Your Pinky Heart

Phenomenally viral song by the Malaysian hip-hop artist, Namewee, "It might Break Your Pinky Heart. Namewee 黃明志 Ft.Kimberley Chen 陳芳語【Fragile 玻璃心】@鬼才做音樂 2021 Ghosician" — premiered on 10/15/21, and it already has nearly 9,000,000 views:

Wee Meng Chee (Chinese: 黄明志; pinyin: Huáng Míngzhì; born 6 May 1983) is a Malaysian Chinese hip hop recording artist, composer, filmmaker and actor who is widely known by his stage name Namewee (/ˈneɪm.wiː/), a bilingual pun on his first name, which sounds like the Mandarin term for name (Chinese: 名字; pinyin: míngzi).

Wee gained popularity after releasing a controversial song titled Negarakuku, a remake of the national anthem of Malaysia, Negaraku. The word kuku resembles the male reproductive organ in Chinese Hokkien dialect. In the weeks following the song's release, it drew criticism from Malaysian society.

(source)

Superficially, the song seems funny and silly, but it's actually a devastating critique of the PRC.  To understand it fully, one needs to grasp the many references and images, and catch all the puns and other word play.  In that sense, it is like a contemporary Tang poem — you have to be up on all the more or less hidden allusions.

The fact that the video is trilingual (Chinese, Malay, and English) makes the satire all the richer (multi-layered).  Note that trilingual subtitles are provided in all three of these languages.

Some of the references are known outside the Sinosphere, e.g., Great Firewall (= censorship), Pooh (= Xi Jinping), etc.  Others, like jiǔcài 韭菜 ("leeks; Chinese chives" = speculative investment; corruption; referenced visually and verbally in the video) are more esoteric and require specialized knowledge.  Language Log readers in the know are invited to supply other clues and explications.

It's making the rounds even on the non-China-focused internet, e.g., here, which will help you crack many of the cultural codes.

 

Selected reading

• "Ramps, chives, garlic, and other members of the Allium genus" (4/29/13)
• "'Lying flat' and 'Involution': passive-aggressive resistance" (6/4/21) — see especially this comment
• "God use VPN" (12/28/15)
• "Dr Victor Mair The Impact of the Internet on Chinese Language and Chinese Studies HD 720p 1", video (5/21/15) — at the US Naval Academy, introduced by Professor Miles Yu
• "Badge of honor: Language Log is blocked in China" (12/26/19)
• "Cat and mouse on the Chinese internet" (7/30/15)
• "The Grass-Mud Horse Dictionary: How Chinese Bloggers Evade Censorship
• Code words aren't just for James Bond and the Secret Service", Time, By Katy Steinmetz (9/4/13)
• "Dubbing and subtitles" (10/21/21)

 

[Thanks to Scott Mauldin]