Explanation here.

Here is what we all should do: Tomorrow, take a little time out of your day and go leave flowers and/or positive messages on the ground where it happened. We have to change the mentality here, enough with this “If I help, I’ll get in trouble” or “China doesn’t value people’s life” excuses. You can be black, white, yellow red or blue it doesn’t matter, bottom line is this, if you are in China YOU are CHINESE, you want to make China a better place then make it happen. 

 

Sina Weibo’s watershed came in 2011 after two high-speed trains crashed in Wenzhou: as officials bungled the response, and then censored news stories, netizens stormed onto Sina’s microblogging platform to voice their outrage and fill gaps of knowledge with educated speculation. Four years later, just as Weibo has seemingly run its course, a different program is stepping into its place as the prime facilitator of unfettered discussion in this country of shackled exchange.

As far as watershed moments go, WeChat’s was notably less newsworthy in the classic sense: it was a sex scandal. Yet it was significant because the sex only became a scandal after — or the exact moment when — a message was transferred from one man’s phone onto another’s via this Tencent chatting platform. By the time the now-infamous Uniqlo sex video reached traditional media — traditional, these days, referring to the Internet — practically everyone who cared had seen it, or knew it existed.

This brings us to the horrific stabbing yesterday morning — outside, of all places, the Sanlitun Uniqlo that nestled into our collective consciousness only a month prior — details of which revealed itself almost exclusively on WeChat. Perhaps this seems unextraordinary, considering how fully WeChat has uplinked with most of our lives. But let’s pretend, for a moment, it were not possible to dart in and out of six separate chat rooms, to easily compare discrepancies in different tellings of the same story, to pose questions to dozens of people at the same time. How many instant messaging windows would you have opened? How many text messages sent? Phone numbers dialed? There was a time not long ago when we’d have to go to the scene to sniff for answers, if that’s what we wanted. Upon being stonewalled by official sources, you’d have to inquire of strangers, and then you would still only have a small piece of the puzzle.

Consider how many of us learned about the victim, the Chinese woman who was stabbed in the back (and how did we know it was the back?). It was likely from the following message, currently going around WeChat, sent from a person who knows both the woman and the foreigner who knelt over her:

Guys, it is very bad news. Our captain roro s wife has been killed by a crazy guy using a 1 meter long knife (“sabre” in french) a few hours ago in sanlitun. They were coming out of the embassy to officialize their wedding when they came accross this crazy chinese guy who told roro he did not like american people. He replied he was french. They left and he inserted his long knife inside isabelle s back.. Trying to defend her, the knife went inside roro s belly twice…. Isabelle died right after she made it to the hospital. Romain is going through an operation now because it was bleeding inside his body..This happened exactly 2 years after the murder of an american citizen in joyce city..
I can t find the words… Huge shock

Hours earlier, “My friend knows someone who knows the girl,” someone may have said in a group you’re in.

And those videos from the aftermath of the attack? Found on WeChat, of course.

As human beings we are inclined to gossip, and WeChat is currently the best tool for our time and place. It has tapped into our instinct to share and learn. Once upon a time, in a bygone age, we would gather around TVs for the 6 o’clock news, thus was our instinct to know and to know collectively. Well, China doesn’t air real news — nothing we can trust, I mean – and who has time for the television anymore? With WeChat, we get all the angles, sometimes simultaneously. We gather sources that we deem credible, and ignore those a bit too eager to forward rumors. We build a story, confirm or deny that story against the observations of others, and pass it into other groups. The transference of knowledge, from one bubble to the next, is seamless and swift. If we thought print media was slow before, print journalists are practically tablet engravers in this age of the intranet. No story published tomorrow will contain information that a smart and plugged-in smartphone user won’t have already obtained from multiple sources tonight.

The service won’t render the Internet obsolete, but it makes certain parts of it less vital: Sina Weibo, with all its ghosts and overseers? Who needs it. Twitter, that echo chamber with character limits? It’s fast becoming a place where the oldest of old-media hang out, those who haven’t ingratiated themselves into enough group chats. Facebook? LOL.

But WeChat, of course, did not rise out of pure innovation. Sure, it’s faster than microblogs (which are faster than blogs, etc.), and more tailored – you can choose who to follow, what groups to join or leave — but it would be much less useful if it were restrictive. That is, if messages were routinely censored, and certain topics disallowed. In other words, if it were a mobile version of Sina Weibo, which has been punished often enough that it will gladly stifle user participation to avoid offending sensibilities.

