• Hegar@kbin.social
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    1 year ago

    People are taking this as a dig on China, but it’s a tale of how fragile nationalists are the world over. This is a level of dumb on par with freedom fries.

    • tehcooles@programming.dev
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      1 year ago

      As far as I understand from the article, by Chinese law what they’re accusing him of is a crime, so technically this is much, much stupider.

      • kautau@lemmy.world
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        1 year ago

        Yes it’s a very stupid law. “No cooking fried rice on anniversary of death of son of great leader who cooked fried rice in Korean War during bombing run, literally exposing his own position”

          • sweetnumb@lemmy.world
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            1 year ago

            If you’re seriously questioning this, then the actual terrible laws and acts going on in China would BLOW your mind in… five.

            • Alivrah@lemmy.world
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              1 year ago

              I’m a bit informed about the current situation actually. It’s just that the reason behind this law in particular is just… Comical…

              • 0xD@infosec.pub
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                1 year ago

                Yeah, authoritarianism and nationalism are very fragile when looking behind their mask.

              • Tyfud@lemmy.one
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                1 year ago

                Yeah, they imprisoned a Chinese UFC fighter who said he could beat any traditional Chinese martial artist because their kung fu doesn’t work in the real world.

                They agreed to set up the match and when he, predictably, beat the living shit out of the spiritual mumbo jumbo guy, over and over again, they claimed he intentionally dishonored China and tried to lock him up.

          • tehcooles@programming.dev
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            1 year ago

            Same regime that outlawed posting pictures of Winnie the Pooh because he was being compared to their figurehead. With that context, the surprise should be…lessened.

  • dji386@infosec.pub
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    1 year ago

    At first I thought this was going to be a piece about Uncle Roger, but reality is funnier than anything he could ever put out.

    • MisterMcBolt@lemmy.world
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      1 year ago

      It’s fascinating how authoritarians demand respect, but throw fits over such petty symbols. “Our DIVINELY chosen, absolutely perfect leader’s own son was killed while DEFINITELY NOT cooking with eggs. How dare ANY true citizen take pride in making such a VULGAR dish?! Egg fried rice shakes the very foundations of our flawless, unshakable regime!”

    • logicbomb@lemmy.world
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      1 year ago

      The dumbest thing about that to me is that if the story about Mao is taboo, then people are not supposed to be talking about it.

      If it’s also something as mundane as egg fried rice, then it becomes possible that this chef simply forgot the taboo story because nobody talks about it.

      • eric@lemmy.world
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        1 year ago

        Also, by making something as inherently inocuous as egg fried rice taboo, they are only drawing attention to the rumor. And the fact that the CCP are so bothered by it would make any reasonable person conclude that there must be some truth to the rumor.

        • sweetnumb@lemmy.world
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          1 year ago

          Well the CCP isn’t exactly known for being smart. Or good at anything at all other than oppression.

          • NOT_RICK@lemmy.world
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            1 year ago

            It’s the instance run by the main Lemmy devs that happen to also be tankies. Read the modlog sometime, I’ve had some (imo) benign things removed from communities on there

              • NOT_RICK@lemmy.world
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                1 year ago

                Leftists that praise and defend authoritarian communism and oddly enough oftentimes anything right wing too if it happens to be aligned against the west like Russia.

  • CALIGVLA@lemmy.dbzer0.com
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    1 year ago

    Mao Anying, a Chinese military officer, was killed by US bombers on 25 November 1950 during the Korean war. A persistent but frequently denied rumour says he was trying to cook egg fried rice instead of taking shelter, and the smoke from the fire exposed his position to enemy forces.

    I mean… There’s stupid and then there’s stupid.

    • Buddahriffic@lemmy.world
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      1 year ago

      Was bombing in the 50s something where they’d say, “oh look, there’s some smoke from a fire, let’s hit that”? Or was it more like, “ok, this looks like the target area coming up, let’s drop our bombs and hope they hit something useful and explode properly, or at least explode when an enemy finds them during this war”?

