Pepe the Sad Frog Coloring Book and Chinese Language Guide

Editor’s note: this “coloring-book zine” by Fei Liu was originally published in Issue 7 of Logic magazine, which is available for purchase here. It has been excerpted here with permission (we’re not defying Logic).

Pepe The Sad Frog Coloring Book and Chinese Language Guide is a coloring-book zine about the Chinese adoption of the US-based Pepe meme, and what potentials there are to explore and encourage bilingual and cross-cultural political dialogue within this phenomenon.

Comic artist Matt Furie’s cartoon frog has taken off in unexpected and also disturbing ways in dark corners of the US internet. Its mainstream embrace by Chinese users help us remember simpler times when Pepe was just… sad.

Found on the Timeline feature of my step-sister’s WeChat app: an elementary school student drawing and coloring in Pepe by hand, and my obsession for the past few months.