#<- tagging w/ drama name bc this is from a promotional post even though it's not official content

[naptimed]

240112 dong sicheng studio update

[yinzhengs]

timeline of zhai tianlin drama

—aka, why OS s2 is in peril: the tl;dr is that people are casting suspicion on zhai tianlin’s phd thesis’ validity + it’s blown up. this is taken from this weibo post here that tried to give a summary / timeline of events (note that as far as i can tell, OP is biased against ztl...) 

note that a lot of (if not all) of these claims are unsubstantiated / based on questionable “evidence.” my heart goes out to ztl for having to deal with the massive influx of hate — tags abt this have been trending all week, and this drama’s even made the news. (link to english article, south china morning post)

avenuex also made a video about it here (which i haven’t watched yet bc frankly i don’t have the emotional energy, but i’ve heard it’s good)

throughout the post they refer to ztl as “翟博士” which is lit. doctor/phd zhai. whether or not it’s snarky... well... i’ll leave it to you to decide. all my additions in the form of links or supplementary info are in square brackets.

一个翟博士引发的惨案 / lit. a massacre that dr. zhai started

背景：翟博士微博晒出北大光华学院博士后站录取通知书，自勉“加油，小翟”。

background: dr. zhai shared on weibo his acceptance letter to the brilliant beijing university, encouraging himself with the caption “加油 [jiayou], xiao zhai” (approx. keep up the good work, little zhai) 第一波：翟博士不知知网。网友问他能否在知网看见他的博士论文，他一头雾水问“知网是什么” 翟博士：自我挽尊“我说不知道1+1=2都有人信”。 the first wave: dr. zhai didn’t know about 知网 [zhiwang] / China National Knowledge Infrastructure (wiki link provided, but it’s a research database similar to jstor in the west). netizens asked if they would be able to read his phd thesis on CNKI. completely confused, he asked: “what’s CNKI?”

dr zhai [later], trying to save his own dignity: “people would believe me even if i said i didn’t know 1+1=2.” 

[ie. he commented this to note that he meant it sarcastically. ppl on the net didn’t believe him, sparking the next events...]  第二波：翟博士无c刊论文。网友通过知网查询，发现翟博士没有c刊论文，正规大学毕业一般都需要发论文。 翟博士轧戏无时间上学。网友分析翟博士博士期间的工作量，基本都在拍戏和活动，完全不符合全日制学生的在校时间。 翟博士工作室挽尊：“博士论文将由学校统一上传”，“通过函授、导师进组指导学习”。

the second wave: dr. zhai doesn’t have a paper in the CSSCI (a rather unhelpful wiki link provided, essentially the largest social science publication citation index in china + a measure by which a publication’s authenticity/accredibility is measured). netizens searched across CNKI and found that dr. zhai didn’t have any papers [cited] in the CSSCI, though according to usual university graduation standards, theses must be published [into the system].

dr. zhai had no time to attend class while filming. netizens analyzed dr. zhai’s workload during his phd program [2014-2018] and found that he was always either filming or doing promotional activities — there was no way he could have had time to attend full-time schooling during the semester.

his studio’s damage control: “[ztl’s] doctoral thesis will be organized and uploaded by his university,” “through correspondence [long-distance teaching], his advisor oversaw his studies”

第三波： 网友继续质疑没有c刊论文如何答辩。 粉丝拿翟博士唯一发表在《广电时评》文章挽尊，但被嘲笑不是c刊，又挽尊北电不一定用c刊。

the third wave: netizens continue to question — without a published thesis, how could he defend his dissertation?

fans tried to defend him with an essay he published in “广电时评” [a film-related magazine], but were mocked because that wasn’t a CSSCI publication. fans also tried to defend him saying that beijing film academy [where ztl got his phd] didn’t necessarily use CSSCI. 第四波：于妈下场。于妈发出对话截图，证明翟博士有十万字论文，且高达645k，赞他写的好。 网友质疑十万字论文怎么只有600多k，引用文献和开头学校图标都没有吗。 the fourth wave: mama yu [nickname for director yu zheng, notable for shows like story of yanxi palace + yin zheng’s upcoming winter begonia] appears. yu posts a screenshot of their chat history [with picture of attachments sent], proving that dr. zhai had a thesis w/ over 100,000 words, and a file size of over 645 kilobytes, praising that he wrote it well.

netizens call into question why a 100,000 word thesis is only ~600 kilobytes — was there no bibliography, or even a icon [ie. picture file which would increase file size dramatically] of his school[’s logo]?

