popular Chinese Web portal Sina posted an eight-minute segment from the show discussing the latest North Korean provocations, it racked up an astounding 2.8 million views and counting, as well as tens of thousands of comments, many of them praising the show. That appears to make it one of the most-watched “Daily Show” clips ever. It also raises questions about whether China’s flagging support for North Korea might reflect popular sentiment as well as Beijing’s own geopolitical calculus.

Otherwise, watch away first. We’ll wait. Here it is on Sina, for those of you whose Internet isn’t fast enough to stream Comedy Central:

The above, posted to Sina on April 4, is now at 3.3 million views. Jon Stewart and staff have noticed, and presented a follow-up (below) that has racked up nearly half a million views on Sina after less than a day. Here’s Fisher again explaining the show’s appeal to Chinese viewers:

Maybe it has to do with China’s restrictive media, which tend not to venture into the kind of cutting political satire that has made the show so popular at home. The population of young, urban, middle-class, Web-savvy Chinese is growing rapidly. They’re making the Chinese consumer market one of the world’s largest, snapping up luxury goods, watching foreign films and enrolling in prestigious American universities. It stands to reason that they’d also be interested in the sort of news coverage that so appeals to young, urban middle classes around the world. But they can’t get it from the Chinese media, so they have to go elsewhere.

Jon Stewart, in other words, seems to have stumbled upon one of the most underserved media markets in the world. He’s right: He, or someone, should be doing a China-focused “Daily Show.” Unfortunately, something as freely critical and openly mocking as “The Daily Show” is unlikely to get past China’s censors anytime soon.

Nor does it hurt that Stewart is funny, of course.

The latest clips. The cookie joke at the end is good.

Of course Chinese media was going to fall for an April Fools joke. But we expected Beijing News to bite it, or People’s Daily, or 21st Century Herald (similarity: they’ve all been duped before, e.g., here and here). But CCTV, a television channel that, presumably, has researchers, copyeditors, producers and news anchors? That is to say, a terraced newsroom of professionally trained reporters and de factor fact-checkers?

Ha!

Via SCMP:

Chinese Central Television’s news channel reported during its Tuesday evening news that Virgin Atlantic, the airline owned by billionaire Richard Branson, was launching the world’s first ever glass-floored air plane.

Embarrassingly, the story was an April Fools’ joke, and Chinese netizens were quick to take the national broadcaster to task.

The comments on Sina Weibo truly are best. Via SCMP again:

“They find time to attack Apple, but they don’t have time to fact-check, that’s true professionalism,” mocked another person, alluding to CCTV’s public attacks against the computer and cellphone maker for its warranty policy in China.

Here’s the Virgin Atlantic release that fooled CCTV:

Today we’ve announced that our world-class engineering crew have been secretly working on the design and production of the world’s first-ever glass-bottomed plane, created to ensure passengers can enjoy both an unparalleled flying experience, as well as a selection of stunning landscapes from the comfort of their seats.

The new aircraft will offer every passenger the chance of a bird’s eye view with an extra special opportunity to look down on the beautiful scenery of Great Britain as they fly.

Actually… that’s a stellar idea. How much should we bet that China is the first to make it actually happen?

Chinese national television falls for April Fools’ Day joke – a day late (SCMP, h/t Alicia)

Do you drink coffee made out of snow? Live in tents and feed on birds? Own a gun? Do heroin?

You must be an American.

“This is how they live in modern-day America,” says the English-language dubber in the above DPRK propaganda video, “huddled together: the poor, the cold, the lonely, and the homosexual.”

We thank Washington Post’s Max Fisher for flagging a version of the above video, which has traveled from the YouTube account of British filmmaker and travel author Alun Hill (who created it) to Hong Kong’s Phoenix TV, which broadcasts in China, before making its way back to YouTube… where Hill’s name has been removed from the credits and some people have been, as they say, ensnared in the satire’s net. (It happens.)

It only makes it funnier:

“Dramatic music.”

“…drinking coffee cups full of snow.”

“They are yummy.”

“They are together in adversity.”

A former Republican candidate from Oregon lines up to buy snow from trucks. He is only limited to one per day.

“The hot snow tastes nice.”

I wish I could afford to drink snow.

