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Chinese ``Web Worm'' fights prejudice
1999-12-21
SHANGHAI - When government organisers dreamed up the idea of China's first ``Miss Internet'' competition, they envisioned a winner with the mind of a computer programmer and the body of a beauty queen. Smart and shapely, she would be a television role model to encourage more Chinese women to venture online. So when Chen Fanhong burst into contention, the organisers determined she must be stopped. Chen had sailed through the qualifying rounds with an easy mastery of Web design and a knack for surfing cyberspace. But she is disabled: a battle against bone cancer has left her temporarily wheelchair-bound. In words that hurt more than her excruciating cancer treatment, the official in charge told her sternly: ``You have lost your spring bloom.'' She could attend the finals, but only as a ``specially invited'' observer. How this frail 24-year-old used a laptop and modem to fight prejudice and ignorance, and eventually claim the winner's crown as the people's choice, speaks volumes about the power of the Internet to change China. NO SUGAR COATING Having breezed through the Zhejiang provincial round of the competition -- whose sponsors included Swedish telecommunications giant Ericsson -- Chen could hardly believe her ears when the organiser told her she was spoiled goods. ``He didn't even try sugar-coating,'' she said. The televised final in Shanghai would require contestants to fish out obscure information from the Web, design and e-mail a greeting card and answer trivia questions. But, the official told her, there would also be aerobic exercises to ``appraise the physiques of the contestants.'' ``How could you possibly try to compare yourself with normal people?'' he demanded to know. There was no room for people like her, he said, using a stock Chinese word for ``disabled,'' which translates literally as ``damaged and diseased.'' Said Chen: ``I cried for the first time since the operation.'' ``Chinese people think it's unhealthy to be in a wheelchair. They feel extremely uncomfortable, which is strange because I feel absolutely normal.'' Chen was ready to call it quits, and so were her parents, nervous about a recurrence of her cancer. In July, she had undergone surgery to fit a steel replacement part into her pelvis, where doctors had discovered two large tumours. Angry and humiliated, she wrote an impassioned essay and posted it on her Web site. ``How can not being healthy mean I have 'lost my spring bloom'? Is our understanding of the meaning of health really this shallow?'' she wrote. ``The Internet is the Internet. It's no substitute for the real world. I thought I could walk into the real world through the Internet, but found that the door to the real world was shut. I could only stand on this side looking in.'' ``WEB WORM'' ALSO FIGHTS CRIME A newly-minted chemical engineer when she was struck down by cancer, Chen soon came across medical uses for the Internet. On her back for six months last year recovering from a prior operation, she set up a Web site packed with information about bone disorders and persuaded doctors at a Shanghai orthopaedic hospital to dispense advice in her chat room. Her other exploits as a ``Web Worm,'' as surfers are popularly known in China, included piecing together a digital mug shot from video clips of a man in glasses and fake beard robbing a bank in her home town of Ningbo, eastern China. Within days the culprit was picked up at a gas station by police carrying a printout of her composite photo. She has also begun writing a novel modelled after the literary kung fu stories of Chinese author Jin Yong, to be first published -- where else? -- on the Internet. So when she came across a Web announcement for a Miss Internet contest, she naturally signed up, inspired by the competition's stated goal of getting more Chinese women online. Of the 4.5 million Internet users in China, 85 percent are men. Men dominate science departments at colleges, and grab the plum jobs on offer to technical graduates. STORY SPREADS LIKE WILDFIRE After she was ejected from the competition, a newspaper in the nearby city of Hangzhou picked up Chen's essay and printed the story. Dozens of newspaper and television stories followed. E-mails poured in to Chen's Web site (http:/fchen.yeah.net), which registered more than 1,000 hits per day. Within a week, the beleaguered organising committee had issued an apology and invited Chen back into the competition. A disabled Beijing woman wrote to Chen saying she also had intended to register but dropped out for fear of humiliation. ``You must go because you're not afraid,'' she urged. This month, as the other finalists left their Shanghai hotel and piled onto a coach for the championship, Chen rolled her wheelchair past the idling bus: she'd travel the few blocks to the television studio on her own. ``Even if I get last place, it doesn't matter,'' she said. ``People will turn on their TV sets, see me and say 'that's impossible'. By the time they turn their sets off I want them to say 'this is normal'.'' At the studio, during a lull in rehearsals, an exhausted Chen draped a scarf over her head to snatch a few moments of sleep. ``The best result would have been for her to pull out,'' whispered her father, worried about the strain the competition had put on her health. ``But there are more levels to this now,'' he said, sitting close by to fend off reporters and well-wishers. ``One person has reflected so much about this society -- about attitudes toward the disabled, about the news media, about how young people should grow up, and about freedom of speech.'' Several hours later, a panel of 10 judges declared Chen ``Miss Internet.'' Journalists swarmed the stage, where she sat calmly, clutching a bouquet of roses. ``An Internet friend had asked whether I'm able to stand up,'' she said. ``Just now I did, and it was my happiest moment.''
Chinese ``Web Worm'' fights prejudice (1999-12-21)1 (11285)
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