Super Girl Li Yuchun is at the center of a peculiar online meme perpetuated by a vocal group of fans.
The singer, whose androgynous style was the focus of countless mainstream media features on the behavior and attitudes of today’s youth, has long been the butt of jokes that say she’s really a man or that she’s had a sex change (and other, cruder remarks that seem less lighthearted mockery of a public figure than undisguised misogyny).
The cross-dressing idea has been captured in a catchphrase, “Brother Chun is All Man, A Real Iron-man” (春哥纯爷们,铁血真汉子), and included in Photoshopped images that feature Li’s head atop the body of Bruce Lee, a male bodybuilder, an alpaca, and so forth. The meme even rated an entry in the list of ten mythical creatures that exploded online early in the year.
In the meme’s latest development, Li Yuchun has become a messiah figure. “Believe in Brother Chun for eternal life” (信春哥得永生) the saying goes, repeated in forums and ‘shopped into pictures lifted from Chinese religious websites like Gospel China.
- Yellow Ape’s blog (Chinese): I believe in Brother Chun image
- Z Enlai’s military boxing blog (Chinese): Tomb image
- Chunge Baoju Di’s Xiaonei photo album (Chinese): Lama image
- Poco.cn via anti-non-mainstream Baidu Postbar (Chinese): World image