POSTSCRIPT: Right after posting, I came across a reminder that North Korea is a satire of itself, basically all the time. Via NY Times: “North Korea issued a direct personal attack on the South’s new president for the first time since her inauguration two weeks ago, saying on Wednesday that her “venomous swish of skirt” was to blame for rising tensions on the Korean Peninsula.”

Venomous swish of skirt. Diplomat-speak means something very different to the DPRK.

Congratulations go out to The Daily Currant, whose “Paul Krugman Declares Personal Bankruptcy” piece on March 6 has found its way across the world to net one hell of a big, clueless fish.

They’re not the only one to fall for it, but Guangzhou-based 21st Century Business Herald, one of the country’s top business publications, should have known better. We just hope, for its sake, that the reporters and editors involved at least cited their source so they can claim ignorance.

As brought to us by SCMP’s Ernest Kao:

The Herald’s article has also been removed, but SCMP.com was able to salvage a post on the newspaper’s official Weibo account:

[Krugman’s] own deficit reached more than US$7 million from Manhattan apartment mortgages, credit card debts and jewellery from Tiffany. His biggest investment failure was the acquisition of real estate in 2007, which saw its value drop 40 per cent. Krugman’s lawyer said although he is going through a debt crisis, he still supports Keynesian policies.

In the Chinese paper’s defense, The Daily Currant looks nothing like The Onion, and Kim Jong-un wasn’t even involved.

Also, quite a few English-language readers got hoaxed, too. This is as good a time as any to show you The Daily Currant’s mission, as clearly laid out in its about page:

The Daily Currant is an English language online satirical newspaper that covers global politics, business, technology, entertainment, science, health and media. It is accessible from over 190 countries worldwide – now including South Sudan.

Our mission is to ridicule the timid ignorance which obstructs our progress, and promote intelligence – which presses forward.

Also see: Outrage Mounts Over Girls Gone Wild North Korea Video. Who’ll bite first, do you reckon, a Chinese or Korean editor?

Another Chinese news outlet falls victim to satire, fooled on fake Krugman report (SCMP)

Jon Stewart gave China’s air the comedic treatment last week (and rhymed it with “Nair”), using footage from a week before (and referencing this story about the Hangzhou factory fire). We bring it up now because, first, we hadn’t seen it on the China blogs yet, but more importantly, everyone is talking about pollution again. And if you must join in on this one-way conversation – pollution sure is unwelcome, eh guys? yeah, totally — you might as well make an Auric Goldfinger reference, as The Daily Show does.

The segment is called “Things May Be Bad, But At Least We Can’t Chew Our Air.” It’s not Stewart’s best effort, and Neil deGrasse Tyson’s appearance is totally wasted, but the audience seemed to dig it.

George Ding, the Beijinger’s backpage columnist, has provided us the latest example of why humor articles should never be translated. His recent column, “Why I’m Coming Back To China,” is an attempt at satire, and it wasn’t exactly well received by the Beijinger’s readers, some who didn’t get it (“Is George Ding thebeijinger’s racist-in-residence?”) and some who simply didn’t like it (“brilliant satire… for an LBH” [loser-back-home]).

But then it was punted across the cultural fence, posted to Caijing’s Sina Weibo, et al., and the vitriol has been multiplied. As sent in by a tipster this morning:

Caijing’s Weibo picked up on it and the reactions are not pretty, not pretty at all. Weibo also didn’t care to mention that George’s surname is Ding so of course the “white men are only here to take our women and jobs” reactions are all in evidence as well.

The Beijinger’s editors have noticed too. Seemingly overnight, the number of post views on Ding’s column jumped over 12,000, which is 12 times higher than the next highest non-Ding post. Iain Shaw writes:

The first bloggers who translated George’s piece into Chinese, Fei Xionghao (飞熊号) and Yao Hong’en (姚鸿恩), seem to have seen the humor. However, when Yao reposted his translation to web portal 163.com’s education channel, things started to get out of hand. Over 4,000 readers viewed the page, with over 200 comments posted, and many of those failing to realize that the “laowai loser” depicted in George’s piece was a fictional creation bearing no resemblance to George himself and – we really hope – little resemblance to any foreigner living in Beijing.

