Analysing posters and memes in China during global pandemic
Abstract
China is one of the countries which has had the highest positive cases and mortal cases during these two years of Covid-19 global pandemic. It has been criticised by some countries in the globe that the origin of the virus came from Wuhan, China. The topic of my “Covid-19 Folklore” project is “Analysing posters and memes in China during global pandemic”. It aims to study the posters and memes that Chinese citizens have created in various cities in China as the Chinese citizens have expressed a lot of their feelings during this challenging period. The focus of this project is the writing and the expression of these posters and memes which are considered material folklore. In fact, these posters and memes contain a rich cultural context for language use and can truly enrich an archival collection.
3 Reserach Questions
This project attempts to address the following questions:
1. How did the Chinese people use posters as a source in making memes in the pandemic?
It is found that there is a lot of participatory virtual art about “fight the pandemic” on social media platforms. They help express concern, care, and support toward the COVID-19 frontline workers. They also help show us the “everyday life” of ordinary people in China during the pandemic.
2. How do they express their values or beliefs through posters and memes?
It is found that Chinese people are portraying the dualistic essence of their uncertain times through posters and memes. They are also expressing the idea of care through posters and memes. On the other hand, the Chinese government has used the narratives about care to praise its political system.
3. What identities do they convey?
It is found that the position of women and mothers are particularly emphasised in those posters and memes. There are mainly three genres of mothers working from home: (1) ‘balancing mothers’ who balance between work and childcare, (2) ‘pedagogic mothers’ who give childcare tips, and (3) ‘commercially oriented’ mothers who offer tutorials by means of product placement and advertisement.
Global Pandemic in China
The global Coronavirus has been a serious topic since it occurred in December 2019. There is evidence to believe that the origin of the virus came from Wuhan, which is located in the east-central of Hubei province in China.
Although scientists are still not sure about the origin of the virus, it is believed that live mammals susceptible to coronaviruses, including raccoon dogs, were sold at Huanan Market and three other live-animal markets in Wuhan before the pandemic. It is in raccoon dogs that severe acute respiratory syndrome–related coronaviruses were identified during the SARS outbreak, which was facilitated by animal-to-human contact in live-animal markets in China.
Research Question 1: How did the Chinese people use posters as a source in making memes in the pandemic?
There has been a large amount of participatory virtual art under the theme of “fight the pandemic” published on platforms including Kuaishou, TikTok, and WeChat. They are of different kinds. This participatory artistic expression provides a bottom-up perspective from the government narratives, giving people access to various ways of creating and sharing narratives around their own experiences during the pandemic, allowing the ordinary people to understand the crisis differently from the views advocated by the state media.
Examples:
Examples can be found on Kuaishou, TikTok, and WeChat public accounts. For Kuaishou and TikTok, the artworks are posted individually in the form of short videos. Under the “anti-pandemic” tags, the top searches on TikTok are for paintings, posters, clippings, and music postings. These postings mainly pass the morale-boosting messages across through instructional demonstration of composition processes such as drawing cartoon subjects like doctors or virus molecules and delivering them with compelling subtitles and background music. They not only illustrate sincerity and genuineness in expressing concern, care, and support toward the COVID-19 frontline workers, but also represent the “everyday life” which are opposite to the discourse being projected by the government.
Research Question 2: How did the Chinese people use posters as a source in making memes in the pandemic?
2.1 In general, Chinese people are expressing both visually generalised images of propagandistic content and art pieces with the national hallmarks, portraying dualistic essence of their uncertain times through posters and memes.
Examples:
The picture of “Chairman Mao on en route to Anyuan” is viewed as “Walking outside for the first time after the end of quarantine”. Quite a lot of the posters are associated with global history, especially related to the wartime. It is because COVID-19 is seen as an enemy of mankind, and so the fight against this disease is quite identical to a war.
This artwork showing a doctor kissing her loved one through the protective glass draws our attention to the sacrifice and the high price medical staff are paying in this pandemic. It also illustrates that medical staff are human beings with devotion, deep knowledge and experience, bravery and patience.
Based on the examples above, it is quite obvious that Chinese arts are really focused on the extensive engagement of Chinese cultural and folk elements.
2.2 In the post-lockdown Wuhan, Chinese people are also expressing the idea of care when examining the anti-COVID-19 measures taken through posters and memes. Some of the posters and memes describe the Chinese response to COVID-19 during the virus outbreak. It shows that care is central to the functioning of liberal democracies. The Chinese government also makes use of the narratives about care to highlight the superiority of its political system and to distinguish the desirable from the undesirable forms of citizens’ political engagement after the COVID-19 outbreak.