[unfortunately... this didn’t really help his case, considering yu zheng has also been involved in controversy regarding plagiarism allegations many times]

第五波：同学被拖下水扒皮。与翟博士一起毕业的其他学生名单被翻出，网友挨个知网查询，均有3-5篇论文，有人非c刊。  电博士不用发c刊论文，含金量受质疑。

the fifth wave: classmates are pulled into the controversy + not spared. the list of the other classmates that graduated w/ dr. zhai was dug up. netizens searched each of them one by one on CNKI: they all had 3-5 papers, some didn’t have CSSCI publications.

beijing film academy’s phd students don’t need to publish CSSCI-level papers — beijing film academy’s academic standards are called into question.  第六波：翟博士抄袭。翟博士发表在《广电时评》的普通文章知网查重高达40%，抄袭十几年前的文章。 文章被抄袭的黄教授朋友圈回应“春晚饰演打假警察的人要我来打假”。 打脸工作室声明没有学术不端行为。

the sixth wave: dr. zhai’s plagiarism. the essay [mentioned earlier], published in 广电时评 was ran through CNKI and [supposedly] had a similarity rating of over 40%, with passages plagiarized from papers over ten years old.

professor huang li hua posted on his wechat: “the one who acted on 春晚 [lunar new year broadcast show] as someone exposing cops as fake has to be exposed by me as a fake.”

[ztl’s] studio officially announced that no academic dishonesty had taken place.

[huang later continued, translation from the south china morning post: “The celebrity’s management company claimed Zhai had no academic misconduct issues, but my essays a decade ago were copied paragraph by paragraph. The truth trumps his argument,” Huang wrote on the Chinese social media app WeChat.] 第七波：学术不端列撤。四川大学将翟博士事件列为学术不端案例，几日后又删除。

the seventh wave: removal from “academic dishonesty” list. sichuan university listed dr. zhai’s case as an example of academic dishonesty, but deleted it after a few days. [link to the world’s worst screenshot] 第八波：导师被拖下水扒皮。翟博士导师被扒出，身为博导却是本科毕业！导师另一位弟子也无c刊论文。

the eighth case: [ztl’s] academic advisor is dragged into the controversy. dr. zhai’s advisor was dug up — he was appointed phd advisor, but had only an undergraduate degree! another one of this advisor’s students also didn’t have a CSSCI-level publication. 第九波：官媒发声。人民日报、共青团微博、紫光阁等官媒发表对翟博士的质疑。 北电回应：自查自纠小组成立。 北大回应：看北电查的怎么样根据规则处理。

the ninth wave: official state media starts reporting: people’s daily [newspaper], the communist youth league’s weibo, tower of purple light [magazine], etc. publish articles regarding the suspicion surrounding dr. zhai

beijing film academy’s response: an internal investigation committee has been established.

beijing university’s response: we will wait on beijing film academy’s investigation results, and then follow standard regulations to deal with this matter.

[ according to smcp: around this time, essay is also reported to have been taken down from CKNI ] 第十波：院长被拖下水扒皮。翟博士毕业答辩导师、北电表演系张院长被网友扒出五十多岁娶了自己的九零后学生刘某，也是杨紫同学，北电下制片厂投资两人演男女主角，找杨紫张一山关晓彤当配角，只获得75万票房。 the tenth wave: a university dean is pulled into the controversy. [one of the] advisors dr. zhai had to defend his dissertation against to graduate, dean zhang of beijing film academy’s acting school, is revealed to have married a student (surname liu) of his born in the 90′s(?), despite being over fifty himself. she was also a classmate of yang zi [this is very irrelevant but she’s a very famous post-90′s actress who graduated from beijing film academy. you might know her for being in ashes of love.] 

a movie production studio under beijing film academy invested in producing a movie where dean zhang + his wife liu were the male/female leads, getting yang zi, zhang yishan, and guan xiaotong [all v v v v famous] to play supporting roles, though it only made 750,000 at the box office.

[so i did some digging and it appears that this is the movie they’re talking about. again it’s mostly irrelevant if you ask me, but maybe you wanted to know. mostly the controversy is for like, taking a really young wife and then making beijing film academy pay for his romantic fantasy movie lol. 

what does this have to do with zhai tianlin? pretty much nothing tbh] 第十一波：北电侯亮平、阿廖沙再次被提起……北电的水有多深? 豆瓣赐翟博士新绰号：靖北侯。

the eleventh wave: previous allegations of professors’ sexual assault cases / misconduct brought back into question ... how much is beijing film academy hiding?

[ the specific cases they reference are 阿廖沙 and 侯亮平, both web names that anonymous posters used on weibo to report/investigate sexual assault allegations at beijing film academy. (the second name is a reference to a character in a tv show who’s a anti-corruption prosecutor); i can talk about those cases but it’d take a whole separate post — tl;dr anonymous poster shares account of sexual assault and ensuing ostracization from faculty/classmates when they tried to bring it to light and ultimately turned to weibo. it was a rly big trending topic for a while back in 2017. ]

douban confers on dr. zhai a new nickname: 靖北侯 

[the meaning, v. approx “peaceful north marquis” is a reference back to “平西王,” “peaceful west king/prince,” the nickname for 薄熙来 (bo xilai), a PRC politician sentenced to life imprisonment for corruption — obviously, the 北/bei also refers to beijing film/uni + 候 is a convenient callback to the previous anon investigator into beijing film sexual assault cases]

that was very very long. i hope this was somewhat helpful ;-; chinese social media has been blowing up about this, this is an attempt to capture some of the context. (this has been stressing me and my friends out as well — fingers crossed for ztl to get out of this unscathed.)