      I mean, I know WWII bombing was like the latter and at some point they drastically improved precision and communication between ground teams and bomber teams, but had they done so yet by the Korean war?

      • maynarkh@feddit.nl
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        1 year ago

        Even in WWII bombers would visually identify target areas. A valley of suspected enemy positions that is the target area is much less easily confused for the valley next to it if there is a dumbass running a fire.

        See also why London’s lights were turned off in WWII.

      • Cipher22@lemmy.world
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        1 year ago

        Overwhelmingly type A. However, at least according to my faulty memory of the literature I’ve read, they were doing some of the initial testing with guided munitions. Mostly focused on bridges, though, which is an odd place for fried rice. Anything else seems like dumb (bad) luck.

  • Sylver@lemmy.world
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    1 year ago

    Thanks China, without your censorship I wouldn’t have learned this absolutely humiliating story of your past. You are so weak because your pilots cook rice in eggs! Now the secret is out!

  • sweetnumb@lemmy.world
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    1 year ago

    What’s sad is that the same level of stupidity could be said about America with anything that someone is immature enough to get offended over. At least we don’t disappear people all day every day constantly. If we keep getting offended by stupid shit then it becomes increasingly more possible though.

    • AnarchoSnowPlow@midwest.social
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      1 year ago

      Not constantly… There were those badgeless, patch less guys throwing people into minivans a few of summers ago. Also people straight up getting murdered in the streets (or their own fucking beds) by “public safety” officers.

      Not to defend China cause they have their own brand of fucking awful, just pointing out that there’s a whole rainbow of ways to be terrible and these are but a few.

      • sweetnumb@lemmy.world
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        1 year ago

        The problem with talking about China is how hard it is for any news to get out of that country that they don’t want you to see. I dated for a long time and nearly married someone from the Chinese mainland, and the stories are so sickening of how easy it is to get ‘disappeared’ I mostly blocked them from my memory. Of course Winnie the Pooh (Xi Xinping) has made things considerably worse and worse so I try not to even think about what they pull now, particularly with their infinite number of cameras and AI face recognition to make it impossible for you to be free in any way.

        People have tried to protest several times there, but of course the CCP is quick to act against and disappear anyone with that kind of behavior. So a few months ago they had a more covert protest (though obviously it’s going to get found out about) where they simply held up blank pieces of paper as a sign of protest, since they knew they weren’t allowed to say anything bad about the CCP without serious repercussions. Good luck trying to find anyone who did that, as the government went after them and also put some other ridiculous measure in place that I can’t recall off the top of my head.

        If you have legit friends in China though, then you can get the skinny on what really goes on over there. Assuming they’re not too scared to even tell you in code since everything is constantly being monitored. They’re disturbingly close to a richer North Korea at this point unfortunately. Definitely don’t believe anyone saying that censorship and detainment isn’t constantly happening though. Criticize the CCP while in China? Good luck ever escaping, and if you have any close friends/family they will absolutely be used as hostages. The CCP will do absolutely everything they can to look good in the public light though, so their extreme tight control over information prevents us from hearing about so many things, and any accident caused by their shoddy construction, if it does get reported, will be said to have a casualty count of 18, when in reality 300+ casualties would be the very minimum possible death toll by the most optimistic possible estimates (like awhile back when an underwater tunnel flooded and you could physically see and count at least five times as many dead bodies from stealth-footage taken than the reported death toll actually was).

    • Siegfried@lemmy.world
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      1 year ago

      In communist China the president dissappear you, in capitalist America the pentagon dissappear the president*

      *just kidding… I hope

      • vulgarcynic@sh.itjust.works
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        1 year ago

        I ask purely out of laziness for something I’m sure I could find in a basic search far shorter than this post, but, what exactly is a tankie? I see it used here as a (I assume) derogatory term but the definition is never obvious based on context clues… I assume something, something pro-CCP / Tianemen massacre?