Examples:
There is a slogan on a Wuhan street corner: ‘Fighting the virus starts with me’. Although the communicative work is done mainly by the words, the design of the words in the message is significant. Not only the font and the color, but also the simplicity of the design remind us of the army, bringing out a sense of discipline. That, in turn, brings out a message: each of us has the responsibility to stop the outbreak. In fact, that is one of the core themes in communication about COVID-19 in Wuhan.
This poster offers four tips for preventing COVID-19: wash our hands, wear a mask, keep warm, and ventilate our room. It also reminds us of the government’s anti-rumor campaign: ‘In the face of COVID-19, do not create rumors, do not believe rumors, and do not spread rumors!’ Other than giving instructions on how to protect oneself and others physically from COVID-19, the poster also gives instructions to the staff members in the factories on how to talk and think about the virus.
This cartoon poster displayed in Wuhan’s metro depicts the metro as a superhero transporting images to fight the virus. The superhero is cheered on by masked people, including a child with a popular slogan: ‘Wuhan, be strong!’ In the poster, it is easy to find a Wuhan landmark, the Yellow Crane Tower. It is important to find the hero has finally reached the end with the word ‘victory’.
Research Question 3:What identities do they convey?
The identity and the position of women and mothers are easily found in those posters and memes. They mainly show three genres of mothers working from home: (1) ‘balancing mothers’ who balance between work and childcare, (2) ‘pedagogic mothers’ who give childcare tips, and (3) ‘commercially oriented’ mothers who offer tutorials by means of product placement and advertisement.
Examples:
‘Is this you working from home? You cannot work if you have little rascals at home.’ On 17 March 2020, Chubby Toot (user ID: xiaopangdudu), a 25-year-old Chinese mother with nearly 2 million followers, shared her struggles of working from home with her two-year-old son at home, whom she referred to as ‘little rascal’ (熊孩子), during the COVID-19 pandemic. Chubby Toot received more than 50,000 likes for her funny Chinese TikTok video, and screenshots. The video shows glimpses of her daily life during the quarantine, for example, working on the laptop when her son powered it off; at an online meeting as her son distracted her; and interrupted by her son as she was talking to her boss on the phone.
The example of Xiao Qi (user ID: 1822370801), whose clip presents a stylised juxtaposition of ideal vs reality. She imagines herself working in a highly professional, calm, and quiet manner (Top image). However, in the real world, her energetic son disturbs her work because he keeps ‘playing with’ his mother (Bottom image).
Conclusion
Based on this research, it is interesting to see how Chinese people react to Covid-19 through posters and memes. It is also interesting to learn why Chinese people have to design posters and memes in a way they want to. These two interesting points remind me of what Sims and Stephens (2011) talk about material folklore. They said that material folklore is more or less permanent and this permanent material culture is tangible. In other words, they can be touched, seen, eaten, or lived in. Furthermore, they can be created by members of a folk group, no matter if it is to function within a belief-oriented customary practice or it is an everyday folk event.
People in China have already created these posters and memes for more than two years, and they have already lived with them. As a result, it has become an everyday folk event for them to express their feelings. It is a good context to understand “everything that surrounds the text—the setting, people, situation— anything in addition to the expressions, item, idea, or objects being shared.” (Sims and Stephens 2011, p19)
This research also reminds me of the story,“Stalking with Stories: Names, Places, and Moral Narratives among the Western Apache'' by Keith H. Basso (1990). Basso (1990) explains that the Apache value descriptive specificity in place-names comes from a distinction that is drawn between "long names'' (bfzhi' ndeez) and "shortened names'' (bfzhi' 'igod). Most Apache place-names contain minimally of a noun marking the subject, an imperfective neuter verb that functions as an adjectival modifier, and a perfective neuter verb that describes some aspect of the position, posture, or shape of the subject. For example tse-figai dah sidil: tse (''rock"; "stone") + -figai ("it is white") + dah ("located above ground level") + sidil ("three or more objects lie in a compact cluster"). That means "white rocks lie above in a compact cluster". This example shows that the view of the landscape has been implanted and embodied through their language. It is a mental map for them. Similarly, my research has also given previous different posters and memes in various locations. Both physical and virtual locations can show how Chinese people react to the global pandemic of COVID-19.