Mourning Li Wenliang, the Whistleblower of COVID-19, on the Chinese Internet

After Dr. Li Wenliang, the Wuhan ophthalmologist known as the whistleblower of COVID-19, died in February 2020 from COVID-19, Chinese social media was overwhelmed with tribute posts to the late doctor. Before his death, Li had been reprimanded by Wuhan police for “making false comments” and "spreading rumors" after a message he sent about the outbreak in a WeChat group was shared publicly. 

Interestingly, many Chinese social media users eulogized Li in online biographies written in the style of “arrayed biographies,” a narrative form featured in one of the most famous historical texts in China: Sima Qian’s Shiji (also known as Records of the Grand Historian). The biographies in the Shiji, written in the late second century BCE, record the life stories of important figures in Chinese history by using examples of the person’s moral character. 

In a new paper published in China Information, Annenberg School for Communication Professor Guobin Yang analyzed 30 of these Shiji-style biographies of Li to explore how Chinese internet users use this narrative style to share stories online under conditions of censorship. Yang argues that the Shiji-style biographies of Li are speech acts that “gave netizens the narrative structures and affordances to express sentiments which would otherwise have been hard to convey or convey in such powerful ways.” 

Borrowing the Voice of History

Like Aesop's Fables in the West, the format of Shiji biographies is instantly recognizable to Chinese audiences, says Yang, Grace Lee Boggs Professor of Communication and Sociology.

“Shiji is a foundational text in early Chinese historical writing. These biographies of famous historical figures, such as generals, ministers, and scholars, are often excerpted in school textbooks and are well known and revered by the educated public,” says Yang, who also directs the Center on Digital Culture and Society.

Yang suggests borrowing language from an ancient genre helps create a special aesthetic and rhetorical appeal by stretching boundaries. To match the diction, grammar, sentence structure, and compositional structure of the Shiji biographies, social media users wrote their Li tributes in classical Chinese rather than simple Mandarin and also employed poetic and literary language. 

Writing this way has several benefits for social media users hoping to eulogize a whistleblower who was chastened by the government, Yang says. “Using classical Chinese not only adds literary elegance and aesthetic appeal, gaining authors recognition for their literary skills, but also helps social media users evade censorship algorithms,” he says. 

Turning a Life into Legend

The basic unit of narrative in classical Chinese historical writing is the anecdote, Yang explains.
The authors of Dr. Li’s biographies fill their accounts with anecdotes from his life, blending facts with fiction to dramatize his story and accentuate its moral significance.

One biography reads:

• “Some people would ask him with curiosity, ‘It’s said that you once bitterly resented the SARS epidemic, and whenever you thought of it, you would gnash your teeth and beat your breast. Now that you specialize in eye diseases, is it not a betrayal of your original intention?’ Li Wenliang smiled and replied, ‘There are two kinds of blindness. One is an eye disease, which can be treated with medicine. The other is the blindness of the heart, which cannot be cured, no matter how hard you try. There are many in the world who are blind to truth, unable or unwilling to speak the facts. This is the blindness that cannot be cured.’”

This anecdote alludes to an episode in the final days of Li’s life, Yang explains. Li gave an interview in which he stated that he would not sue the police for wrongly accusing him of spreading rumors: “It is more important that people now know the truth … A healthy society should not have only one voice,” he said. However, there is no evidence he actually said anything about “two kinds of blindness” in the interview, Yang says.

“The Grand Historian Comments”

Almost all the 130 chapters in the Shiji conclude with a section called “The Grand Historian comments,” a narrative device that summarizes the story and offers a concluding judgment. “Authors of Li’s biographies make use of this feature to comment on the integrity of his character and the sacrifices he made for the public good,” Yang says, noting that many biographies emphasize Li’s reputation as a “truth teller” and his censure by the government.

One biography ends:

• “The Grand Historian comments: Wenliang, though skilled in the art of medicine, was but an ordinary man. Why then do people of the world remember him? For three reasons: first, he revealed the shroud of an impending plague; second, he endured the humiliation of official reprimand; and third, he died young, to our deep sorrow. Such are the ways of the world. What to do? What to do!”

Telling Stories Against All Odds

“The Shiji biography form gave netizens the narrative structures and affordances to express sentiments which would otherwise have been hard to convey or convey in such powerful ways,” Yang says. “They show that despite tightening political control, Chinese netizens can still tell their stories in creative and imaginative ways. Poetic language helps to deter censorship, and fictionalized anecdotes provide moral substance as seen in Chinese historical storytelling for centuries.”