Twitter Bits: Wholesome Memes, Winter Wonderlands, and Grimes and the Gigafactory

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4:05 PM HKT, Wed January 9, 2019 2 mins read
A Family Affair

Chinese social media is kicking off 2019 on a surprisingly wholesome note.

The 四世同堂 “four generations” challenge, which first appeared on China’s short-video app Douyin (known internationally as TikTok), features family members making an appearance from youngest to oldest. A daughter calls out to her mother, who calls her mother, who calls her mother — you get the picture.

Brought to foreign media attention by BuzzFeed reporter Kassy Cho, this meme might be one of the cutest in recent internet history. Of course, the rest of the world wasted no time joining in.

Ice, Ice Baby

Another heartwarming sight this winter: Harbin’s annual Ice and Snow Festival officially began January 5th. This frozen wonderland spans 600,000 square meters — defending its title as the world’s largest snow festival — and offers dog sledding to mass weddings to winter swimming performances in temperatures well below freezing.

Of course, the thing that really makes the ice festival’s reputation is the ice sculptures. This year, 64 artists from 12 countries competed to make masterpieces out of no more than 10 chunks of ice. These stunning works, modeled after animals, cartoons, and famous monuments, put Frozen‘s Elsa to shame (don’t @ me).

Gigafactory Visions

Down in Shanghai, Elon Musk broke ground on Tesla’s first overseas factory and China’s first completely foreign-owned car plant on Monday. The Gigafactory 3 is expected to produce the company’s cheapest electric car by the end of the year and crank out 500,000 vehicles per year once it is fully operational, according to a company statement. Based on Tesla’s Q3 results, that’s more than five times the number of vehicles the company manufactures domestically.

But perhaps what got the Twitterverse more excited was this post by Musk’s ex-girlfriend who just so happened to, for no special reason whatsoever, pay the country a visit.

Twitter users had some suggestions for what the Canadian singer-songwriter could do:

Update: Looks like Elon and Grimes grabbed some hotpot in Beijing…

And if you’re wondering why the Global Times is dissing a “pancake quick meal on the street”, here’s some background:

Pictures of You

And to top off this week of wholesome social media content, enjoy this tweet from History in Pictures which renews our faith in soulmates.

Is this 缘分 yuanfen (“fate”)or what? The story is credited to coming out of Chengdu, while the photos were clearly taken in Qingdao, around 2,000km away. Brb as I scroll through my camera roll to check if my future husband is lurking somewhere in the background…

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