Life is precious, but love is more valuable
— Chinese saying Dramatic statements of love and affection, often combined with images of anonymous young couples hugging and kissing (Fig. 3.7), dominate the Qzone profiles of Anshan Town residents just as frequently as baby photos. While these postings differ from baby images in a number of ways – a different theme, shared memes rather than original images,
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and originating mainly from the town’s teenagers rather than parents – they nonetheless serve a similar function of representing the impor-tance of family- oriented values into moral frameworks. These postings show how Qzone becomes a space where one can fantasise upon and share with one’s friends everything that points to the infinite happiness that may be gained through unbridled affection and commitment – often implying marriage – between partners. Qzone thereby constitutes one of the most important places for Anshan Town society to idealise love and life- long devotion.
Romantic memes: How teenagers talk about love online
The fact that much of the content posted regarding love and devotion is in the form of forwarded memes rather than original content is signifi-cant, as it implies that, on this topic, many prefer to communicate online in words other than their own. This suggests that people find it easier to Fig. 3.7 Meme of couple kissing shared on Qzone. Caption reads:
‘I already have you in my heart. Even if there was someone better, I wouldn’t want them.’
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recycle another’s words regarding love rather than write about it at great length themselves. This may reflect issues of possession. While babies (as already demonstrated) are persons that parents are keen to display online as a mark of their own achievement, being in love is something young people often aspire to but may not have achieved, so cannot illus-trate it themselves.
Even in cases where young people do have romantic partners, issues of preserving an appearance of decency may be at play. Sharing memes merely implies identifying with something, whereas writing original romantic content suggests one has direct experience. Young people, even into their twenties, were often keen to hide relationships from their parents and other friends. Chapter 4 will discuss in more detail how parents and schools believe that students will be distracted from their studies if they become involved in romantic relationships. Set against this culture of non- permissiveness, romantic memes stood out as being strongly declarative in nature, proudly showing young couples embracing, holding hands or kissing (Figs 3.8, 3.9 and 3.10).
However, while these memes are in one sense transgressive (par-ticularly in terms of imagery), the text that accompanies them empha-sises a conformist ideal of monogamous devotion and commitment. All of the memes in Figs 3.7– 3.10 feature this common trope of dramatic declarations of love, and images of unspecified couples embracing or
Fig. 3.8 Meme of couple kissing shared on Qzone. Caption reads: ‘When can I finally proudly tell other people, I have a partner that I love so much?’
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Fig. 3.9 Meme of couple holding hands in front of marriage registra-tion office. Capregistra-tion reads: ‘In five years’ time, will you accompany me to this place, and spend 9 RMB?’ [9 RMB ($1.45) is the cost of a legal marriage registration]
Fig. 3.10 Meme of couple embracing on basketball court. Caption reads: ‘One’s own wife. Who you can have a hilarious time with, get so close to and won’t lose face. This is called love.’
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holding hands. In contrast to literature which has suggested that ‘tra-ditional’ Chinese society is undergoing an ‘opening up’ towards novel Western forms of relationships and sexuality,11 online memes shared by Anshan Town youth generally remain focused on promoting conven-tional views of relationships. Very occasionally these same declarations of love may tiptoe on the border of respectability, such as in Fig. 3.11, which combines saccharine statements of devotion with altogether more tactile imagery (see hand placement).
All of these posts appear to have tens of thousands of likes. The large numbers of likes and shares that such posts attract may be due to the romantic content, but may also be because the postings specifically request that users like and share them (qiuzan and qiuzhuan respec-tively). Although the photos look self- made, rather than professionally taken, it is often unclear whether these are ‘real’ couples, or whether such imagery is created to capitalise on the appetite for this genre of
Fig. 3.11 Meme of couple embracing. Caption reads: ‘The greatest expression of love. Requesting likes and requesting blessings [of this post]. In the days ahead, whether they are good or bad, we can struggle together, we can create our future. You say you can give me a blessed and joyous future, do you know, as the people in love say, I really feel blessed. My future has you! This is definite, Wenguo, we want to be blessed, so blessed that it will make all the people of the world jealous.
My future has you, Xu Ziqing.’
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postings and in a desire to achieve internet fame. Unusually, the text that accompanies the image in Fig. 3.12 names its two subjects, although again there is no reason to assume these are necessarily the people in question.
For younger unmarried persons in the town a further strong sub- theme of romantic Qzone postings emphasises the importance of waiting patiently in the cause of true devotion (Figs 3.12– 3.16). This is exemplified by the following status update shared by a 17- year- old high- school student.
