813 Incident

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Event
Event: 813 incident, 813事件, Zhang Zhehan incident, 张哲瀚事件
Participants: Zhang Zhehan, Chinese netizens, yxh accounts, other theorized involved parties
Date(s): August 13, 2021 - present
Type:
Fandom: Word of Honor, etc.
URL:
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On August 13, 2021, serious accusations against Zhang Zhehan, the lead actor in Word of Honor, went viral on Chinese social media. This incident became known as the 813 incident or simply 813 and had severe and ongoing repercussions for Zhang Zhehan, but also impacted his fanbase.

The Events

Tourist photos of the actor, taken in 2018 near the notorious Yasukuni Shrine in Japan, were posted on weibo, along with many other claims about his alleged unpatriotic behavior. The Chinese public appear to have been genuinely outraged that he posed near a shrine to generals who committed war crimes against Chinese people during World War II. He was blacklisted from the entertainment industry and branded a traitor by many. Misinformation, apparently spread by paid accounts called yxh or marketing accounts, fueled the outrage--for example, initial reports that the photos showed him in an area where he would have had to pay to enter, thereby proving that he went to the shrine on purpose, seem to have been incorrect. (In reality he seems to have been taking cherry blossom photos in a popular tourist area that happened to be near the shrine.) Someone also edited misinformation into Baidu Baike (China's version of Wikipedia) to bolster their claims about Zhang Zhehan associating with anti-Chinese war criminals and visiting other Japanese shrines with anti-Chinese history.

As a result of the blacklisting, Zhang Zhehan's filmography was removed from Chinese streaming sites, including Word of Honor itself. Zhang Zhehan is also a singer, and his music was removed from Chinese platforms and Spotify. Nirvana in Fire was edited to remove his scenes. The actor's social media accounts were also shut down. Even his name became a forbidden phrase that could not be posted on some websites.

Of note, Zhang Zhehan was blacklisted by the China Association of Performing Arts (CAPA), a non-governmental association, rather than by the relevant government agency, National Radio and Television Administration (NRTA). In November 2021 Chinese and international fans were excitedly discussing the fact that Li Xuezheng, a prominent industry association executive and filmmaker, was publicly questioning CAPA's authority to blacklist people and various procedural justice issues. On weibo Li Xuezheng's hashtag #人民的公义# "justice of the people" had 3.5 billion views as of December 7. Bilingual fans were providing translations of new developments on twitter. Fans thought that the hashtag was being intentionally excluded from weibo's hot search. On December 24, Zhang Zhehan filed a police report for defamation in Beijing.[1] Li Xuezheng's weibo account was suspended in early 2022, with investigations and lawsuits supposedly ongoing, but with no conclusion made public.

Zhang Zhehan started releasing music again in December 2022[2], but according to rumors one of his filmed but unreleased shows was planning reshoots with a different actor[3].

Fans believe that the timing of the 813 allegations (right before the anniversary of Japan's WWII surrender, when nationalism was at a fever pitch) was deliberate sabotage by anti-fans and/or industry insiders. An early fan theory was that industry rivals or companies who hadn't expected Word of Honor to be such a runaway success wanted to shift the public's attention to newer dramas coming out. Another version pointed to CAPA's interests in gaining power/money.

Fandom Impacts

The incident was extremely visible on Chinese social media, and news quickly spread among fan communities in other languages as well. Fans were devastated. Responding to the news, one Word of Honor fan on fail_fandomanon said,

Is it hypocritical of me to draw a line here and not at government censorship of the medium in the first place? Possibly. But there is something about what this has turned into, the overt making an example of an individual to enforce a broader political conformity, with not only the ruin of an individual's life but a very clear "this could happen to you" to every single other person in the industry, and the element of how it started as business competition orchestrating, that just makes me feel, I don't want to be involved in this at all.[4]

An immediate and major impact on the fandom was the loss of access to canon material. Word of Honor is still available to international fans, but the show and related media was removed from Chinese streaming sites. Not only official media, but also fanworks were deleted, including fan videos on bilibili. Fanfiction posted on lofter and wland was also impacted, with the sites planning to either delete tags and/or the stories themselves.[5][6][7] Rumor has it that Lofter did not actually delete text posts.

