Instagram Is a Site of Protest for the Chinese Diaspora

The lo-fi aesthetic from China's more hopeful and democratic past can be seen in other accounts. The Chinese Instagram community became very popular during the early days of the swine flu. I've never seen these images before, but they were refreshing from a time when they were hushed due to political reasons.

The follower base had already been built. Many of his followers were based in China during the siege of the city. They started sending him messages about their grievances. When the stream of submissions grew large, he started using the story feature on the social media platform.

There was a lot of testimony at the check-in. Followers were eager to share their stories because they lacked other channels to do so. Some people were told by their family to keep their mouths shut about the oppression, while others were placed under house arrest-style quark with a stable supply of food. The page received over a thousand submissions, most of which were oral histories about the reality of living under a dictatorship. The images of a historical protest, coupled with the stories of Chinese people's collective suffering, elicited a feeling of unique "historical moment."

In her book Negative Exposure: Knowing What Not to know in Contemporary China, scholar Margaret Hillenbrand defined such images as "photo-forms." A new wave of protest spirit started to emerge from these aesthetic pages, which riffs on largely-known but poorly- understood historical events like the Tiananmen protest. The anonymous submission mode made the small slides of the stories into a space for voices of dissent and political discussions.

Hans began the page based on his interest in elders in his family. The first McDonalds in China opened and my grandma waited in line for two hours to get a burger for my dad. There was a time when people were excited about the market economy, and were open-hearted about changes.

Hans posts jokes about contemporary Chinese history, in particular, jokes about the Pearl River Delta, a metropolitan area known as China's Bay aAea, on his meme page.

There is a meme account that pokes fun at northeastern China's unique culture. The experience of being bilingual and bicultural as a young overseas Chinese is reflected in the meme accounts. A typical post might include a cringe-worthy Tinder profile, a starter pack image of different types of Chinese transplants, or a hilarious English phrase. The Chinese government is an increasingly convenient butt of jokes. The state spokesman who gives definitive but nonsensical answers to journalists and Olympic snowboarder Eileen Gu was mocked in new prototypes of meme.