 WeChat is the center of the Chinese internet — powering everything from messaging to payments — and the main portal where China’s news outlets and bloggers publish their work. Family drama Saturday is the start of Lunar New Year, a major holiday across parts of Asia marked by centuries-old traditions, never-ending plates of food, and reunions with family. But in China, at least, the “honeymoon period” during prolonged visits with relatives quickly comes to an end. Soon enough, siblings and parents begin bickering over trivial things, and “the difficulty of maintaining family love increases exponentially,” a blogger who uses the pseudonym Chen Xiaoshui wrote for Sanlian Lifeweek Magazine. There’s one topic many young people in China are particularly dreading discussing with family this year: their career plans. College graduates in the country are struggling to find jobs across the board, but parents often believe their children’s personal shortcomings are to blame for their poor job prospects. “No matter how much you prove to yourself that ‘I have grown up,’ it does not work for them and is not what they see in their own eyes,” one of Chen’s friends said. Digital luck One of the most important traditions of Lunar New Year is the exchange of hóng bāo, red envelopes filled with cash given to friends and family as a symbol of good luck. The practice has been digitized, and platforms like WeChat are now the default way to send loved ones red envelopes. But as tech blog PCOnline notes, the “free” feature for delivering one on WeChat — which actually costs 14 cents — is a lucrative business. Some 4 billion hóng bāo were sent through the app last year, pulling in an estimated $562 million for Tencent, WeChat’s parent company. Digital hóng bāo are also becoming an important marketing push for businesses and social media influencers, the blog noted. Internet stars often show appreciation to their followers during Lunar New Year by gifting red envelopes during livestreams, and global brands like Gucci and Tiffany are now sponsoring some of the broadcasts. These collaborations “trigger a rush of fans” to the brands’ websites, boosting traffic more than 100% above normal rates. Goodbye to Japan’s ‘godmother’ Yoko Abe — mother of the late Japanese Prime Minister Shinzo Abe, and daughter of post-war Prime Minister Nobusuke Kishi — was known as Japan’s “godmother” for supporting a long lineage of nationalist political leaders. When she passed away this week, the news immediately made headlines in Taiwan, where President Tsai Ing-wen and President-elect Lai Ching-te both expressed their condolences in Japanese. Many mainland political analysts questioned why Taiwanese leaders chose to celebrate Abe, whose family’s politics they argued facilitated war crimes on the island during World War II. The foreign affairs blog yǒu lǐr yǒu miàn, or “having both reason and face” — a Chinese idiom used to refer to people who are both logical and socially adept — provided one explanation. Its anonymous author argued that while Yoko Abe’s family historically oppressed Taiwan, her son’s nationalist platform was rooted in anti-China sentiment. Shinzo Abe’s foreign policy actively helped promote Taiwan’s sovereignty, which Tsai and Lai’s Democratic Progressive Party also supported. The post argued this shared agenda is evidence of Japanese foreign influence in Taiwan, meaning for the DPP, Yoko Abe’s death is like losing a “biological mother.” | 
