news

On August 3, France, in the women's singles table tennis final of the Paris Olympics, Chen Meng defeated Sun Yingsha 4-2 to win the gold medal.

one

On the evening of August 6, the Beijing Daxing Public Security Bureau released a message: After receiving a report from the public, some netizens posted slanderous messages about athletes and coaches on the Weibo platform after the women's singles table tennis final at the Paris Olympics. In response, the police quickly launched an investigation and arrested the suspect He Moumou (female, 29 years old).

According to netizens, He fabricated "dirty rumors" after the game to slander Chen Meng, who won the final.

It is obvious that He is a member of the so-called "fan circle".

On August 3, Chen Meng and Sun Yingsha met in the Olympic table tennis women's singles final.

Judging from the live broadcast, there were a large number of fans in the stands holding banners and props that read "Come on Sun Yingsha", cheering for Sun Yingsha crazily, with occasional hysterical shouts. What surprised the Chinese audience the most was that when Chen Meng made a mistake, some people cheered, and when she scored, some people booed.

Even crazier scenes occurred on social media during and after the game, with a large number of insulting comments attacking athletes and coaching staff members. On August 4, Weibo officials banned more than 300 accounts that violated the rules, either temporarily or permanently.

For a time, public opinion across the country was in an uproar. Many Chinese people learned the term "fan circle" for the first time and were deeply shocked by the madness of fan circle culture.

What puzzles many people is when did the fan culture, which originated in the entertainment industry, invade sports, especially the Chinese table tennis team, and when did it become "like a river bursting its banks, unstoppable"?

two

Sun Yingsha, who seems to be the center of attention today, was once a victim of fan culture.

In May 2021, the Chinese Table Tennis Association announced the list of athletes participating in the Tokyo Olympics and decided that Sun Yingsha and Chen Meng would participate in the women's singles. The decision to choose Sun Yingsha instead of Liu Shiwen angered some extreme fans of Liu Shiwen.

Under Sun Yingsha’s Weibo, they attacked her using the usual tactics used by fans, leaving many disgusting comments.

What’s even more exaggerated is that these fans began to attack indiscriminately, and even Zhang Yining, who recommended Sun Yingsha to participate in the competition, was affected.

Fan Zhendong, the new men's singles table tennis champion at the Paris Olympics, may be the earliest "awake person in the world".

On September 13, 2021, the national table tennis team departed from Guangzhou to Xi'an to participate in the National Games. A large number of fans gathered at the airport and took close-up photos of the athletes. On the same day, Fan Zhendong, who felt uncomfortable, spoke out through the fan club's Weibo:

Outside the arena, I am an ordinary person and I need private space just like every other ordinary person.

Fan Zhendong was still quite polite at this time and did not directly name the fan club.

More than a month later, on October 17, 2021, Fan Zhendong published a long article specifically targeting the fan circle, hoping that fans would only focus on the game and that online speech should comply with public order and good customs:

Some "fan circle" expressions are not suitable for us here. Please just focus on the game. This is my voice as an athlete.

On the first day of the Lunar New Year in 2022, Fan Zhendong once again blasted the fan circle while wishing netizens a happy new year:

Whether online or offline, I once again ask the fans not to say or do things that they shouldn’t do in the name of my goodness, and to join me in resisting any form of fan circle-like words and deeds.

When Fan Zhendong spoke out earnestly, the fan clubization of the Chinese national table tennis team had already become irreversible.

Recently, Deng Yaping, who couldn't stand it any longer, spoke out against the fan circle culture: "Just talk about who you like, don't attack anyone!"

But the "essence" of fan culture has never been just about "who to like", but also about "who to attack".

It can even be said that without attacks and slander, there would be no fan clubs.

On the morning of August 12, 2016, in the men's table tennis singles final of the Rio Olympics, Zhang Jike lost to Ma Long 0-4 and won the runner-up.

Zhang Jike’s fans were angry and started to fight.

From who has better skills, who won the Grand Slam, to who is more handsome, who is more popular, who is more approachable... there will be a fight on every dimension.

Zhang Jike's fans even dug up a paper to prove that Ma Long learned his skills from Zhang Jike.

This debate, which attracted hundreds of thousands or even millions of forwarded comments, was unprecedented in the history of Chinese sports and was known as the "Fruit and Butterfly War."

The so-called "Fruit and Butterfly War", "Sister Fruit" refers to the fan group "Dragon Fruit" of table tennis player Ma Long, and "Sister Butterfly" refers to the fan group "Butterfly" of Zhang Jike.

At that time, some people commented that this reminded them of the competition between Alan Tam and Leslie Cheung for supremacy in the Hong Kong music scene in the 1980s.

Therefore, 2016 can be called the first year of the Chinese table tennis fan circle.

Compared to Fan Zhendong who dislikes fan circles, Zhang Jike may enjoy the fan circle culture to some extent.

After all, it was with the support of the fan circle and a large number of die-hard fans that Zhang Jike had the confidence to enter the entertainment industry and gain huge commercial value. In his heyday, Zhang Jike endorsed more than a dozen well-known domestic and foreign brands and participated in the recording of more than 20 variety shows.

