Talk:Li Haoshi controversy

More reference sources are on the way
Please be rest assured that more references will be added shortly.

Please bear with me about the difficulties of handling and archiving Chinese citation sources and kindly give me a little more time.

Thank you. Boreas Sawada 05:49, 18 May 2023 (UTC)

Rename

 * 2023 Li Haoshi Insulting Remarks Controversy

&#32;Bookku   (talk) 04:12, 21 May 2023 (UTC)
 * Word insulting is subjective hence not needed
 * Word remark or joke (or some other word) is appropriate need to be seen by studying what Reliable sources are saying.
 * L and H in Li Haoshi need to be in capital letters but  First letters in other words need to be small letters


 * You’re right. The ‘insulting’ thing was what he was accused of, and indeed we shall not affirm that in the title.
 * And I would suggest that the word ‘controversy’ can now be changed to something like ‘incident’. For that, when I started to compose this entry, it was still a hyped-up controversy, and yet as the company was fined and a criminal probe was triggered (as well as further consequences that I would like to add later), it has now become an incident. Boreas Sawada  03:42, 22 May 2023 (UTC)
 * @Boreas Sawada How about title '2023 incident about Li Haoshi's anecdote' ? Or may may be you can suggest few more alternatives. &#32;Bookku   (talk) 13:54, 22 May 2023 (UTC)
 * I just moved the page to Li Haoshi controversy of 2023, which removed the ‘insulting’ word and shortened the title. But if you or anyone has better ideas, please feel free to move again. Boreas Sawada  01:52, 23 May 2023 (UTC)

RS description of the controversy
Other than Global times - 'inappropriate metaphor controversy' - rest of media seem to be employing term quip or joke. &#32;Bookku   (talk) 05:50, 21 May 2023 (UTC)

Global Times ref
Idk RSN allows Golabal Times as RS but to cover consequences for the artist that can be good source to cross check. &#32;Bookku   (talk) 04:53, 21 May 2023 (UTC)

Translation of the slogan
I doubt PLA slogan referred in this article may be getting translated literally. WP community might need to look for, discuss and confirm which would be more appropriate translation. &#32;Bookku   (talk) 05:26, 21 May 2023 (UTC)

On the first paragraph’s short description of the ‘joke’
@Bookku & @TrademarkedTarantula:

Many thanks for helping refine and copy-edit this entry.

However, I found it hard to give a brief description of the ‘joke’ given by Li. And that is because what Li said is one thing, and what is perceived by the Chinese authorities is completely another thing. The Chinese authorities did accuse Li of ‘insulting’ the PLA. And yet I would argue that any sensible person will not draw such a conclusion. Also, I doubt anyone would seriously reckon that he was making a mockery of the PLA, either. Therefore I would suggest that the first paragraph be further revised to reflect that it is disputable whether the comedian was intentionally making a mockery of the PLA or is it only that the Chinese authorities reckoned so.

To prove my point, I made a transcript and a verbatim translation of his speech as it was delivered on-site, with more contextual backgrounds both before and after he quoted Xi’s words. Please note that in the Chinese original, certain words were omitted due to the colloquial context (primarily conjunctions), which have now been reinserted (presumably) as light-coloured small text within brackets to enhance clarity. (ST for ‘source text’ and TT for ‘translation’.)

ST: （因为） 上海是一个国际化的大都市， （所以我） 做的一切事都要跟国际接轨. TT: Given that Shanghai is a metropolis of international reach, it is imperative for me to align all my endeavours with international expectations.

ST: （因此） 我去上海以后就收养了两条 流浪狗. TT: Therefore, after I moved to Shanghai, I adopted two stray dogs.

ST: 严格来讲都不是 流浪狗 ，我们是从家附近的一座山上捡回来的两条 野狗. TT: Strictly speaking, they are not even stray dogs. We actually brought back two feral dogs from a hill near our home.

ST: 我们都不算救助它们，因为它们在山上那个食物链的那个 （地位） 完全不需要我们的救助. TT: We were barely even considered to be rescuing them as they held a high position in the food chain on the hills and did not require our assistance at all.

ST: 我们只是相当于《变形计》可能是， （让它们） 体验一下城里的生活. TT: We were merely doing an episode of Bianxingji and providing them an opportunity to experience city life.

ST: 这两条狗它们确实在山上就是食物链的顶端. TT: These two dogs were indeed at the very top of the food chain on the hills.

ST: 我看到它的第一时间我感觉我不是在看两条狗， （而） 是《动物世界》的拍摄现场. TT: Upon seeing them for the first time, I felt like that I wasn’t looking at two dogs, but rather as if I was on the set of Animal World.