In cfandom, fans of Zhang Zhehan decided to keep quiet and not defend him, for fear of making the situation worse:

Since August 15, cfans have stopped posting anything related to what happened, and have stopped defending him publicly on social media. Any attempt to defend him or clarify the situation can be seen as whitewashing, or him leading unpatriotic feelings amongst his fans which is incredibly dangerous and can backfire on him, making his already horrific situation even worse. So fans have been very, very quiet.[8]

A lot of English fandom also locked down and became less accessible after 813. Various fan forums and events have had to add rules around how to handle 813 and related developments. For example, see the Word of Honor subreddit: Guidance on How to Proceed on this Subreddit - PLEASE READ, Archived version (August 15, 2021).

Meanwhile, the reputation of popular cdrama youtuber Avenuex was forever tarnished in the eyes of some English-speaking Word of Honor fans; her video on 813 spread the misinformation from weibo about Zhang Zhehan to English-speaking spaces. She supposedly lost hundreds of Youtube subscribers after posting the video[9], though it doesn't seem to have made a dent in her numbers long-term[10]. WOH fans started criticizing this and other aspects of her YouTube videos. See this 2021-09-22 thread, Archived version on fail_fandomanon. Some fans even thought she was being paid to spread misinformation.[11] (There's no evidence she was paid.)

813 also seems to have encouraged more fans to become tinhats:

Like most of this subthread back in July? early August? when we did an informal little poll, I was also a shipper but not a tinhatter before 813. I thought they were probably friends selling CP, but three things have pushed me to the tinhatting side:

First, like you said, GJ continuing to appear to refer to ZZH post-813. I didn't expect it at all, either! And there's no 'selling CP' explanation anymore, there's only 'we're assigning meaning to coincidences' or 'he actually really cares.'

Second, like I've said in previous threads, and like quite a few of us have said, this is my emotional support tinhat! I want to believe that ZZH is loved, and that the evidence of someone who's public presence I still can see is evidence that he's doing okay, and that he got something real and worthwhile out of this whole ordeal. And this is probably the biggest reason. If ZZH is happy and loved? If he can say that it was worth it? Then I don't care who the fuck he's dating.

But the third and final thing, that I don't think I've seen other nonnies mention, is that due to the post-813 migration of the fandom into shared private spaces... I have seen a lot of clips that I hadn't seen before, and seen things pointed out in them... and exactly what types and levels of casual touch, exactly, should I believe are platonic? Lol.

fail_fandomanon, October 2021[12]

I honestly think the Word of Honor tinhatting would have died down for now if not for 813, which (A) meant people were already primed to believe in conspiracy theories, (B) made people who believed in JunZhe feel like ZZH was at least happily in love if nothing else and made them feel better about the situation, and (C) meant there were no new interviews and promotions to conflict with the idea of ZZH they formed in their minds. And because these people huddled together to talk about their beliefs, in conflict with the parts of fandom that thought he really was unpatriotic, it built up more intensely.

fail_fandomanon, July 2022[13]

813 led to the growth of more conspiracy theories in the fandom generally, not just tinhatting among Junzhe shippers. The lack of reliable news updates, compounded by the likelihood of a genuine conspiracy to destroy Zhang Zhehan's career, caused fans to turn to "melon" accounts and other unverified sources, especially non-Chinese speakers, who had even more limited access to information and relied on a small group of bilingual fans to translate new information. Increasingly questionable theories spread among fans in 2022. For example, Gong Jun, ZZH's costar in Word of Honor, is believed by some to be the mastermind behind 813.[14] Unfortunately, Zhang Zhehan's own public statements may have encouraged the spread of this theory; his instagram account, zhangzhehan_super3, became active again in April/May 2022, where he posted a video suggesting nefarious intent or bad behavior on Gong Jun's part. ZZH's posts caused another rupture in the fandom, because until that point, many fans believed that Gong Jun was making veiled references to Zhehan as a supportive gesture or (if they were tinhats) as a sign that he and Zhehan were in a relationship. When Zhehan actually mentioned this alleged CP fanservice on instagram, albeit without mentioning Gong Jun by name, he indicated that they were not friends and Gong Jun was trying to cash in on shippers in a way he found distasteful. (Since these references to ZZH were very oblique, as of December 2022 it's still not confirmed if any of the fanservice was intentional or just fans' wishful thinking. One incident ZZH mentioned in particular may not have even been Gong Jun's doing at all, according to some fans on fail_fandomanon; in one of GJ's September 2021 TV appearances, the show displayed ZZH's baby pictures instead of GJ's onscreen, presumably by accident.[15][16][17])

Solo fans of Zhang Zhehan or Gong Jun, Zhang Zhehan/Gong Jun shippers, and Zhang Zhehan/Gong Jun tinhats are all motivated to support different theories. Many fans believe the instagram account is controlled by someone else, and his new videos, photos, and music output are either faked, older unpublished material, or somehow coerced. Others believe Gong Jun to be guilty as charged, while a third faction thinks Zhang Zhehan's opinions are genuinely his but incorrect. Anti-ZZH fans appear to think the original 813 allegations are true. Meanwhile, some Word of Honor fans are trying to ignore 813 and focus on the show.

