Chinese Paratrooper Crying

Submission 747

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About

Chinese Paratrooper Crying, also known as When a Chinese Paratrooper Finds Out or Chinese Soldier Crying, refers to a phrasal template and exploitable image macro meme featuring a photograph of a young and teary-eyed Chinese paramilitary officer likely taken sometime around 2010. The image is often posted alongside text that reads, "When a Chinese paratrooper finds out they're being dropped into Appalachia and not New England." While the earliest known instance of this phrase was first documented in March 2024, different versions of the meme that were popularized in 2024 show "Appalachia" often replaced with other supposedly dangerous American cities, like Atlanta or Miami, in caption memes about a theoretical WW3 scenario.

Origin

The image of the crying Chinese soldier can be traced back to the year 2010, with the earliest known record of the post showing the image alongside context appearing on a Rediff^[1] listicle from December 15th, 2010. The caption on the image reads, "A paramilitary police recruit shed tears before heading to Xinjiang Uygur Autonomous Region to start his service, at a railway station in Jiaxing, Zhejiang province, China."

On March 17th, 2024, X^[2] user @Rothmus posted a version of the aforementioned image with text added to it in a banner across the top of the image, creating a caption meme. The text read, "When a Chinese paratrooper finds out they're being dropped into Appalachia and not New England." The post gathered over 1,000 likes and 4 million views in seven months.

The post gathered pushback from Americans who consider West Virginia and the Appalachian region to be one of the more neglected parts of America, saying that the natives there would not be equipped to fight any wars given a long history of health problems caused by pollution and drug epidemics.

On March 20th, X^[3] user @jakebrodes wrote, "The hoorah America fuck yeah!! day dream war fantasies of meme peddlers and content factory accounts love to view Appalachia as a mythical stronghold of ruthless hardened trained guerrilla killers of men and not one of the most neglected and impoverished places in the country."

Also on March 20th, 2024, X^[4] user @WireRacing wrote, "I lived in West Virginia for years and have no idea why people outside Appalachia think it’s this redoubt of hardened guerrillas in waiting. It’s a place where the soil, air, and water have been poisoned by industry and 30% of everyone you know has cancer."

Spread

The meme saw a resurgence on October 15th, 2024, with X^[5] account @StateofMind_02 posting a version of the U.S. map captioned, "Result if WWIII happens." The map showed China taking over the American Southeast. The post was subsequently deleted.

On October 15th, X^[6] user @iBMM335 posted a version of the meme that read, "When a Chinese paratrooper finds out they're being dropped into Atlanta and not New England," gathering over 53,000 likes in a week.

On October 19th, 2024, X^[7] user @smokeismedicine posted a smiling edit of the meme, gathering over 9,000 likes on a post captioned, "PLA troop after I tell him he is beautiful 🥹💕"

Also on October 19th, X^[8] user @quadspawning posted a tweet that read, "PLA troops after getting deployed to Transylvania and seeing a guy wearing a cape with a widows peak and fangs running at them," gathering over 14,000 likes in two days.