About that, though. Let’s look at Ding’s column. Read these sections without context, as if you were Chinese. Pretend you have no idea who George Ding is, or what he’s written before. Pretend you’re seeing it on a site — either 163’s education channel, Caijing, or the Beijinger — that is otherwise devoid of satire:

Another reason is that I couldn’t find a job worthy of my extensive resume. Most employers didn’t give a lick how much China experience I had, and those who did were surprised that I didn’t pick up Mandarin in the five years I spent in Beijing. As if a language made up of squiggles is that easy to learn. In the end, I couldn’t even get a job teaching English in the States, because apparently you need like a Ph.D or something.

And:

Honestly, I thought I’d feel more at home back home, but let’s just say that home wasn’t exactly where the heart is. In fact, being home is downright unbearable when your parents are constantly nagging you. When are you going to get a job? When are you going to move out of the basement? Did you take $40 from the cash drawer?

And:

If I’m being perfectly frank, I also missed not being the center of attention just because I was foreign. I hadn’t counted on the fact that going back to my home country meant that I was not going to be a foreigner at all.

Shaw, along with all of us, might wish there weren’t foreigners like this, but there absolutely are, and if you were being honest, you’d probably admit to knowing one or two of them. It’s a lousy type of laowai, for sure, and Ding — who I know personally — is absolutely not this type. But Chinese readers can hardly be blamed for getting upset at recognizing this characterization.

Ding’s mistake is not that he was joking, but that he didn’t take the joke far enough. In other words, he failed to accomplish the first aim of satire, to be “a sort of glass wherein beholders do generally discover everybody’s face but their own,” according to Jonathan Swift. We do see “our own” metaphorical face in his column, and it’s ugly and not funny. Readers aren’t asked to take the next vital step of refuting that reflection, and unfortunate as it may be, the author will not be saved by throwing up his hands and proclaiming, “Satire, everyone!”

By the way, I can tell you Ding is a genuinely nice guy who deserves none of the ad hominem attacks on his person. I’m sure if he did it again, he’d use a pseudonym, as satirists — most notably Swift — usually do (a name like “Butcher McGraves” would have helped drive home the joke). Also, he was kind enough to email me his response:

I guess I’m astonished first of all. I wrote the first piece as a joke, poking fun at all the “Why I’m Leaving China” pieces. I wasn’t trying to antagonize anyone. I’m writing for Kitto’s former magazine and I’ve written for Charlie Custer as well. I thought mine was worth a chuckle and didn’t think anyone would care, but that blew up into a discussion of my identity without my input.

The second piece was kind of “doubling down.” I wanted to see just how far I could push satire and test the gullibility of people. Again I never thought it would become a big deal. I even told my editors, I don’t think this will be as popular because it’s like telling the same joke twice.

I am astonished and a bit disconcerted by the reaction. Okay, Chinese readers, I get that satire might get lost in translation. But come on people, have some skepticism. Am I really going to feel self-conscious when cars stop for me or steal money from my parents’ petty cash drawer?

But I guess that’s the nature of the Internet and the dubious honor of being a small center of attention on it. I’ve learned a lot from this experience (this is the most attention I’ve ever gotten for my writing and I anticipate it’s only downhill from here) so I guess my ultimate emotion is gratitude. I’m grateful to everyone who read it, no matter what reaction they had. I’m grateful to those that understood and enjoyed my humor. I’m grateful for those that rushed to my defense. But most of all, I’m grateful to my friends for knowing and believing in who I truly am.

He can take solace though: he’s in good company, on both the Chinese and Western side.

POSTSCRIPT: I also got in touch with China Daily Show. Its official reply:

I’m not surprised people are annoyed –  this story is nearly six months old. Oh I get it, it’s a joke about the ageing print-media news model.

 By Xiao Yi

“At my residence in Beijing, with Coke toast first to the supreme leaders!”

And with that first message on June 29, Sina Weibo user @作家崔成浩 – literally, “Writer Choi Seongho” – launched himself into Chinese social media fame. From the very beginning, as a self-proclaimed North Korean patriot, he has written solely to glorify the Democratic People’s Republic of Korea, and has attracted more than 480,000 followers while following no one in turn.

But all is not what it seems. Far from being a true believer in the Juche Ideal, Choi just might be this country’s foremost satirist.

