One of the most significant cultural phenomena in Chinese society in recent years is the growing interest in history. Everyone—elite and general populace, leftists and rightists—shows an unprecedented enthusiasm for understanding China's past. And in 2009 a series of major historical anniversaries, including the 90th anniversary of the May Fourth Movement, have pushed China's “historical fever” to new highs. One of the major reasons stimulating the keen interest in history is that the “reforms” that followed June Fourth, returned China to a “pre-liberation” scenario almost overnight: bureaucratic corruption, moral bankruptcy, social injustice; to the point that, in some important aspects, such as higher education, the status quo in China is not as good as the KMT era, and many phenomena that people thought could not happen again, such as prostitution and the sale of official posts, not only occur, they do so on a far greater scale than in the past.

History has played a big joke on the Chinese, who having experienced countless sufferings and paid the price in countless lives, rather than gaining social progress with their bloody struggle, have turned full circle to find themselves back where they started. How exactly did this come about? Not only the elite, but also many ordinary people are puzzled by this problem. This historical puzzlement of unprecedented numbers of people is what drives China's historically unprecedented “public history movement.”

Read more: Historical Bafflement of the Chinese People

Abstract: This paper explores the process by which user-created content in contemporary China has evolved from being appropriated as a weapon of political mobilization and accusation to serving as vehicles of independent self-representation. The analysis is set in the context of the social, political and economic metamorphosis that China has undergone in the past five decades and foregrounds the dynamics of political, economic and technological forces that has been transforming Chinese media and the way media users have been (mis-)represented. The metaphor of 'the wall' is used to chart the contours of the struggle for self-expression and representation. The paper concludes with a brief discussion of the political and social implications of the internet and networked user created media content for China.

Key Words: User-created Content, Self-representation, "Big Character Posters", YouTube Videos, Ti-yong

On June 20 2008, China's President Hu Jintao thrilled a burgeoning generation of Chinese internet users by acknowledging their important role in China in a four-minute online chat with them in an internet chat room. The president said, "We care a lot about Internet users' ideas and advice...The Internet is an important channel for us to understand and collect public opinions" (China Digital Times, 2008; Watts, 2008) .

Read more: The Turn to the Self: From “Big Character Posters” to YouTube Videos