Very erotic very violent (Chinese: 很黄很暴力; pinyin: hěn huáng hěn bàolì; Wade–Giles: hen huang hen pao-li; literally "very yellow very violent") is a Chinese internet meme that originated from a news report on China Central Television's flagship Xinwen Lianbo program allegedly quoting a schoolgirl describing a web page. On the Chinese Internet, this incident was widely parodied and weakened the credibility of the state broadcaster's newscasts.[1]
This Chinese phrase, which combines the intensive adverb hen 很 "very; quite; much" with huang 黄 "yellow" (denoting huangse 黃色 "yellow colored" or "sexy; erotic; obscene; pornographic") and baoli 暴力 "violence; force", follows the form of very good very mighty, a snowclone for Internet slang popularized earlier that year.
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On 27 December 2007, Xinwen Lianbo aired a report about the wide and easy availability of explicit content on the internet. The report appealed to juristic institutions and government to hurry to make relevant legislation in order to purify the internet environment. In the report, a young student described a pop-up advertisement she saw as being "very erotic very violent".[2] After the airing of the report, many parodies were posted by internet users ridiculing the comment and CCTV's credibility in part.[3]
The incident also questioned the reliability of Xinwen Lianbo, noting the unlikelihood of a web page being both violent and erotic at the same time (even though such pages do exist), and the age of the student interviewed. Personal information of the interviewed girl was later also leaked, identifying the girl in the report by name.[4] Online message boards were populated by large threads about the incident,[5] and a satirical work even stated that CCTV's website was the number one "very erotic very violent" website on the internet,[6] with some users even creating their own toplists of sites which meet these criteria,[7] the "top 8 very erotic very violent sports events"[8] and even identifying things that are yellow as being erotic (since 黄, huáng, the Mandarin character for "yellow", also means "erotic").[9]
According to a general consensus,[10] it is said that the girl in the report would have not been able to access a web page describable as "very erotic very violent" unless she did it intentionally. It is thought that the line was actually a form of distortion by the reporters and not actually the views expressed by the girl, trying to make the problem look more serious. Even though the internet is already heavily filtered in China, the news report may have suggested that the current filters are not enough.
In addition, the girl interviewed in the report was never actually identified.[10] It was also pointed out by some media,[11] that the outcry from the community about this report showed a dissatisfaction for the content of the report, and the censorship of the Internet in China in general, and an explosion of long term dissatisfaction for the production practices of Xinwen Lianbo.[12]
Some critics also emerged, expressing discontent about the internet outcry and large amounts of parodies related to the report, some using her real name, as revealed by a letter written by the girl's father.[4][13]
Most Chinese media intentionally ignored the role CCTV played in the report, focusing more on the violation of the girl's privacy.[14][15] Wang Xiaofeng, chief writer of cultural department, Lifeweek, claimed that CCTV and the users have lack of consciousness for protecting minors.[16] There were also some claims that “what the girl really needs is benevolent critique from the adults other than fleer from entertainers”.[17]