2024-03-22 05:11:41
Convenience stores and stores in some areas removed all Nongfu Shanquan products, and a ‘performance’ of pouring entire Nongfu Shanquan bottled water into a river became popular on an Internet short video platform. A SNS post showing Nungfu Sanquan bottled water being thrown away in the toilet. SNS screen capture
This happened in October 2023 when I went to Guilin Yangshuo, a famous tourist destination that appears on China’s 20 yuan banknote. Since it was just after the National Day holiday, the bustling tourists had disappeared and the streets were relatively quiet. Around dusk, when I was wandering around the alleys near my accommodation and looking around at restaurants to have dinner, I noticed quite a few people gathered in front of a street vendor. I thought it was a ‘good restaurant in town’ so I quickly went and stood in line. It was a small street vendor selling Chinese-style hotteok, similar to Korean hotteok, except for the filling inside.
‘Patriotic’ sells more than hotteok at hotteok restaurants
As I waited in line and looked closely, I saw a sign in front of the stall that said, “This store does not welcome Japanese people.” They also kindly translated “This shop does not welcome Japanese” into English under the Chinese. When it was my turn, I ordered three or four different types of hotteok and informed them that the ‘e’ was missing from ‘welcom’. Then the owner who was baking the hotteok looked at me intently for a moment, and he seemed to have sensed something strange about my Chinese pronunciation and suddenly said: “Are you Japanese by any chance? “We don’t sell this hotteok to Japanese people.”
The middle-aged female owner’s tone of voice was so rude and her voice was so loud that people standing behind her immediately started paying attention to me. Beginning in August of that year, anti-Japanese sentiment in China was aggravated by the Japanese government’s discharge of Fukushima nuclear contaminated water. The Chinese government announced a complete ban on the import of Japanese marine products, and it was also a time when cries of ‘Overthrow Japan’ were once again heard on the Internet and various social media. I thought to myself, ‘I’m going to lie and say I’m Japanese,’ but the owner of the hotteok restaurant had a very serious look in his eyes and the people in line seemed to be glaring at me, so I just smiled and said, “I’m Korean.” Then her gaze softened a little, but she still finished baking her hotteok with a smile on her face, and the boss said, She said, “That’s good. I can’t let Japanese people taste my delicious hotteok like this. Japan and Japanese people are really, really annoying. “Isn’t that right?”
The highlight was the reaction of the people standing in the back row. Someone in the back row who was listening to the conversation between me and the president said this. “This store is a truly patriotic street vendor. That’s why there are so many customers. Why don’t they put up a sign saying it’s a patriotic hotteok restaurant? “The most patriotic hotteok restaurant in the world!” Some people clapped and some people laughed loudly. Someone else diligently took pictures of the hotteok restaurant with their smartphone. We may not know, but that hotteok restaurant may have caught fire that day in various short-form videos on the Internet and on social media.
In the past few days, ‘patriotic companies’ and ‘traitorous companies’ have emerged in China, suffering from an untimely boom and being criticized by public opinion ‘like a hotteok restaurant on fire’. This is a new wave of ‘patriotism’ that suddenly spreads around the Internet in China after Zong Qinghou, the founder of Wahaha, one of China’s largest private food and beverage companies, passed away from a chronic illness on February 25, 2024.
The memory boom was followed by a reverence boom and a witch hunt.
Zhong Qinghou, who founded Wahaha Enterprise in Hangzhou, Zhejiang Province in 1987, is a representative first-generation reform and openness private entrepreneur who was the first to succeed in ‘local branding’ in China’s food and beverage sector. In the early days of the business, the company mainly focused on children’s nutritional food and beverage business, but in 1993, it entered the bottled water business under the brand ‘Wahhaha’, bringing about significant changes in the Chinese bottled water industry since the mid-1990s. In 1998, it produced China’s first native brand cola, ‘Feichang Cola’, imprinting the image of the company as a ‘national company’ among the Chinese people. Wahaha bottled water and food and beverage products continued to lead in market share in China until the launch of competitor Nongfu Shanquan.
Zong Qinghou was the richest private entrepreneur in China. However, in 1996, when a new food and beverage company under the brand name Nungfu Shanquan was created in Hangzhou, Zhejiang Province, also in the same city, a full-fledged ‘water war’ began. Moreover, Zhong Shanshan, the founder of Nungfu Sanquan, was originally a food and beverage agent for Wahaha Group.
SNS screen capture
Zhong Shanshan, which had outstanding abilities in public relations and marketing, sparked a debate over ‘natural water and purified water’ in 2000 by targeting Wahaha bottled water. Nongfushanquan bottled water was advertised as ‘natural water drawn from nature’, but the water produced by other companies was merely purified tap water and did not contain any beneficial ingredients. The phrase “We do not produce water, we are merely carriers of Mother Nature” that was put up at the time is still talked about today. At the time, Nungfu Sanquan defeated Wahaha and took hegemony in the bottled water industry with just this advertising slogan.
However, when Zong Qinghou died, a tectonic shift occurred. There is a ‘memory boom’ for Zong Qinghou and the Wahaha company on the Internet and social media, centered on the ’80s generation’ (those born after 1980) who grew up drinking the children’s nutritional beverage that Wahaha first created after its founding. This soon becomes a ‘admiration boom’. Unconfirmed stories, such as the fact that Zong Qinghou never fired ‘old’ employees over 45 years old during his lifetime, served as a ‘force of positivity’ that gave him strength to live.