Finally, WeChat has the ability to create action, similar to 2009-11 Twitter (before Twitter became suddenly dead). A person — any person — can propose an action, and if it makes enough sense, creates enough momentum and gains enough support – all organically, of course, like a snowball — it will translate into movement. Ultimately, for as comfortable as virtual spaces have become, users still seek to translate their virtual conversations into real-world activity. For an example, check out this message currently making the WeChat rounds:

Here is what we all should do: Tomorrow, take a little time out of your day and go leave flowers and/or positive messages on the ground where it happened. We have to change the mentality here, enough with this “If I help, I’ll get in trouble” or “China doesn’t value people’s life” excuses. You can be black, white, yellow red or blue it doesn’t matter, bottom line is this, if you are in China YOU are CHINESE, you want to make China a better place then make it happen. So tomorrow let’s all show that we care, that life matters and that we are concerned by deposing flowers. People might look at you, judge you, ask you to leave but keep in mind that it is because you are doing the right thing. Let’s all make sure that tomorrow by the end of the day, all wechat moments are filled with pictures of flowers, and trust me, by night, people will light candles all over the place. This is how you change mentality, this is how you show you care about something, by doing something as simple as deposing a flower. So what’s your excuse?

I’m not saying there will be “candles all over the place” by nightfall tomorrow, but I’m willing to believe a few people will lay flowers. We’re just talking flowers, by the way, but authorities will notice. They’ll think, Next time, what if it’s not just flowers commemorating the innocent victim of a random attack? What if it’s, say, to commemorate a self-immolation at Tianamen? (Guess where I learned about the man who purportedly set himself on fire at Tiananmen last night?) What if it’s… something bigger?

It seems almost impossible that WeChat escapes official censure. It’s too easy to use, and thereby too dangerous. And this is how an innovative piece of technology that’s born in the People’s Republic of China dies there. Eventually, the only thing left to destroy will be censorship itself.

UPDATE, 4:16 pm: Flowers.

We have two videos from the stabbing this morning, in which a man wielding a meter-long sword attacked — seemingly at random — two people outside Uniqlo in Sanlitun, Beijing. The first video, above, is graphic, and I wouldn’t recommend it if you’d rather not watch a woman bleeding from stab wounds.

We’d like to point out this guy, casually strolling by the scene of two bloody stabbings:

In the video below, the attacker, when approached by police, simply gives himself up by laying down his sword and getting on his stomach.

UPDATE, 8/14, 10:54 am: How this story unfolded on WeChat.

The man is said to be a 25-year-old named Mr. Gao. Via Guardian:

Police said the attacker was from Tonghua, a city in the north-eastern province of Jilin.

Friends of the woman, who is thought to work as a tattoo artist in Beijing, posted messages on social media expressing their shock. Addressing the female victim one wrote: “You have to wake up and make me a tattoo, bless, my thought is with you.”

@prchovanec @zhongnanhai Victim was friend’s friend’s fiancee. Motivation was apparently nationalist — “Chinese who sleep w/ 老外 should die.”

— Jordan Phillips (@jordanp) August 14, 2015

As heard on social media, there was a stabbing this morning outside the Uniqlo in Sanlitun, one of the busiest areas of foot traffic and commerce in Beijing. Police appear to have subdued the assailant and roped off the area.

Sina Weibo is still all about the Tianjin explosion last night, but more information to come on this stabbing as it becomes available.

For now, some pictures culled from Twitter:

UPDATE, 1:13 pm: Um, is that a katana?

Police seem to have the situation under control:

Some more pictures:

UPDATE, 2:10 pm: Here’s a video of the moment the man is arrested after stabbing two people. He appears to simply give himself in.

Here’s another video taken just moments before the one above. It’s graphic.

UPDATE, 8/14, 10:54 am: How this story unfolded on WeChat.

The man is said to be a 25-year-old named Mr. Gao. Via Guardian:

Police said the attacker was from Tonghua, a city in the north-eastern province of Jilin.

Friends of the woman, who is thought to work as a tattoo artist in Beijing, posted messages on social media expressing their shock. Addressing the female victim one wrote: “You have to wake up and make me a tattoo, bless, my thought is with you.”

@prchovanec @zhongnanhai Victim was friend’s friend’s fiancee. Motivation was apparently nationalist — “Chinese who sleep w/ 老外 should die.”

— Jordan Phillips (@jordanp) August 14, 2015

Authorities were not happy about that Uniqlo fitting room sex video. Reports the LA Times:

The Cyberspace Administration of China, the country’s Internet watchdog, reprimanded two of the nation’s main web portals, Sina and Tencent, for failing to stop the spread of the video, and police said they were investigating. On Sunday, Beijing police said they had  arrested the couple in the video and four others.