ST: 就两条狗追一个松鼠， （它们） 像炮弹一样发射了出去. TT: The two dogs were chasing after a squirrel, and they shot off like two shells.

ST: 那你平时看到一些狗，你会觉得很萌、心都被融化了，你会想到这些词. TT: So, when you see some dogs in your daily life, you’ll probably find them adorable—so cute as if your heart will melt. These are the words that will come to your mind.

ST: 我看到这两条狗的 （时候） ，内心只闪烁出了八个大字，就——作风优良，能打胜仗. TT: And yet when I saw these two dogs, only eight big characters were flickering in my mind: ‘have good styles, be capable of winning battles’.

ST: 非常优秀！ TT: Excellent!

ST: 我牵着这两条狗在上海的街头威风凛凛. TT: It gives me such a majestic feeling when I walk on the streets of Shanghai with these two dogs on my lead.

ST: 唯一的问题就是，它们的运动量太大了，我的身体素质有点跟不上. TT: The only problem is that their level of activities is way too high, and it’s quite struggling for my physical condition to keep up with them.

I can only speak for myself, but as a native Chinese speaker, born and lived in mainland China for 30 years, I cannot see any simile, metaphor, or allusion in it. He told a story about his dogs, and that’s it. Although I had gone through something like this (I was once too put into prison for seven months for using Xi’s nickname on Twitter), the bizarre absurdity of this event is well beyond my comprehension. Therefore, I do not reckon that he was intentionally making fun of the PLA, and I do reckon that we should refrain from affirming this farcical accusation (mocking the PLA) from the Chinese authorities in the introductory paragraph. Boreas Sawada 03:27, 22 May 2023 (UTC)


 * @Chu Tse-tien Thanks for valuable inputs. I am quite open to discuss points raised by you.
 * 1) Please help understand what primary source you are using for transcript and how do you confirm that is reliable enough?


 * One aspect is usually @ Wikipedia we go as per what reliable secondary sources are saying. International reliable  media sources which I came across seem to be considering that as a joke and mocking. At personal level I prefer to see is reliable secondary sources are not inventing any thing what is not there in primary source (though WP policies and users usually seem to ignore this aspect and rely on whatever majority reliable sources are saying). Even if we decide we do not invent what is not there in primary source for that at least reliability of primary source needs to be confirmed. Since this is first time I am handing this topic area please help understand what primary source you are using for transcript and how do you confirm that is reliable enough?


 * 2) Li Haoshi by profession is just a stand-up talk giver or stand-up comedian?


 * This is important question since if he is a comedian usually making people laugh through his talk show then it is more likely to be considered joke or a humorous account. (Again RS in international media seem to describe Haoshi as a comedian). If is not comedian but just talk show maker then describing that as just entertaining account is possible.
 * One important point of consideration. One difference between your own case and Li Haoshi is that you may not necessarily artist, in any situation where freedom of expression and speech gets restricted artists and even common people find innovative cryptic ways laugh at things attempting remaining withing legal boundaries simultaneously finding ways to say what they want to say. And this need not be every time deliberate over the decades literary culture itself molds in that way. Many comedians in Pakistan are quite cryptic making comedy within the given boundary same time testing the waters.


 * 3) In the change I had made   I did not use word mocking for the same reason not to invent what is not there in primary source. But then what other word we can use for 'employing'? may be 'utilizing' / 'using' or some thing else? do suggest. &#32;Bookku    (talk) 07:03, 22 May 2023 (UTC)
 * Thanks for your kind reply!
 * 1) Yes, I entirely understand your concerns in this, and that is one reason why I choose to put this piece of material here on the talk page rather than in the entry’s main text, also along with another apparent reason—copyright ;)
 * The source is the exact leaked recording, which is widespread all over the internet. I have enclosed one in the main reflist (currently Ref No 14 ), but it is actually quite widespread. Radio Free Asia, for instance, also uploaded this segment of the recording to their official YouTube channel, only that the first sentence (‘Given that Shanghai is a metropolis of international reach, it is imperative for me to align all my endeavours with international expectations.’) was cut out in their upload. This clip has been verified to be true by several mainland Chinese media, for example, The Paper.
 * Therefore, based on these sources, I myself made the above transcript and translated it for the purpose of giving more context to what he precisely said.
 * 3) I have no objection to your choice of words, and yet it currently goes with mocking, which in my opinion, is an affirmation of the accusations made by the Chinese authorities. I would suggest rephrasing the sentence something like ‘Li used a Chinese military slogan to commend his dogs, which resulted in accusations of him insulting the People’s Liberation Army (PLA) by both the Chinese authorities and some individuals.’
 * 2) Li is a professional stand-up comedian, and yes, his main job is to make people laugh. And yet I still do not reckon he was ‘testing the waters’ in this very case. In my opinion, he was just telling an interesting anecdote about his dogs. No-one would have thought that those words of Xi could not be used to describe average dogs. (Why do I use ‘average dogs’? Because the authorities themselves have indeed used these words on military dogs.)

