by Jessica Levine on October 4, 2012
Understanding China requires a basic familiarity with “human flesh search.” Image ©iStockphoto.com/PressureUA
As it smoldered, Yang Dacai (杨达才) smiled.
Then-chief of the Shaanxi Safety Supervision Bureau, Yang had been dispatched to the scene of an August bus fire that killed 36 people along a stretch of Yan’an (延安) highway in the central Chinese province.
Almost immediately, Sina Weibo, China’s Twitter, trended pictures of the vehicle’s charcoaled, blown-out frame; of emergency crews carrying the dead. Behind lengths of crime tape, arms tucked at the small of his back, stood Yang—grinning at a motioning police officer.
This image juxtaposing tragedy against stereotyped government callousness quickly spread. Disgusted, and determined to ascertain the official’s identity, netizens conducted what is known as a human flesh search.
Translated directly from the Chinese “renrou sousuo yinqing” (人肉搜搜引擎) and popularized by Chinese bulletin board services like Mop, Tianya and KDnet, flesh searches are grassroots, collaborative efforts to share information online.
Shaanxi Safety Supervision Bureau chief Yang Dacai became suddenly famous, with netizens rushing to caricature him.
Although the term sounds ghoulish, this sleuthing process involves the probing and posting of personal details in pursuit of romance, kinship, justice, or vindication. Citizens and officials alike are equally exposed to the deluge of home and email addresses, bank statements, or gaming handles. Yang, a man with expensive tastes, was no exception.
Despite Yang’s supposedly-meager government pay, flesh searchers unearthed his penchant for designer watches, belts and eyeglasses. He was ultimately dismissed as Bureau chief for these excesses, but Yang’s dispassionate smugness in the face of a horrific accident surely did not help his cause.
“Flesh searchers feel like they are sharing information in a system that does not have a comprehensive or consistent rule of law,” explained global tech sociologist, ethnographer and 88 bar blogger Tricia Wang in an exclusive Tea Leaf Nation interview. “In a way, this is like an ad hoc, ground-up rule of law. It’s thrown together, it’s not very systematic, it can fall apart at any second—but what’s amazing is that there is no face-to-face contact and yet trust is able to form.”
Wang specifically cited the infamous and disturbing kitten-killer case.
In 2006, a video of a woman stomping a kitten to death with the sharp point of her high heel appeared on a Mop forum. With no recourse to file a formal complaint, outraged netizens took matters into their own hands and, through a flesh search, found the culprit: Wang Jiao from Heilongjiang province summarily lost her iron rice bowl (铁饭碗), a coveted government job that usually lasts to retirement and pays a lifetime pension.
