How an investigation into contaminated cafeteria food took China’s internet by storm
Content warning: This post contains images that could be distressing to the appetite.
When is a rat not a rat? When it’s a duck neck, according to administrators at Jiangxi Industry Polytechnic College.
After a student there found what appeared to be a rodent’s head in his canteen meal earlier this month, and posted a video of it online, the school and local officials’ responses were defiant: The furry object sporting teeth and whiskers was delicious duck’s neck—a common Chinese snack—and not a gruesome, gnarled, rat head, as practically everyone who saw the video believed.
The incident generated uproar online. Hashtags related to the incident cumulatively garnered billions of views, with netizens ridiculing the ludicrous explanation with memes. They sarcastically christened a new hybrid food, “rat head with duck neck (鼠头鸭脖 shǔtóu yābó),” and posted images (some horrifying, though others strangely cute) of ducks with mouse heads or vice versa.
Netizens accused the school and local authorities of “calling a mouse a duck (指鼠为鸭 zhǐshǔwéiyā),” a play on “calling a deer a horse (指鹿为马 zhǐlùwéimǎ),” a Chinese idiom referring to the deliberate misrepresentation of something. The phrase comes from the story of prime minister Zhao Gao (赵高) of the Qin dynasty (221 – 206 BCE). He obsessed over power, and once tested the loyalty of his subordinates by gesturing to a deer and saying it’s a horse, daring anyone to contradict him.
Chen Jiahe is an intern at The World of Chinese. She is interested in sharing stories about Chinese society, youth culture, and history.