Boreas Sawada 08:56, 22 May 2023 (UTC)

Further discussion on the introductory lines
To @TrademarkedTarantula:

The facts in this sentence are entirely incorrect. Li and his firm were not penalised by the PLA. He was accused of insulting the PLA, and the Beijing Municipal Bureau of Culture and Tourism fined his contracting firm. Li is currently okay (for the time being); he has just lost his job and is being investigated in a criminal probe led by the Chaoyang Branch of the Beijing Municipal Public Security Bureau. The PLA has nothing to do with these things, only one of their official social media accounts released some strong condemnations, but they’re not directly involved.

And I’m not an English expert, but is this sentence grammatically correct?

And also, Li Haoshi is a Chinese name, which means Li is his surname while Haoshi is the given name. Boreas Sawada 09:18, 22 May 2023 (UTC)


 * @Boreas Sawada I updated the lead taking into account the discussions up til now. Do suggest how do you find those changes? any further suggessions? &#32;Bookku   (talk) 13:56, 22 May 2023 (UTC)
 * Please allow me some time to address the ‘citation needed’ issue in paragraph 2 of the ‘History’ section (which I am doing right now); after that, I’ll revise the entry and add more follow-ups. Boreas Sawada  18:38, 22 May 2023 (UTC)

On the ‘citation-needed’ paragraph
In the main text, the following sentence has been marked with ‘citation-needed’:

It is very hard to prove its omnipresence in mainland China for this is something like proving (or citing) the fact that ‘His Majesty the King is a man’. I know the Guidance of Wikipedia used the example of ‘the sky is blue’, but I am sure that you can find some sources that discussed the colour of the sky and why it is looked this way, but I doubt anyone would find a source that clearly states ‘His Majesty the King is a man’. And this is exactly the situation we are facing. This military slogan has been so widely used that anyone who lived in mainland China would not doubt its prevalence. Because they will hear, see, and read it repeatedly for the past decade on television, on hoardings, in newspapers, or on the internet. As being Xi’s words, these twelve characters are doomed to be reappearing every once in a while in mainland China’s propaganda newspapers and media. If these are the sources we need, I can give as many as it suits you—for instance, the first 14 sources in this topic’s reflist.

And you all can be rest assured that they all mentioned the exact twelve characters as put forward by Xi in 2013.

This slogan is also prominently displayed in every military camp, every single one of them, without any exception. Some picture evidence can be found in citations 15—17 in the following list.

And use any search engine and put these characters into it, and you’ll find even more pictures, articles, videos, etc.

Therefore, it is not hard to find propaganda articles that use this slogan; it is hard, however, to decide what could be the best way to verify this statement of its omnipresence is true. Boreas Sawada 00:24, 23 May 2023 (UTC)


 * Came across following book on google books Idk how much that would help as citation
 * Knowing the People’s Liberation Army. N.p., 李亞明, 2021. ISBN: 9789574395231, 9574395235 Page 19
 * &#32;Bookku   (talk) 02:21, 23 May 2023 (UTC)
 * Thank you. And I have just found that a new article by WSJ used the word ‘ubiquitous’ to describe this slogan which I have put into citations. Boreas Sawada  02:42, 23 May 2023 (UTC)
 * @Boreas Sawada On side note I wish to request you to update the article Chinese comedy that will help readers to understand background of Chinese comedy better. &#32;Bookku   (talk) 05:59, 23 May 2023 (UTC)
 * Eh... Quite the contrary, this whole thing has nothing to do with the so-called ‘Chinese comedy’. Li and the entire company he worked with were performing Western-style (or American-style?) stand-up comedy (just as described in the entry of stand-up comedy), which is vastly different from Chinese comedy. Therefore I would suggest removing this mention.
 * As a matter of fact (and an interesting anecdote)—in order to avoid suppression from the authorities, some of his fellow stand-up comedians (not necessarily his colleagues) once switched to English performance for a while, and some of them (this time including some of his colleagues) later even went to the United States to pursue further career development.