The typical netizen reacts to him with scorn and ridicule, but Choi responds with the sort of indifference that characterizes a master Internet troll. He continues to sing North Korean political propaganda, publicize portraits of Kim Jong-il (comparing him to “the sun that every human being admires”), and celebrate DPRK accomplishments, such as satellite launches.

When netizens attack — e.g., @Korea_中国法师: “A tyranny that starves countless citizens and makes countless lives suffer, shameless and evil dictator!” — the patriot counters with ridiculous phrases that have since entered Weibo lexicon: “Watch your tone!” he writes. “Anyone who defies the supreme leader will not be excused. We are serious and will track your longitude and latitude.”

Serious? Only to the few — and they are very much the minority — who aren’t in on the joke.

During the once-in-a-decade political transition of the 18th Party Congress, when China’s security forces went into overdrive, banning innocuous activities like flying toy helicopters and buying fruit knives, Choi wrote, “Sometimes what a person says can change the world, for example, one person yells, Look, they are having a meeting on the boat!”

One Sina Weibo user, who may or may not have gotten it, replied: “How dare you insult the intelligence and dignity of China! Report your longitude and latitude, we are serious!” But Choi’s “meeting on the boat” is actually a reference to CPC history – a highly secretive meeting in 1921 held on a red boat, in which Mao Zedong, along with 12 others, made the decision to establish the Communist Party — and hints at his subversive humor.

Sina does not reveal the identity of its users, making it hard to determine whether Choi is really from North Korea. His account does not come with the telltale “V” that signals his location or identity has been verified. In his profile, he simply stresses his heart is linked to — and would never leave — Pyongyang, capital of North Korea. Many netizens, however, suspect he is a Chinese national; others say he is actually South Korean, or possibly Korean American (he has posted in English before, but those are usually quickly deleted for whatever reason). Netizens often ask him to reveal his identity, but he either ignores them, ridicules them, or points them to this post. Most agree that he knows a lot about Chinese history and, as @棉花糖 puts it, “is unusually smart.”

Choi isn’t just popular among average netizens. Many verified celebrities also follow him, including Kai-Fu Lee, the Taiwanese-born American computer scientist and executive, and Ivy Chu, a well-known TV hostess on Phoenix TV.

Phoenix TV sought an interview with the elusive Choi last month, but Choi declined defiantly. He did add, however, that he would do it with Ivy Chu, whose adorable smile and attractive personality have endeared her to many male viewers. She appeared to openly flirt with Choi online, leading netizens to coin the term Ju-chu (竹体思想), a combination of the characters in Juche — North Korea’s (specifically, Kim Il-sung’s) ruling philosophy — and Ivy’s last name.

Choi’s online interview with Chu was shown on the Phoenix TV program “The Internet’s Hottest Item.” Here’s how it began:

Yes, it was that kind of interview. Other highlights:

Ivy: You mentioned that you were a reporter and a student studying abroad, does that mean you are a “princeling”?
Choi: My parents are farmers, never had official post. Even in the future, I will not become the father of princelings.

Ivy: But, you are also a writer, do you plan on writing a book? What kind of book?
Choi: A book that introduces the new prosperity of Communism. I am serious.

Ivy: Ever since you’ve become famous, so many weibo accounts have mimicked your style and used your name and even stated that you all are related, what do you say to that?
Choi: Perhaps I have the most number of relatives on Weibo, still counting every day. Unbearable, and I don’t know any of them. Be tolerable a little bit, maybe they also need “Pyongyang sytle.” [Note: he wrote "Pyongyang sytle" in English, and intentionally misspelled "style"]

Ivy: Then what do you think of your fame? With 450,000 to 460,000 fans, are you comfortable? And did you think of this outcome when you first started Weibo?
Choi: I did not expect it at all. And I follow no one. Perhaps it is because people are eager to learn about the Juche idea. And Choi will continue to warm their hearts with the sunshine with Juche.

Whoever Writer Choi Seongho is, he has succeeded in one key respect: by shedding light on North Korea’s cheesy propaganda, he’s shown how much China has changed in a generation. Perhaps that’s been his point all along. As @不能吃我 points out, “China used to be like this during Mao’s time. People knew nothing but to praise and worship. Glad that period is over.”

Xiao Yi is a travel enthusiast who tweets @ellies_day.