Zhang Jike once said with emotion: "When I went to competitions before, only a few dozen people watched me. After 2016, wow, it really felt like a concert."

The "Fruit Butterfly War" finally disappeared in April 2023.

At the end of March 2023, the "Zhang Jike incident" broke out. Well-known financial journalist Li Wei'ao first posted a message to expose the incident, and then published an IOU signed by Zhang Jike, accusing him of owing a huge gambling debt and leaking other people's private videos to creditors. The incident shocked the whole country, and the huge traffic brought by the parties involved caused a carnival of melon-eating by the whole people. In the end, amid the lamentations of the Butterfly Sisters that "the whole network is strangling a hero who once fought for the country", Zhang Jike's public image completely collapsed.

Zhang Jike likes to use the "Butterfly" table tennis racket and has a long-term partnership with the manufacturer, so his fans call themselves "Butterfly". On April 5, 2023, Butterfly Table Tennis Racket announced the deletion of Zhang Jike's portrait and co-branded product information.

For a long time thereafter, Zhang Jike disappeared from the public eye and only recently reappeared on social media, and the "Fruit Butterfly War" has become a thing of the past.

Zhang Jike's fans held placards on the first day of the China Table Tennis Open (Chengdu) in June 2017.

three

As early as 2021, the official WeChat public account of China Youth Daily forwarded an article: "Don't let this year's athletes be ruined by fan circles."

But the formation of sports fan culture may have to start with "the fat guy who doesn't understand sports" Liu Guoliang.

During the 2016 Rio Olympics, a netizen left a message on social media asking, "Is the fat guy behind the Chinese team who doesn't understand football an official? It seems that he is the only one in the stadium who doesn't understand football..."

Liu Guoliang unexpectedly became the "fat guy who doesn't understand football".

This meme quickly became popular on the Internet. Liu Guoliang accepted this title calmly and called himself "the fat guy who doesn't understand football" on Weibo, which immediately attracted hundreds of thousands of fans.

As a result, Liu Guoliang and the national table tennis team witnessed for the first time the far-reaching power of social media, and decided to start with "personal IP" to comprehensively enhance the influence and commercial value of the national table tennis team.

The Chinese national table tennis team has truly mastered the code to traffic. Through events such as "Zhang Jike, wake up" and "Xu Xin expresses his love", the reading volume of topics related to the Chinese national table tennis team during the Olympic competition week reached an unprecedented 310 million.

From now on, who dares to say that the Chinese national table tennis team has no traffic?

This also proves from another dimension the "authority" of 2016 as the first year of the national table tennis fan circle.

The story that impressed me the most at that time was that, with the help of Japanese media reports, the Chinese national table tennis team launched two major IPs: "Empire Destroying Dragon" Ma Long and "Empire Fierce Tiger" Zhang Jike.

With the addition of "big python" Xu Xin, the national table tennis team has gathered the classic IPs of "dragon, tiger and python"; since then, the national table tennis team has consciously launched personal IPs such as pig farmer Chen Qi, little fat Fan Zhendong, little jujube Liu Shiwen, and big baby Ding Ning.

Of course, "The Fat Guy Who Doesn't Know Football" is the earliest and most famous IP.

In 2017, the Chinese national table tennis team, leveraging the power of its personal IP matrix, commercially packaged the team's direct qualifying tournament for that year's World Championships and marketed it to the market, naming it "The Strongest 12-Man Tournament on Earth," which quickly aroused strong market demand.

At this point, the Chinese national table tennis team not only has achievements, but also sponsorships, variety shows and endorsements.

But everything has a price.

Fan circles are the backlash of the marketization of the Chinese national table tennis team.

Since the goal is to build a personal IP, traffic-oriented and even attracting fans are a natural part of the process.

From Liu Guoliang to Zhang Jike and Ma Long, no matter what their personal will is, they inevitably became "traffic idols" and inevitably had their own fan circles.

At that time, there was a very popular meme called "both culture and sports flourished", and the fan culture of the entertainment industry naturally and smoothly transferred to the sports industry.

At the beginning, people had not yet realized the problem with fan clubs, and even regarded them as the ultimate code for commercial traffic; later on, they were in a dilemma and looked back and forth.

It was not until the beginning of 2024 that the Chinese national table tennis team officially drew a clear line between itself and the fan circle.

On February 2, 2022, Liu Guoliang, chairman of the Chinese Table Tennis Association, who was supervising the closed training with the team in Hainan, made a harsh statement: he asked everyone to be of one mind and consciously resist the "fan circle culture."

In April, He Xiao, head coach of the national table tennis team, reiterated at a symposium the national table tennis team's determination to resolutely resist fan culture.

It was too late. In the women's singles final of the Olympics on August 3, the fan club showed its fangs, which had been sharpened for years, to Chen Meng, the national table tennis team, and the national audience.

(The author is a writer, and his works include Abandoning Chang'an and Entering the Pass)

Author: Zhang Mingyang

Image source: Visual China

Image editor: Zhang Xu