BEIJING: A Tibetan fox emoji package recently made its way across China’s digital waves. The man featured in the emoji pack appears to be at a loss, looking at you with a sense of disbelief. The big square face, coupled with deeply set eyes in a haze-like setting, almost reflect the human reenactment of a Tibetan fox.
As netizens deemed the expression simply too funny to just let go, they quickly upgraded the GIF to the next level, transforming it into a full-fledged emoticon package.
The man’s name is Zhang Chenliang and his moniker is none other than Wuqiong Xiaoliang or Bowu Jun in Chinese. This is no idle boast as the popular science blogger has no less than 6 million followers on Weibo, China’s Twitter equivalent, and a following of more than 6 million on short video sharing platform Bilibili.
The 31-year-old Beijing native, holding a master’s degree in agricultural entomology and pest control from China Agricultural University, is a project director at Natural History magazine. In charge of managing the magazine’s Weibo account, much of his daily schedule involves answering curious reader queries which can cover entomology, zoology, botany and geography. In replying to them, Zhang has adapted an online persona, turning himself into the reserved, humorous “Mr. Naturalist” with a hint of mischief to boot.
Popular science is rarely the socially acceptable definition of fun.
Stereotypical science knowledge goes against the goals of stealing public attention and creating an online goldmine. Nevertheless, for Zhang, with many popular science streamers following in his footsteps, short video platforms like Bilibili and Douyin (China’s version of TikTok) turned out to be a way to break the boundaries of knowledge and uncovering new paths to popular science.
– The Daily Mail-Beijing Review News exchange item
