The Chinese internet’s best reactions to Trump’s China visit

Here is The China Project’s selection of the best reactions on the social media platform Weibo to Trump’s state visit to China:

To a video of Trump’s granddaughter, Arabella Kushner, reciting classical Chinese poetry and singing songs in Mandarin, a performance that Xi graded A+, Weibo users wrote:

“Such a cute girl.”

“Granddaughter diplomacy!”

“It seems that every kid in this world can’t escape the fate of performing something for the elderly at some point in their childhood.”

“Stop elevating yourself! Your kid just put up a show for your own joy, but Trump’s granddaughter sang for the friendship between China and America.”

A few tourist attractions, such as the Palace Museum and the Mutianyu section of the Great Wall, released urgent notices of temporary closure for “important events.” Though the reason wasn’t specified, internet users were quick to take a guess:

“Your foreign master is coming.”

“Trump arrives at the Great Wall and says, ‘The Mexico border wall should look like this!’”

“Don’t tell me this is for that idiot Donald Trump.”

In addition, the panda house in the Beijing zoo announced it would be closed from 7 a.m. to 12 p.m. on November 10 for “transformation and upgrading.” Apparently, no one on Weibo believed it:

“They just can’t break their habit of lying, huh?”

“Why not just say ‘Trump will be there to see pandas’? There’s no attempt to stop him from doing that.”

“Calm down, guys. You should be grateful for being allowed to leave a comment about this news.”

• Twitter
  Yesterday Twitter doubled its character limit from 140 to 280 per tweet. China’s Great Firewall blocks the service for most people in China, except for a minority who have the right circumvention tools. In this context, it came as a surprise when a Sina news center Weibo account reported the Twitter character expansion. The news generated some funny reactions:

“140? 280? For us, it’s always the 404 era.” (“404” is the error message that is displayed when users try to access blocked sites.)

“What does this news have to do with my life? I can’t use it anyway.”

• Facebook
  China spreads propaganda to U.S. on Facebook, a platform it bans at home / NYT (paywall)
  “Each quarter China’s government, through its state media agencies, spends hundreds of thousands of dollars to buy Facebook ads.”
• Gender stereotypes
  How China’s trans icon just fuels more patriarchy / Sixth Tone
• Basketball players up to mischief
  LiAngelo Ball, two other UCLA players released on bail after shoplifting arrest in China / Washington Post
• Aliens
  China’s race to find aliens first / The Atlantic
• Gaming
  Behind the screens of the biggest ‘League of Legends’ tournament / Sixth Tone
• Automation craze
  Unmanned AI police station to open in Wuhan / Radii China
• Science
  Study suggesting liquor’s ‘anti-cancer’ effects provokes backlash / Caixin