        • body_by_make@lemmy.dbzer0.com
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          Tankie is or isn’t derogatory depending on who’s saying it and what context. They call themselves tankies, but when I use it it’s always a slur.

          Tankies are authoritarian facists who have a thin veil of liberalism (they’ll consider this a slur, and that’s fine) wrapped around them. They genuinely believe Stalin, Putin, and China can do no wrong. They deny the concentration camps in China and think Ukraine are the bad guys.

          They claim to be communist, but are one hundred percent authoritarian in their beliefs.

        • DAMunzy@lemmy.dbzer0.com
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          1 year ago

          Wikipedia has a good definition:

          Tankie is a pejorative label generally applied to communists who express support for one-party communist regimes that are associated with Marxism–Leninism, whether contemporary or historical.

          History:

          The term “tankie” was originally used by dissident Marxist–Leninists to describe members of the Communist Party of Great Britain (CPGB) who followed the party line of the Communist Party of the Soviet Union (CPSU). Specifically, it was used to distinguish party members who spoke out in defense of the Soviet use of tanks to crush the Hungarian Revolution of 1956 and the 1968 Prague Spring uprising, or who more broadly adhered to pro-Soviet positions.

  • Buffaloaf@lemmy.world
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    1 year ago

    Are we not going to talk about how the guy’s name is Wang Gang? I mean, that’s fine, I just wanted to make sure.

    “China reacts to Wang Gang’s eggs” could be an alternative title though.

  • MonkderZweite@feddit.ch
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    1 year ago

    “As an ordinary person who gets a lot of money by posting some cooking videos, he should at least not be disrespectful to this country and the people who sacrificed for this country.”

    So, uh, someone unordinary, who doesn’t get a lot of money by posting some cooking videos, can?

    • Socsa@sh.itjust.works
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      1 year ago

      The subtext here is that YouTube is banned in China, so someone like Wang Gong using it very likely means it is a ministry of information cultural export program of some kind to begin with.

  • AutoTL;DR@lemmings.worldB
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    1 year ago

    This is the best summary I could come up with:


    A Chinese celebrity chef has apologised after he was accused of insulting the memory of Mao Zedong’s son by posting a video about how to cook egg fried rice.

    “As a chef, I will never make fried rice again,” Wang said in his apology on Monday after taking down the video.

    Mao Anying, a Chinese military officer, was killed by US bombers on 25 November 1950 during the Korean war.

    A persistent but frequently denied rumour says he was trying to cook egg fried rice instead of taking shelter, and the smoke from the fire exposed his position to enemy forces.

    The Chinese Academy of History has said the claim about Mao Anying is a “most vicious rumour”, but the story remains popular.

    The rumour – and references to egg fried rice – are now a taboo topic in China’s highly sensitive and controlled political environment.


    The original article contains 346 words, the summary contains 146 words. Saved 58%. I’m a bot and I’m open source!

  • Cipher22@lemmy.world
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    1 year ago

    How have the Chinese not played the reverse card and intentionally celebrated cooking fried rice as a sign of bravery in the face of an adversary here?

    • jmcs@discuss.tchncs.de
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      1 year ago

      Getting your unit killed out of stubbornness crosses the line from bravery to just being stupid.

    • MacN'Cheezus@lemmy.today
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      Something tells me it would like go over about as well as dressing up as a British colonial officer to celebrate Independence Day.

      • Cipher22@lemmy.world
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        1 year ago

        But people do, just a couple of bandages and your set. Also, so many jokes about the red coats are coming.

        • MacN'Cheezus@lemmy.today
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          Yes, I’m sure you’ll find some people who might dress up for a performance, but I don’t think this is very common. At least I’ve never seen it.

          You realize that while a single counterexample DOES invalidate a logical argument, a single outlier does not invalidate a statistical trend, right?