Xi’s Obscure Nicknames, from ↗↘↗ to “2-4-2” to “N” to “n-butane” 

With lots of of documented (and censored) on-line sobriquets, Xi Jinping is arguably probably the most nicknamed chief in latest Chinese language historical past. To remain forward of the censors, on-line Chinese language have lengthy resorted to utilizing homophones, variant characters, intentional typos, and a spread of typographical tips when referring to China’s “core” chief.

Over time, as evading on-line censorship has develop into harder, the nicknames have trended towards the abstruse. When a latest “Soviet-style” joke a couple of man asking a genie to “make blah-blah-blah blah-blah-blah” went viral, the primary string of three nonsense syllables have been interpreted by many to imply “Xi Jinping,” and the second was thought to imply one thing like “hurry up and die” or “step down quickly.” Regardless of the vagueness of the joke, references to it have been shortly censored on social media and the unique poster (@怪以德服人猫) had their account summarily deleted from Weibo for allegedly violating platform coverage.

Even the tonal marks utilized in Xi Jinping’s identify (习近平, Xí Jìnpíng) have develop into a roundabout solution to check with him on-line. In Might of 2023, Chinese language Twitter and social media was abuzz a couple of sequence of three arrows ↗↘↗ mentioned to signify the three tones (second/rising tone, fourth/falling tone, and second/rising tone, respectively) in Xi Jinping’s identify. This utilization had originated with a screenshot, purportedly from QQ, displaying a put up that learn: “You recognize what’s miserable? When random netizens who do your job as a pastime are smarter and extra competent than you.” Somebody within the feedback part had responded, “These keyboard warriors are extra competent than ↗↘↗.” Many who learn the remark have been shocked and amused that they managed to appropriately interpret the three arrows as a reference to Xi Jinping, though others needed to ask, “Can anybody clarify this?” Among the many feedback of these within the know: “I understood that!” “How was I capable of learn that? Somebody save me,” “God, I’ve been saying it →↘→ all this time, guess my Mandarin isn’t that good,” and “I obtained it at first look. Does this imply I’m going to hell?”

That individual mixture of tones, in fact, can correspond to many different names, together with Peng Liyuan (彭丽媛, Péng Lìyuán), the Chinese language soprano and spouse of Xi Jinping; Wang Huning (王沪宁, Wáng Hùníng), political theorist and present chairman of the Chinese language Folks’s Political Consultative Convention; and even Voldemort (伏地魔, Fúdìmó), the antagonist within the Harry Potter novels. However the normal consensus is that ↗↘↗ and its variants “2-4-2” (which means “second tone, fourth tone, second tone”) and “N” (whose three strains are thought to look just like ↗↘↗) all check with China’s prime chief. One other rising Xi nickname is “n-butane,” whose chemical line-angle formulation considerably resembles the three tonal marks or an elongated “N.”

Because the creatively piquant on-line nicknames of yesteryear—together with such classics as Winnie the Pooh, Steamed Bun Xi, Foreskin Xi, and Xissolini—are censored and fall into disuse, they’re changed by ever extra abstruse symbols and esoteric references. Xi nicknames proceed to proliferate, with new incarnations (actually “new pores and skin,” 新皮肤, xīn pífū) showing continually. Some joke that ultimately these monikers will probably be diminished to clean areas, very similar to the eloquently clean items of paper displayed by protesters in the course of the 2022 White Paper Protests. That mentioned, it appears probably that for so long as Xi Jinping stays in energy, the busy commerce in variant Xi nicknames will proceed to growth.