Teacher Li Is Not Your Teacher
 Twitter profile picture of Teacher Li Is Not Your Teacher | |
Type of site | Twitter account |
|---|---|
| Available in | Chinese |
| Owner | Li Ying |
| URL | twitter |
| Launched | May 2020 |
| Current status | Online |
Teacher Li is Not Your Teacher (Chinese: 李老师不是你老师; pinyin: Lǐ lǎoshī bùshì nǐ lǎoshī), also known by his username @whyyoutouzhele is a Twitter account operated by a Chinese artist based in Italy named Li Ying (Chinese: 李颖; pinyin: Lǐ Yǐng). During the 2022 COVID-19 protests in China, the account was used as a medium to disseminate information regarding the protests resulting in international attention to the protests due to the extensive censorship of the protests by Chinese authorities. The avatar of the account features a drawing of a tabby cat.[1]
Background
The owner of the Twitter account, Li Ying, was born in 1992 in Anhui, China.[2]
Li's grandfather was a doctor and officer in the National Revolutionary Army who fought in the Burma campaign during World War II. As a result of ties to the Nationalist movement, Li's grandfather was criticized as a 'counter-revolutionary element' during the rule of China under Mao Zedong and as a result, his family moved to southern China to escape persecution. During the late period of the Cultural Revolution, Li's father was a Worker-Peasant-Soldier student who had attended university to become an art teacher.[3]
Li later recalled that his father's experience gave him a clear understanding of what it feels like to "stand on the wrong side of politics." During his early days, Li claimed that he was an ardent supporter of the Communist Party of China before his political views drastically changed after learning about experiences of human rights lawyers such as Pu Zhiqiang online. When he was 19 years old, he held his first exhibition called "Picasso at the Circus" in Jinan, Shandong, which according to him was "mocking an absurd society." He worked part-time as an art teacher and since 2015, he has been living and studying in Italy. He was supposed to return to China in 2020 but due to COVID-19 pandemic, he has remained there since.[4][3]
According to MIT Technology Review, Li began paying attention to social issues in China in 2021 and used his account in Sina Weibo to post on-site information submissions from netizens. Due to extensive censorship efforts by Chinese authorities, 49 of his accounts in Weibo were banned. However, his supporters encouraged him and provided their phone numbers so that he could continue to register accounts. In April 2022, he transferred his main communication platform to Twitter.[5]
Covering the 2022 COVID-19 protests in China and aftermath
After protests erupted at the Foxconn factory in Zhengzhou, Henan on November 2022, Li's Twitter account became a medium for online information about the protests in mainland China, as the account was responsible for receiving and disseminating on-site information. Since Twitter is banned in China, many users used virtual private networks (VPN) to access Twitter and send contributions to Li, who then spread the information, resulting him gaining 600,000 followers within a week after the outbreak of the protests. The way Li sent and received information subsequently attracted international attention to what was regarded as the largest demonstration movement in China in a generation. Thus the account became a primary source cited by international media on the protests and a key source of information for disseminating the situation of demonstrations in China.[6][3][5][7]
According to statistics, he has received more than a thousand pieces of first-hand information from China in a single day. Li also admitted that due to his limited professional level, he could not be 100% sure of the authenticity of the information so he tried to test the authenticity by cross-comparing different videos of an incident. He urged his followers to double-check the details of their submissions before sending it to him, contributing to improvement of the quality of submissions. During this time, he barely had any any hours to sleep due to him focusing in the sharing information of the protests online. According to The New York Times, the videos he spread attracted more Chinese people to pay attention to the protests.[8][9]
Li claimed that because of his dissemination of sensitive content, his family was also under pressure from the Chinese government and as a result, officers from the Public Security Bureau harassed his family in order to pressure him. He also admitted that he has suffered from death threats and in addition, an online test also showed that he suffered from severe depression, and he suffered from physical and mental stress. Even so, on 4 December 2022, Li posted on Twitter stating that he would never commit suicide. In an interview with CNN, he stated that the Twitter account "is more important than his life" and he would not shut down. He also further stated that he has arranged someone to take control of his account if something were to happen to him.[10][3][11]
With the end of the protests in December 2022, Li continues to use the account to share submissions from his followers regarding social issues in China.[12]
References
- ^ "How a Twitter Account With a Funny Cat Avatar Told the Tale of China's Protests Explained". News18. 2022-12-11. Retrieved 2023-10-26.
- ^ Kuo, Lily; Wu, Pei-Lin (2022-12-10). "The painter in Italy who informed the world about China's protests". The Washington Post. Retrieved 2023-10-24.
- ^ a b c d Gan, Nectar; Xiong, Yong; Wang, Selina (2022-12-11). "How a Twitter account with a cat avatar took on Beijing". CNN. Retrieved October 2, 2020.
- ^ Pan, Jenny; Mistreanu, Simina (2022-12-03). "How a Chinese art teacher inspired a new generation of protesters". The Telegraph. Retrieved 2023-10-26.
- ^ a b Yang, Zeyi (2022-12-02). "How Twitter's "Teacher Li" became the central hub of China protest information". MIT Technology Review. Retrieved 2023-10-25.
- ^ Hale, Erin (2022-12-05). "How one Chinese Twitter user exposed COVID protests to the world". Al Jazeera. Retrieved 2023-10-26.
- ^ "How a painter in Italy became a crucial source of information during China's recent COVID protests". Australian Broadcasting Corporation. 2022-12-14. Retrieved 2023-10-26.
- ^ Mozur, Paul; Xiao, Muyi; Liu, John (2022-11-30). "'Breach of the Big Silence': Protests Stretch China's Censorship to Its Limits". The New York Times. Retrieved 2023-10-26.
- ^ Zhang, Han (2022-12-06). "The Twitter User Taking on the Chinese Government". The Nation. Retrieved 2023-10-26.
- ^ "李老师：即使在意大利也受威胁". RFI. 2022-12-14. Retrieved 2023-10-26.
- ^ Wang, Yun (2022-11-30). "INTERVIEW: 'I'm just reporting what's going on'". Radio Free Asia. Retrieved 2023-10-26.
- ^ Jing, Wei (2023-07-25). "Xi'an police probe agencies amid angry protests by parents over exam 'immigrants'". Radio Free Asia. Retrieved 2023-10-26.