At some point, the wave of condolences filled with respect for this veteran private entrepreneur turned into a witch hunt against Nung Fu Sanquan and its founder Zhong Shanshan. A ‘conspiracy theory’ spread around the Internet that Zhong Shanshan had betrayed Wahaha and its founder Zhong Qinghou, who had trusted him, by stabbing them in the back by stealing products from his time as a Wahaha agent and selling them at high prices in other regions. In addition, the logic that Nungfu Sanquan is a ‘pro-Japanese company’ has also spread around the Internet, such as that the design of Nungfu Sanquan’s bottled water imitates the Japanese flag, and that the design of several food and beverage products produced by Nungfu Sanquan are also modeled after Japan’s Yasukuni Shrine or Qingshui Temple in Kyoto. Various versions were made and enlarged reproductions were made.
On February 20, 2024, Mao Xinghuo, who speaks the truth, formally filed a complaint against novelist Mo Yan in the Beijing People’s Court. SNS screen capture
In addition, as it became known that Zhong Suzhou, Zhong Shanshan’s son and successor to the group, was of American nationality, public anger towards the ‘traitor company’ Nung Pushanquan spread into an uncontrollable fire. They campaigned that the bottled water they produced was the purest in the world, but in reality, they were angry that the corporate culture and the founding family were full of betrayal and conspiracy and had no regard for the interests of the country and people.
There is also a performance of pouring bottled water into the river at Nungfu Sanquan.
In the aftermath of this, Nungfushanquan’s stock price is plummeting to the greatest extent in the shortest amount of time since its founding. According to reports, since Zong Qinghou passed away on February 25, sales at Nungfu Shanquan’s official flagship store have continued to plummet, with the decline amounting to more than 90%. Convenience stores and stores in some areas removed all Nongfu Shanquan products, and a ‘performance’ of pouring entire Nongfu Shanquan bottled water into a river became popular on an Internet short video platform. Thanks to this, Wahaha, a rival company, experienced a surge in sales, which led to a situation where supply could not keep up with demand.
As the anger and boycott against Nungfu Sanquan grew out of control, it was not only Nungfu Sanquan and its founder Zhong Shanshan who began to panic. Former Hu Xi-jin, a representative ‘patriotic warrior’ who has been agitating public opinion by selling clicks on the Internet under the guise of ‘patriotism and the nation’ <환구시보> Even the editor-in-chief went so far as to call for ‘inclusion and tolerance’ and appeal for rational patriotism. The economic situation was already at its worst, and there were concerns that patriotic debates and boycotts would further worsen the economy and public sentiment. Furthermore, this is because the ‘Cultural Revolution’-style madness and irrational stigmatization that has been floating around Chinese society in recent years is becoming more serious, especially on the Internet.
There is another incident that former editor-in-chief Hu Xijin criticized as irrational madness. On February 20th, Mao Xinghuo, who speaks the truth, filed a complaint against Nobel Prize winner Mo Yan. ‘Mao Xinghuo, who speaks the truth’ is one of the influential bloggers active on the Chinese Internet, but in our terms, he is closer to a ‘low-key conservative right-winger’. Since November 2023, he has been consistently posting posts on the social media Weibo accusing Mo Yan, winner of the 2012 Nobel Prize in Literature. Several literary works written by Mo Yan distort or insult numerous Chinese heroes and distort Chinese history. For this reason, it is argued that Mo Yan’s problem should never be discussed as a matter of literature or art, but should be viewed as a violation of the Hero Martyrs Protection Act and an anti-national historical act. Finally, on February 20, 2024, a complaint was formally submitted to the Beijing People’s Court. He posted the full complaint on Weibo and defined his complaint as a ‘patriotic public interest lawsuit’ for the country and people. As soon as the fact that the complaint was filed became known, numerous patriots with ‘the same position’ flocked to his Weibo, clicked ‘like’ and complained that Mo Yan should be punished ‘in the name of patriotism’. He even filed a complaint against Hu Xijin, who criticized him.
The moment patriotism takes the bait of influencers
In recent years, a new type of patriotism reminiscent of the Chinese version of McCarthyism has been blowing in China, such as the Mo Yan Su and Nung Fu Shanquan incidents. In particular, the political rigidity that has accelerated since Xi Jinping’s third term system and the ‘silent’ atmosphere of fear that has spread throughout society, where ‘different opinions cannot be expressed’, are further encouraging such sentiments. Isolated and depressed people mired in the swamp of economic recession and unemployment gather on the Internet and social media to form an invisible ‘crowd’, and they are defenseless against the instigation of ‘influencers’ who expand and reproduce various rumors and fake news. exposed. The moment the crowd’s uncontrolled anger and irrational patriotic madness bites any ‘bait’ thrown by influencers, the crowd instantly turns into an ‘Internet rioter’.
“Drinking Wahaha is patriotism, and drinking Nungfu Sanquan is a treason.” ” This is a ‘patriotic slogan’ that is currently circulating on the Chinese Internet.
Beijing (China) = Freelance reporter Park Hyun-sook
*This is a series in which the author, who lives in Beijing, reads China’s hidden or unrevealed memories and thoughts.
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