Both 813 itself and the fandom's turn toward conspiracism may have caused other fans to leave the fandom.[18][19] The increasingly stark divisions on the drama side of the fandom also seem to have negatively impacted the related cnovel fandoms: see A Light on You for a 2023 example.

Fanworks in response to 813

AO3 fanworks posted per month in the Word of Honor, Word of Honor RPF, and Gong Jun/Zhang Zhehan tags. 813 may have caused a temporary surge in Gong Jun/Zhang Zhehan fanwork posting, as Chinese fans moved their stories from Chinese sites.

While 813 and its aftermath may have killed some fans' interest in Word of Honor fandom, other fans created RPF fanworks in response to 813. As of November 2023, the AO3 tag for 813 includes 124 fanworks, of which 122 are also tagged Gong Jun/Zhang Zhehan.[20] RPF fans also set up a few post-813 AO3 collections.

Links

2021

2022

2023

References

  1. ^ Zhang Zhehan successfully filed police report over defamation four months after scandal tarnished his reputation, Archived version, Lim Yian Lu, Yahoo News, 27 December 2021.
  2. ^ Wikipedia:Zhang_Zhehan, accessed 18 February 2023.
  3. ^ Xiao Zhan, Bai Baihe wrap/ Seven Tan, Xu Kai begin/ Retro Detective reshoots/ Crystal & Mark, youtube video by Marcus Here!, Feb 7, 2023.
  4. ^ Re: Cnovels - Word of Honor/TYK/etc., Archived version, anonymous comment in fail_fandomanon, 2021-08-15. (Accessed 20 September 2021.)
  5. ^ twitter discussion, Archived version, 18 August 2021.
  6. ^ Wland & Lofter both nuked all JunZhe fics., Archived version, tweet by ieatwhitecats, 18 August 2021.
  7. ^ wland has also nuked the JunZhe category this morning 🌝 Joke's on them because I saved most of the fics I liked last night., Archived version, tweet by ieatwhitecats, 18 August 2021.
  8. ^ tumblr post by zhongwans, Archived version, Sep 29, 2021.
  9. ^ twitter thread by farawaywanderer of discord screencaps, Archived version, Nov 29, 2021.
  10. ^ At the time she had an estimated 80K subscribers and a year later has 99K subscribers. The crucifixion of Zhang Zhehan in the age of misinformation, Archived version, medium post by 1000snow, 22 August 2021. AvenueX, Archived version (Accessed 30 December 2022.)
  11. ^ Re: Cnovels - C-Ent, ZZH, and CAPA, Archived version, anonymous thread, fail_fandomanon, 2021-11-30.
  12. ^ Re: Cnovels - Word of Honor/TYK/etc. - RPF, Archived version, 2021-10-10.
  13. ^ Re: Tell Meme, anonymous comment, fail_fandomanon, 2022-07-13.
  14. ^ "Evil Gong Jun is still the other end of the spectrum of outlandish theories. So those who loudly believe ZZH is ZSJ (I say loudly because it's only a specific sort) also believe that evil Gong Jun framed Zhang Zhehan, is a male prostitute who posts nudes and should be banned from C-Ent." Re: Cnovels - ZZH cult, Archived version, fail_fandomanon thread, 2022-07-25.
  15. ^ Re: Cnovels - ZZH cult, Archived version, anonymous comment, fail_fandomanon, 2022-07-25.
  16. ^ Re: Cnovels - C-ent, Archived version, anonymous thread, fail_fandomanon, 2022-06-09.
  17. ^ Re: Cnovels - ZZH cult, Archived version, anonymous comment, fail_fandomanon, 2022-07-25.
  18. ^ Re: Cnovels - ZZH cult, Archived version, fail_fandomanon thread, 2022-07-25.
  19. ^ Re: Never Love Anything, Archived version, fail_fandomanon comment, 2024-01-11.
  20. ^ August 13 2021 (Chinese Actor RPF), Archived version, AO3 works page, logged-in counts (Accessed 30 November 2023.)
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