On average, the Chinese don't like the Japanese very much. The memory of the war has never entirely faded, not least because the Government ensures that it doesn't. I am often struck by the casual hostility directed at Japan by Chinese people who are not only too young to remember the war, but whose parents are too young to remember. Recently, in Xinjiang, three Chinese Uighur men on a bus told me of their dislike for the Japanese because of the war. You'd be hardpressed to find many other areas where the Uighur and Han (China's ethnic majority) are of one mind. On a flight from Urumqi back to Beijing the next day, a young university student in the seat next to me lamented that her Sony laptop and Canon digital camera were Japanese. She wasn't happy about that, but had to admit that "they make the best stuff".

Most of the time, ill will is subverted to the necessities of modern, international society and naked consumer lust (after all, if you gotta have a VAIO...). From time to time it erupts in some serious way, such as the riots after China lost to Japan in the Asia Cup soccer finals in Beijing two years ago. More often, it erupts in fairly ridiculous ways, such as when the builders of a new Japanese-financed building in Shanghai were forced to change the design of the top of the building as a large, circular cutout was thought to be too suggestive of the Japanese flag. The new design uses a safely neutral square cutout. It makes the building look like a 400m bottle opener, but that's a small price to pay for salvaging the honor of the Pudong skyline. Now, if only we had an 800m bottle of Tsingtao beer to go with it.

Simply unacceptable!

Roland Soong, author of the excellent EastSouthWestNorth (ESWN) blog in Hong Kong, has posted on a Beijing Evening News story about another outbreak of faintly ridiculous nationalism, this time in one of China's popular massively multiplayer online role-playing games. The game is Netease's Fantasy Westward Journey (梦幻西游). Apparently, some time around the Fourth of July (Americans, hold your jokes, please), a player noticed that a backdrop in a virtual Tang Dynasty office had a sun motif that looked alarmingly like the Japanese flag. By July 6, the avatars of thousands of angry players had "gathered" in the space in something akin to an online mob where, fortunately, the reaction was limited to angry griping and conspiracy theories. Screenshots show the mob in all its pixelated wrath. As Roland translates from the news story:

"To raise a 'Rising Sun flag' in a Great Tang government office is obviously a challenge and an insult!" said local game player Mr Zeng angrily. Another game player Ms Lu could not conceal her disappointment: "Even though everything in the game is virtual, our feelings are still genuine. This incident has seriously hurt our feelings. We find this unacceptable." According to game player Mr Gu, many game players contacted the customer service line after the incident broke, but the other side only repeated: "No comment." Mr Guo said that the word among the game players is that the "Rising Sun flag" is present in a Tang dynasty government office because some of the stock shares in this online game have been purchased by a foreign company. This explanation has not been confirmed.

On this, Peking University Department of Sociology professor Xia Xueluan said a national flag is not an ordinary commercial product because it is the symbol of a sovereign nation. Therefore, to hand the flag of one sovereign nation at the symbolic place for another sovereign nation is a form of public challenge. Prof Xia said the game's planning and operation department should consider the social meaning of the game instead of the mere commercial value. While entertaining the public, they ought to educate and lead people to make the proper value judgments.

No word on resolution yet. Netease has provided photographs of actual Chinese dynastic offices with similar motifs in them, but they may find that a little virtual redecorating will be the best move in the long run.

Before. Note rising sun at upper right.	After. Note angry mob.

Or maybe not. As Beijing-based technology entrepreneur and blogger Bill Bishop notes on his blog, the protests are helping to drive a lot of traffic. That's something to warm the heart of any online game operator.

Stay tuned for any further developments.

Update: ESWN has posted an interesting follow-up article on the virtual "jailing" of a player and problems with politically named avatars and guilds in the game.