Language Log

His offense? He posted an egg fried rice video on Nov. 27, two days after the anniversary of the death of Mao Anying, son of the founder of the People’s Republic of China, Mao Zedong. Mao Anying was killed in the Korean War while, legend has it, cooking egg fried rice.

Even though, for those in the know — a small fraction of the total population — the dangers of "egg fried rice" are obvious, most people are blissfully unaware of the sensitive political and historical implications of this common fare when made, eaten, or mentioned on certain autumn days.  Among a sampling of 25 students from the mainland whom I asked about it — mind you, these are elite, educated scions of China's wealthy (their parents spend an enormous amount of money to send them to places like Penn — when I ask them what they think of if I mention egg fried rice, I just draw blank stares from almost all of them, even when I prompt (now a sensitive word in AI redolent America!) by saying something like, "Does egg fried rice have any political nuances for you?", they don't have a clue.  The rate of those who do not know about the delicate nature of egg fried race grows larger the younger they are.

Mr. Wang, a.k.a. Chef Wang, was born on June 11, 1989, a week after the Tiananmen Square massacre. He grew up in a village in Sichuan and dropped out of school at 15. Mr. Wang, who declined to comment, probably didn’t have much access to information outside of what the government wanted him to know.

Mr. Wang starts each video with a greeting, “Hello, I’m Wang Gang,” speaking Mandarin Chinese with a Sichuan accent [VHM:  and extremely rapidly, like a machine gun, yet still with clear Sichuan pronunciation]. He combines his farm boy persona with professionalism while working behind his wok stations, cooking dishes like a farm-style breakfast and Mapo tofu*. His following has grown to tens of millions on Chinese social media sites, plus two million subscribers on his YouTube channel.

[*Mapo tofu is the quintessential Sichuanese dish.  The name means "mápó dòufu 麻婆豆腐 ("pockmarked grandma's beancurd").]

He calls himself a “grass-roots head chef,” according to his intros. “I’m grateful for every experience, thankful for this era and sincerely hope that my videos can assist everyone, enabling them to step into the kitchen and fall in love with cooking.”

“Thankful for this era” is the politically correct way to say that rather than attribute his success exclusively to his personal talent and efforts, he sees it as part of China’s success as a nation. That shows Mr. Wang’s awareness of the rules for staying out of trouble.

Some nationalist bloggers pointed out that Mr. Wang had posted egg fried rice videos around the same time in the past. They said he also posted the recipes around Oct. 24, Mao Anying’s birthday.

The fact is that Mr. Wang has posted various fried rice recipes over the years, and he isn’t the only one to come under attack for it.

The Weibo account of The People’s Daily, the official newspaper of the Chinese Communist Party, was criticized for reposting Mr. Wang’s video of egg fried rice on Oct. 24, 2018. Around the same time in 2021, the Weibo account of a state-owned telecommunications company posted the dish; its account was suspended. Last month, two elementary schools in southeastern Zhejiang Province held an egg fried rice contest with 1,000 participants on the same day that Mr. Wang posted his recipe. The schools were attacked by nationalists on social media and deleted their posts.

The consequences can be much worse. In 2021 police in southern Jiangxi Province detained a man for 10 days after he posted a comment on Weibo saying, “Thank you, egg fried rice.”

Mr. Wang’s experience shows the lengths China will go to in restricting free speech.

The Chinese Academy of History, a state institution, called anything linking Mao Anying’s death with the dish “particularly malicious.”

Hu Xijin*, the former editor of The Global Times, the Communist Party tabloid, advised everyone to avoid the topic of egg fried rice entirely. “In the future, especially around the anniversaries of the martyr Mao Anying, public discourse should avoid touching on the topic of egg fried rice,” he wrote on his social media Weibo account.

[*Hardliner par excellence]

Some people pushed back at the suggestion. Banning any mention of egg fried rice in October and November, they noted, is both ridiculous and outrageous.

Mr. Wang deleted the video recipe and apologized.

“As a chef, I will never make egg fried rice again. Nor will I shoot videos about it,” a sour-faced Mr. Wang said in his apology video, ending it with a deep bow. But he had to delete that video, too. Commentators said his tone was reluctant and sarcastic.