Wang's way with words

It happened on a Saturday night in March at the railway station in the southern Chinese city of Kunming. A group of five assailants clad in black attacked travelers with long knives. Twenty-nine people were killed and more than 130 injured before security forces finally shot the attackers.

All of China was shocked. Wang Zuozhongyou responded to the incident by posting a picture without comment on his blog "Weicombo." He took apart the city name "Kunming" and decorated the first character with five red knives (see Figure 1). It should be clear to readers what he meant by the drawing.

A tradition of word games

"Chinese people love word games - they are like crossword puzzles for Germans," Bobs juror Tienchi Martin-Liao said. The Chinese language with its sound system makes Wang's images particularly fascinating: "Everybody thinks, what does he want to tell us with the riddle? It's a game of intelligence!"

It's not only the Chinese language that is well suited to Wang's artistic approach to world affairs. When the Malaysia Airlines airliner disappeared without a trace in March on the way from Kuala Lumpur to Beijing, the artist published a calligraph with the plane's flight number, MH370. He replaced the number seven with a red question mark (see Figure 2).

The artist also makes word games in English. When the North Korean missile tests caused consternation in the west, he commented with the word "North Koready," alluding to the war readiness of the isolated country.

Creative and original

The international jury of the DW contest The Bobs - Best of Online Activism was enthusiastic about Wang's puzzles: Weicombo won in May in the Most Creative & Original category. In an interview with DW's Chinese service, Wang said he was very surprised by this award. He said he was only expressing his opinion and had "no political motivation."

"My works are products of pure coincidence," said Wang Zuozhongyou - a pseudonym that means something like "Emperor Left-center-right". The artist said he felt creativity in the media was lacking and wanted to use humor to motivate people to think, Martin-Liao said.

A good opportunity arose in February, with the Olympic Winter Games in Sochi, Russia. There was a technical glitch during the opening ceremony: one of the five Olympic rings failed to open and remained in the shape of a star. Wang drew four Olympic rings and replaced the fifth with "404," the error message shown on the internet when a page is not available. In China, however, the message is also shown when a page is blocked (see image).

"Wang manages to criticise in a very subtle way," Martin-Liao said. She said he never overstepped boundaries, and that his fans could draw their own interpretations of his images.

The censors saw red

But the coin has a flip side. Since Wang's images can be freely interpreted by anyone, he, too, has been affected by censorship. A German flag that at first glance appears harmless is potentially subversive: "Germany" in Chinese is "Deguo," the same as the word "morality." And its three colors - black, red and gold - are not interpreted in China as a reminder of Prussia's war of liberation against Napoleon.

"Black is the fight against the mafia, red for the red songs of revolution, yellow for the elimination of pornography," Martin-Liao explained. The colors allude to Chinese campaigns of communist indoctrination and against organized crime and prostitution. But the flag was used by online activists as a form of criticism of the corrupt elite, until the Weibo platform allowed them to delete it from thousands of accounts.

China welcomes its history

But usually Wang had luck with his publications, such as the image with the English word "history." He inserted a comma between "hi" and "story," so that it could be read as "Hi, story" (see Figure 3). "The picture describes China's special treatment of its own history," Martin-Liao said. For example, she added, while the massacre in Tiananmen Square 25 years ago in China is still taboo other historical events such as the war against Japan are abused for nationalist propaganda.

"You can talk about something privately but not in public, otherwise you risk arrest" Martin-Liao said. The subtlety of his puzzles and the almost 235,000 fans for Weicombo are Wang's best form of protection, she said. Wang will not be picking up the Bobs prize from the Deutsche Welle Global Media Forum on June 30. He wishes to remain anonymous. It's not hard to imagine why.