According to Beijing TV, the police investigation is focused on two questions: first, who posted the video and second, whether the tape was a publicity stunt intended to drum up business. A brief police statement said one 19-year-old man surnamed Sun was charged with disseminating obscene material, while three others were being detained, along with the couple. Police indicated the video dated from April.

We hope the couple is okay. I guess public sex is a real threat to society and you shouldn’t do it, but then again — maybe you should.

Porn is “illegal” in China, but, you know — does this need to be said? — good luck stopping it.

It doesn’t have to be Uniqlo. (Actually, better if it isn’t – spread the wealth.) It doesn’t even have to be a dressing room. But here’s an honest chance for us, the little people, to make a real difference in the fight against censorship: we can — by a simple bit of sex in a public place, a camera phone, and an Internet connection — show the world just how fucking dumb this fucking government can sometimes fucking be.

Apologies for the split infinitives.

We’ve been trying to do it with our page of porn sites not blocked in China (“We hate Internet censorship, of course, but so should the censors: it doesn’t work”), but this is much more effective. If you choose the video route and can sneak in a “we will be together,” that’s cool, but it’s unnecessary. Pictures will do. Post them. We’ll do it for you if you’d like.

Go do this. If you need a reason why, be reassured that you’re ruining the day for benighted bureaucrats who believe in “socialist core values,” and if they want their socialist values so bad, they can leave the sex to us and all just go fuck themselves.

“The vulgar video had spread like a virus online and clashed with socialist core values,” Xu Feng, a director at the Cyberspace Administration of China (CAC), was quoted as saying by the Global Times newspaper.

The government would “continue to crack down on vulgar materials online and safeguard the cyber environment,” Feng vowed. Beijing police are reportedly investigating who made the film and how it appeared on the internet.

(Above quote from the Guardian.)

Also, if you see a shirt available on Tmall or Taobao, BUY IT. It won’t be available for long.

I passed by Uniqlo just now on my way home, the infamous Sanlitun branch where a young man and woman had sex in the fitting room and put the video of it online. (You can watch it here.) Maybe that part of Sanlitun Village always has a large crowd of young folks milling about. Maybe there are those who ironically take selfies in front of retail chains, and journalists often un-ironically do work there (CNN!). I don’t know. Or maybe shoppers are lining up for this season’s hottest new item:

I don’t know. A couple had sex, and Uniqlo is by far, now and forevermore, the biggest beneficiary. Come on. That’s kind of bullshit.

Uniqlo says they weren’t behind this, and the fact that they’re probably not lying makes the story all the more disappointing. If a real human being concocted this bit of marketing derring-do, it would justify and vindicate the entire history and field of public relations. Dov Charney – American Apparel’s skeevy founder – hired porn stars and models to attain Uniqlo’s current wildfire of buzz, and failed. Companies sink thousands every year into advertising campaigns without entertaining the possibility that mainstream media will notice. And Uniqlo? Did it spend money to make money? Did it bother to pollute our eyes and ears with subliminal messages of bonking? Did it so much as try to position itself in our subconscious as a place where quickies were cool? No. It did nothing but offer medium-priced everyday wear and fair-quality jeans. And now it’s laughing its way to the bank, because two people had sex. Life isn’t fair.

Well, I suppose there is one drawback: someone will have sex again in a Uniqlo fitting room. Probably not by tomorrow, because there’ll be some Argus-ass eyes affixed to those doors. But it will happen. And may it continue happening until it becomes commonplace, and we can continue to stroll by this store in the heart of Sanlitun without raising our camera phones as if in the shadow of Angkor fucking Wat.

If you’ve been anywhere near WeChat or Weibo today (or China’s corner of Twitter, for that matter), you’ve likely heard that a young man filmed himself having sex with a young woman in a fitting room in the Sanlitun branch of Uniqlo in Beijing recently. The video was uploaded to the Internet yesterday evening and has been making the rounds. It’s out there. Someone was gonna post it. [...] Here it is.

In case you were wondering, as many online have, Uniqlo says this was not a publicity stunt (who do you think they are, American Apparel?). Quote from Shanghai Daily:

In its statement released on Wednesday morning, Uniqlo said it has reported the indecent content to websites where it appeared “immediately.”

“We would like to remind the public to uphold social morality and use our fitting rooms in a correct and proper way,” said Uniqlo.

“We also firmly deny some online allegations saying the video is our publicity stunt.” Uniqlo said in the statement.

UPDATE: