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A popular Chinese live-streamer's show was abruptly cut off after a fellow live-streamer presented an ice cream that's shaped to look like a tank.
Ice cream was presented in form of a "tank"
The incident happened on June 3, a day before the 33th anniversary of the June 4 massacre in 1989, where Chinese soldiers crushed the student-led protests at Tiananmen Square in Beijing, according to Bloomberg.
The ice cream, presented together with some cookies and what appeared to be a chocolate ball and a chocolate wafer roll, bore a passing resemblance to the tanks that an unidentified Chinese man tried to stop from moving through the square.
Images and video clips of the "tank man" repeatedly moving to stand in front of the column of tanks to stop them from advancing had come to symbolise defiance in the face of violent suppression by the government.
The live-streamer, Li Jiaqi, is a wildly popular among the Chinese, and is known as "Brother Lipstick" (口紅一哥) for his wildly successful feat in selling lipsticks to women -- he once sold more than 15,000 lipsticks within five minutes.
His success had even led to a feature on the TIME100 Next 2021 list, which called him a live-streaming sales powerhouse and commended his charity work benefiting rural farmers.
Was promoting ice cream when show got cut
According to the BBC (Chinese), the 29-year-old was promoting a sort of layered Viennetta ice cream by Wall's when his show was cut off.
Li then posted a statement on his official Weibo page that said his team was "dealing with technical issues", and asked everyone to wait for a moment.
Two hours later, however, he apologised once again and said the livestream could not continue any longer.
Screenshot via Li Jiaqi/Weibo
Li, who has more than 64 million followers on Taobao Live (a live-streaming service on the Taobao app), was promoting the ice cream product -- popular among Chinese consumers -- during the "618" shopping festival.
Taking place from June 1 to 18, many e-commerce brands strive to promote their goods during this period that's touted as the second largest shopping festival after Double 11.
It is unknown if it was Li's team or the brand company which came up with the way the ice cream was presented.
Missed his shows after
Although Li had planned for more livestream shows on the weekend after, he failed to appear on any shows, prompting concern and curiosity from his fans.
Some even asked what the "tank" meant, in hopes of getting some answers through private messages from those who understand the situation.
These discussions, however, were scrubbed from Weibo as soon after they appeared, leaving only comments that expressed trust in the Chinese Communist Party (CCP) or speculated the disruption was due to "foreign forces", according to CNN.
Disruption sparked curiosity
As much as the Party wants to keep chatter about the events of June 4 to a minimum, the sudden disruption to Li's show and censorship of the livestream incident altogether have likely stirred the curiosity of social media users, who might be more inclined to find out the real reason behind the disruption, in what is known as the Streisand effect.
Not everyone in China knows about the Tiananmen Square protests and subsequent violent suppression. Information is subdued, and few people are willing to discuss it publicly under a restrictive political climate.
And while people in China are free to view sources of information beyond the Great Firewall using VPN services, many use such services to explore foreign entertainment options, instead of political news.
June 4 is a sensitive date in China
This incident with Li came a month after another popular online personality, "Sai Lei", who first became famous due to his nationalist content, was banned by several social media platforms.
He had included a clip of the "tank man" briefly in a video in which he criticised American TV channel CNN.
All references to the "tank man", as well as the Tiananmen Square massacre, are heavily censored in China, where the online censorship apparatus targets even the slightest or most obscure reference to the issue.
Every year on June 4, emojis that might be used to convey mourning, such as candles, are disabled in China. Popular messaging app WeChat also disables the function of changing profile pictures on this day.
Previously, in 2021, a Chinese app was censored after it asked "What's the date today?" on June 4 -- a seemingly innocuous question on any other day, but took on a different flavour as it was posted on a day deemed sensitive by authorities.
A current affairs commentator, who was interviewed by U.S.-funded news service Radio Free Asia, had expressed his incredulity that no one in Li's team spotted the crucial mistake even though it was supposedly "common sense" to avoid any references to the crackdown on June 4.
Candlelight vigils in Hong Kong -- one of the last places in China to uphold the decades-long tradition -- have also been banned by the authorities.
China's Defence Minister Wei Fenghe had previously addressed the crackdown in 2019 -- a rare admission by a CCP member that confirmed the event.
Calling the government's response, which killed around 10,000 people in an estimate, "an incident", he rejected the use of the word "suppression" to refer to the crackdown, and said the CCP's response was the "right policy" as they "took measures to stop the turbulence".
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Top image via Taobao Live