There is a kind of love called ‘letting go’ . . . I am the one that loves you . . . I’ll wait for you.
Perhaps unsurprisingly, young, unmarried people were the main group who posted this type of meme. It appears to be a tacit way to advertise the romantic availability and moral integrity of the meme sharer while also justifying their singledom. Taken as a whole, this genre of posting romantic memes among young people draws strongly on rhetoric sur-rounding monogamous devotion. Furthermore, the fact that many of these posts use shared memes suggests they correspond to more broadly held values.
Fig. 3.12 Romantic meme shared on Qzone. Caption reads ‘Single girls please remember, place quality over quantity, waiting for a long time is for a more beautiful chance encounter, it’s after going through the big-gest test in life, that God (Shangdi) will give you the most precious gift.
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Posting about one’s own love: legitimised experience of newly married couples
A small number of relatively newly married Qzone users in Anshan Town felt at greater liberty to create their own original postings highlighting their ongoing, committed (and legitimised through the act of marriage) relationship, which they shared on their social media profiles. These postings tended to portray the martial relationship in a particularly Fig. 3.13 Meme of series of flowers. Caption reads: ‘But the thing we are lacking is not the person who is good enough, right enough, or dependable enough, but in the end of the end, every one will change and end up needing this kind of person. If you give him a little more time, he will give you a little more time, it’s better. Come, let us fall in love without worrying about the time.’
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harmonious light. For example, the following post was made by Song Xuebai, a young married mother who worked in the town’s hotel (men-tioned previously), who posted the following message on her Qzone pro-file during her pregnancy:
To see my husband come home every day and gently pat and caress my stomach, it is really so sweet! [I’m] so blessed (xingfu)! Really I love him more and more each day!
At times individuals also attempt to pepper these displays of deep devo-tion with elements of humour, perhaps indicating a degree of reflexivity about these postings. For example, Han Peng is a 26- year- old married Fig. 3.14 Meme of cartoon couple embracing. Closing sentence of accompanying text reads: ‘ . . . I know you will come, so I will wait.’
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male hairdresser who runs a hair salon in the town with his wife. They live and work together each day in the salon with their young son, and always present themselves to customers as a very close pair. Among Han Peng’s public postings was a message that was directed to his wife:
I don’t dare to love you, because there is no medical insurance for lovesickness
A final, and perhaps most impressive, example of this genre of post-ing comes from Zhang Chaoyue, an unemployed 23- year- old married male who lives in his parents’ house in the town along with his wife.
His father works as a salesman for one of the town’s factories. Although Zhang Chaoyue graduated from Anshan Town’s middle school, he never completed his high school education in Bai Town, as he was unable to bear sharing a dormitory with his classmates. One day he suddenly appeared at his parents’ home at Anshan Town refusing to return to high school. Zhang Chaoyue worked as a manual labourer for a spell in Bai Town, but disliked the work. During this time he met his wife, also from Anshan Town. In the end he reduced his working hours to just mornings. Eventually he decided to leave his job, and returned to Anshan Town to live with his parents. He worked in one of the town’s Fig. 3.15 Romantic meme shared on Qzone. Text above photo reads:
‘Time will tell you who really loves you, and who is just playing.’
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factories for a short period. However, once again, he could not tolerate the manual labour, so he resigned his position and now spends much of his time on his computer at home, playing games, visiting websites and using social media.
For Zhang Chaoyue, Qzone has become an important way of declar-ing his devotion to his wife. His profile picture features a wedddeclar-ing photo of him and his partner. Many of his status updates on social media take the form of messages of unending devotion to his partner.
I love you to death.
My wife, I will love you for all of my life.
Yes, yes, love for a lifetime.
These examples, all of which emerge from newly married individu-als, are of particular note as they demonstrate the extent of the post-er’s efforts to portray their relationships as the living embodiment of the types of family connections that the memes posted by unmarried Fig. 3.16 Romantic cartoon meme. Caption reads: ‘Wife, if we are to walk apart, reply to me, you will wait in the original place for me to come back. // Mmm. Husband, I will wait for you to come back.
Definitely!’
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persons allude to. In this case relationships are typically portrayed in a way that emphasises intra- family harmony.
In summary, young unmarried individuals show a propensity to share memes about marriage, love and devotion. Newly married people may also make original status updates regarding their marriage. Older married couples in their thirties and above tend to share far less of these types of romantic postings and memes because, as will be explained in Chapter 4, patterns of social media use generally become more con-strained within relationships between married couples in the town.