Last week’s CDT Chinese 404 Archives podcast highlighted the recent revival of the Silent Observer WeChat account. The account, which for several years has provided a platform for philosophically-inclined reflections on Chinese society and current affairs, is now on its fourth incarnation: from 默存格物 Mòcún géwù, or “Silent Observer”; to 新默存 Xīn mòcún, or “New Silence”; to 新新默存 Xīn xīn mòcún, or “New New Silence”; and now on to 新新新默存 Xīn xīn xīn mòcún, or “New New New Silence.” Its editor, writer and former journalism professor Song Shinan, announced the latest regeneration in September in a post laden with references to Hegel, Kierkegaard, and Arendt:
Silent Observer, New Silence, and New New Silence are all gone.
Today, we create New New New Silence, because we still can; because there is freedom, beauty, and love in our hearts, and Silent Observer is an island of that freedom, beauty, and love.
We build these islands because we live in a highly fragmented society. Every day, we face a flood of information, but we have no idea what’s really going on in our society, or in the minds of others. We know the thoughts of a few in our own immediate circles, and see glimmers of a few others’ through social media, but we don’t know what the people at the top are thinking, nor those at the bottom, nor those in between. We don’t know the thoughts of those who died in silence, nor those who live on in silence. We cannot freely communicate, and the anguish of that does not just affect us individually. Freedom, beauty, and love will shrivel in an age of stifled communication, unless people have a song in their hearts that they can clap and sing along to, no matter how constricted the space, or whether anyone else can hear.
[…] There are too many obstacles on the way to freedom, but I think the biggest is nihilism.
[…] To rise above nihilism, we must build islands for ourselves. Perhaps Silent Observer can be one such island—an island of freedom, beauty, and love. [Chinese]
Silent Observer was the original publisher for Jiang Xue‘s famous account of “Ten Days in Chang’an” under Xi’an’s COVID-19 lockdown in January, 2022. Ian Johnson explained the account’s name, tone, and the circumstances of its first reincarnation in his 2023 book, “Sparks: China’s Underground Historians“:
Jiang Xue had posted her piece on the WeChat public account called mocun gewu, or “Silent Observer.” The name itself is a small expression of dissent. Mocun can be translated as “silent” but it is best known as meaning the soul leaving an immobile body and wandering to other lands. It stems from the Taoist classic Liezi, where a king sits at a banquet. A magician takes him to other realms. After what seems like ages have passed, the king returns to the banquet, wakes up, and asks his retainers what has happened. They say he has simply sat there silently (mocun) for a few moments. And so the term has been glossed to mean sitting silently while one’s spirit travels far—a metaphor for Chinese society.
Immediately after Jiang Xue’s article was posted, the “Silent Observer” account was closed for violating internet regulations. Shortly after, the account was relaunched as “New Silence” and resumed with an article by the well-known writer Zhang Shiping, who goes by the pen name Ye Fu. He has written numerous essays and short stories about the brutal early years of Communist rule in western Hunan province and now lives in exile in the Thai city of Chiangmai. His essay was a meditation on the jianghu—the honorable bandits and rogues of the backwoods who had become a symbol for Chinese people with a conscience.
[…] “In today’s mainland China, what the imperial court wants is that all corners of the land revere its orthodoxy, and for that it must crush civil society. The tangible jianghu has long ceased to exist, but in the hearts of the people the jianghu continues unbroken.” [Source]
(“Mocun” was also a courtesy name of legendary Chinese literatus Qian Zhongshu, chosen by his father as an antidote to Qian’s talkative nature.)
New Silence was later banned in apparent response to an essay by Song posted in December 2022, which praised Volodymyr Zelenskyy, Iranian actor Taraneh Alidoosti, and China’s own White Paper protesters for “Fighting for History.” Announcing New New Silence’s launch in February, 2023, Song wrote: “What would you do if years of painstaking effort were wiped out in an instant? Cry and wail and curse your fate? Sink into dejection and give up at that first setback? No. The late Ming Dynasty historian Tan Qian had an extremely inspiring answer: count to four, and start again.”
Another glimpse of the account’s content can be seen in a reflection on the highly contested spirit of the May Fourth Movement that was posted by “New New Silence”—and subsequently censored—in 2023:
As I see it, the most important inheritances of the May Fourth Movement were the active participation of the masses in politics, resistance against the powers that be, yearning for new discoveries, and the pursuit of equality and freedom for individuals. This is the May Fourth Spirit that is truly worth cherishing. It is a spirit we sorely need right now. [Source]
Silent Observer’s latest revival confirms its informal membership of Chinese social media’s “Reincarnation Party”—though its four incarnations to date pale in comparison to the dozens or hundreds achieved by some others. “Reincarnation Party” was one of 104 terms explained in our China Digital Times Lexicon: 20th Anniversary Edition ebook, from which the following entry is taken:
Reincarnation Party (转世党 zhuǎnshì dǎng)
Collective name for those posting under new social media accounts after their prior accounts have been banned by platform censors.
Cartoonist Kuang Biao reincarnated on Weibo dozens of times. (Weibo)
The name comes from the Buddhist concept of reincarnation. Users who post about sensitive topics may have their social media accounts suspended or deleted by the company running the platform, often without any explanation. In such cases, a user can then “reincarnate” on the same platform by creating a new account, often named after the old one but with labels to designate that it is a “reincarnated” account, sometimes by including numbers or the word “reincarnation,” to make it easier for their previous followers to find. The term first applied to Weibo and has since spread to other social media platforms.
Political cartoonist Kuang Biao reincarnated dozens of times on Weibo, and for several years included his reincarnation count in each successive username: as of May 2015, for example, his incarnation was “Uncle Biao Fountain Pen Drawings 47” (@飚叔钢 笔画47 @Biaoshugangbihua47). One Weibo user named “Repair” reportedly reincarnated a record-holding 418 times. In 2011, after DeutscheWelle’s official Weibo account was deleted, the media outlet said it was “forced to re-incarnate again under the tyranny of Sina [Weibo].” In 2013, Taiwanese politician Hung Chih-kune attempted to sue Weibo for repeatedly deleting his account and forcing him to reincarnate.
As online reincarnation became widespread, it became an increasingly visible form of resistance against internet censorship. Users whose tenacity in the face of repeated bans leads them to engage in the practice became part of the “Reincarnation Party.” Regulators subsequently began to tighten rules about who can create new social media accounts. In 2015, the Cyberspace Administration of China (CAC) announced new rules that required users of blogs, microblogs, instant-messaging services, online discussion forums, news comment sections, and related services to register with their real names. In 2021, CAC regulators ordered social media websites to step up oversight of “blacklisted accounts” in order to prevent “reincarnation.” These measures have made it harder for users to successfully “reincarnate” and led to a decrease in the phenomenon.
One account that succumbed to this trend was 越秀山边 (Yuexiu Shanbian), a WeChat public account focused on events in and around Guangzhou, known for its emphasis on people’s livelihood issues, independent thought, and free speech. After being repeatedly banned and reincarnated, it announced on May 30, 2023: “I regret to tell you that ‘Yuexiu Shanbian’ will no longer be reincarnated; the backup account ‘Yuexiu Shanxia’ that was activated on January 4 this year will also stop updating indefinitely.”
China’s government, although formally atheist, also claims authority over spiritual reincarnation under the “Measures on the Management of the Reincarnation of Living Buddhas” issued by the State Administration for Religious Affairs in 2007. These regulations detail the bureaucratic requirements for permitting, locating, verifying, and approving reincarnations of Buddhist religious leaders.