Boreas Sawada 06:51, 23 May 2023 (UTC)
 * And to be honest, I don’t watch both of them. Therefore, if anyone is suitable to update the article on Chinese comedy, it shouldn’t be me. My ‘speciality’ is on political persecution and I might one-day update entries like picking quarrels and provoking trouble if my translation mission goes on well ;) So sorry I might let you down on this. Boreas Sawada  07:06, 23 May 2023 (UTC)
 * Oh ok then in that case probably article Chinese comedy may be considered for renaming to Humor in China or may be a new article on Humor and China should be possible. I hope some one will take up those general articles for expansion in due course. &#32;Bookku   (talk) 07:14, 23 May 2023 (UTC)

Did you know nomination
Done. Now the citations in the introductory section have been reduced to three.

These are a couple of well-written reports that cover the whole incident, with most of the details mentioned below included. It would be better to put them in the lead rather than in the following sections repeatedly.

Boreas Sawada 20:10, 23 May 2023 (UTC)


 * @Chu Tse-tien I suppose one needs to reply DYK discussions preferably on Template:Did you know nominations/Li Haoshi controversy of 2023 itself.
 * Since that transcludes in Template talk:Did you know and visible to other DYK participants resulting in better scope of interaction with a diverse group of article writers and inputs. Where as article talk page discussion about DYK is not instantly visible to them and you may miss valuable interaction and inputs. &#32;Bookku   (talk) 06:12, 24 May 2023 (UTC)
 * I suppose so, too. But I don’t know how to reply on that page ;) Just click edit and type whatever I want in a new line at the bottom? Boreas Sawada  06:28, 24 May 2023 (UTC)
 * Open for edit, see how others have adjusted indent ':' to start reply, see preview and confirm looks ok then save. A bit of small experimentation. I learned like that only. If you make any mistake in indenting others will any way notice, help and guide since is visible to many expert users. &#32;Bookku    (talk) 06:45, 24 May 2023 (UTC)
 * Okay, so just like an average talk page, then. It is called a template and I was wondering if extra conventions were there to be followed. Thanks for clearing my doubts. Boreas Sawada  06:50, 24 May 2023 (UTC)
 * And just about to ask, about the hook. I don’t often read the home page of Wikipedia (rather, I would land at the ‘Special:Search’ page if I clicked my bookmark for Wikipedia—to dodge the home page). Therefore I have no idea on what standard a hook is considered a good one? As I am a native Chinese speaker, I happen to know that their DYKs have to conceal the main topic (in this case, that would be something like: ‘… that a military slogan of the People’s Liberation Army (PLA), ‘be capable of winning battles and have good styles’, has led to what recent controversy in China?’), but based on your recommendation, I reckon this is not the convention here in English Wikipedia? Boreas Sawada  06:46, 24 May 2023 (UTC)
 * Oh here on en WP no convention of deliberate concealing. If a question making needs so to make it interesting then that is okay. I hope this helps. &#32;Bookku   (talk) 06:54, 24 May 2023 (UTC)
 * Okay, thank you!
 * Still, I would reckon that ‘… what recent controversy was triggered by commending dogs with a military slogan of the People’s Liberation Army (PLA) and led to the person in question and their company being heavily penalised by the Chinese authorities?’ would be a possible candidate and I’ll put it there ;) Boreas Sawada  07:01, 24 May 2023 (UTC)

Similar cases section
None of the sources in this section are about the Li Haoshi controversy or how the events listed within are related. I'm not familiar with this subject or its sources, but this section seems like it gives undue weight to this information. I'd suggest finding sources that specifically mention these prior incidents in relation to the one in the article. Otherwise I'd recommend removing it. ArcticSeeress (talk) 15:13, 14 July 2023 (UTC)


 * For the link of Li’s case with the case of Luo Changping, it was mentioned in the second half of the 19th paragraph of the WSJ article, in the seventh paragraph of a CNN report , and in the last paragraph of the Independent report . The first source was already listed in the References section, the rest two were once cited but were removed by others for redundancy.
 * And there are plenty of articles that linked the case of Luo Changping and the case of Qiu Ziming, just put their names in the search box and you’ll see how many reports had linked them two in their articles. It would be strange not to mention Qiu’s case if the case of Luo is mentioned here since they were compared a lot in varied sources. Boreas Sawada  16:53, 14 July 2023 (UTC)
 * Then those sources should be included in the section to better reflect the weight that these articles give to the connection between these incidents. Remember that Wikipedia articles should primarily reflect how secondary sources talk about a given topic, so if the sources in a section don't actually talk about the topic of the article, it gives the impression of the material being unrelated original research. In any case, the sources don't seem redundant to me, so I'd recommend readding them and removing the cleanup tag. I'm not familiar with the article's history, so I'd appreciate if you could tag the person who suggested the removal of the sources so a more thorough consensus can be reached in this discussion in regards to their inclusion. ArcticSeeress (talk) 01:28, 15 July 2023 (UTC)