[clodiuspulcher]

I’m new to roman history, and I barley know the name Clodius; could you tell me more about him?

Publius Clodius Pulcher is a freak, a demon, a Pretty Boy, a man of Contradictions, a wild tribune of the plebs who sincerely believed the Laws did not Apply To Him, and my favorite Roman Politician bar none who epitomizes Roman Politics to the extent that I’d think he was a parody of a Roman senator, a fake person, the Discworld version, except he was REAL. Born to the Esteemed Patrician Claudius Pulcher Family, in 92-91 BC, Clodius Pulcher was the youngest of 3 sons (and had some older sisters too, most notably the notorious Clodia Metelli who aided and abetted his political career w/ considerable financial/other support) and deviated Wildly from the staunch conservatism of his oldest brother Appius Claudius Pulcher (PS: he’s a freak too and I need to do a whole post on ACP cos. 54 because WOW). They served in the third Mithridatic war under Lucullus together when Clodius was in his early 20s but Clodius didn’t get as high a position as his older brother and started a mutiny. Lucullus naturally removed him, Clodius then commanded a naval fleet and was almost immediately captured by pirates. They tried to ransom him to king Ptolemy because Clodius kept talking up how ~important he was (a Claudius Pulcher! A nobelman! A patrician from one of Rome’s richest and most famous families!) but Ptolemy didn’t care and Clodius had to wait until the threat of Pompey coerced the pirates to let him go. These early military incidents basically set the tone for Clodius’s entire life and political career, and I think they really Tell you what kind of person Clodius was. This is what we’re working with here.Clodius is best known for two things: radical populism and gang wars, and the bona dea scandal.  The latter is what his arch Enemy Cicero tends to harp on because it’s absolutely insane: basically Clodius snuck into a women’s-only religious festival dressed as a woman, and was discovered because his voice was deep, and they kicked him out and had to re-do everything and he was tried for sacrilege etc. Plutarch/Cicero/Etc. claim this is because he wanted to sleep w/ Caesar’s wife but I Doubt that (and so does the author of the Clodius Bio: honestly I think this is ‘no one had ever told him no and he genuinely did not think the Law applied to him because status/wealth/etc). And Actually this is connected to the populism because when he was tried for sacrilege he positioned himself/his friends as ‘fighting against the senate’s overweening power / returning power to the hands of the people’ because the bill the senate promulgated to try him for sacrilege had the senate select the jury and that was the hill Clodius and his followers chose to die on. Then he dragged Cicero into it and Cicero had to defend himself and destroyed his alibi and Clodius only got off by bribing the jury and it was a mess and Clodius hated Cicero from then on even though he started it. wild. My Latin Professor described Clodius as a ‘dyed in the wool populist’ which is Not Untrue, since to be fair he’d had a Populist Streak since his army days (he was called ‘the soldiers’ friend’ because of the Lucullus mutiny debacle). it was PROBABLY a selfishly motivated populism, though, (and again: from the beginning Clodius’s populism was motivated by personal gain , he started the mutiny because he was mad at his own ‘slighted’ status) although I have to wonder if Clodius was Sincere to any degree…. but that’s my Thoughts. Continuing on the Shocking and Radical road, Clodius tried several different arcane laws to become a plebeian but eventually teamed up with the first triumvirate to be adopted by a plebeian family ~59. He didn’t change his name though, aside from the “Claudius->Clodius” thing that some people debate is even a significant difference (Cicero makes a distinction though when speaking of Clodius vs. his brother so). As tribune in 58, Clodius did some legitimate good: he passed laws restoring forbidden collegia and creating those that hadn’t ever existed, allowing the poorest some measure of involvement and status, and of course he passed a grain dole law which distributed free grain to the same class. He also helped the function of the senate actually- he passed a law wherein anyone who was removed from the senatorial lists by the censors had a chance to defend themselves, and formalized the process by which political actions could be hindered by bad omens (no more of Bibulus trying to stop politics from happening because of Auguries). However Clodius also used his political power and stalwart supporters to literally attack personal enemies (namely Cicero) whom he managed to get exiled based, again, on that purely personal vendetta stemming from the Bona Dea scandal. He passed a law that was like “Anyone (named Cicero) who executed Roman citizens without trial (during the Catilinarian conspiracy and is named Cicero) is exiled… bye.” Clodius’s Legitimate gangs of adherents helped with this and he intimidated politicians like Pompey as well when he needed to. This devolved into ah. gang wars between supporters of Clodius and T. Annius Milo’s (a political rival) gladiators/slaves whom he bought/trained to combat them, and in the midst of the chaos Cicero was recalled from exile when popular favor swung his way. Eventually Clodius was murdered in 52 BC by Milo’s slaves along the Appian way, the street his ancestor Appius Claudius built… Yet he remained a Stalwart (though selfish!) Populist to the end- Indeed, during his last campaign (for the praetorship) he vocally promoted supporting/improving the status of freedmen! Clodius! The loyalty his supporters felt for him speaks to the efficacy and importance of his tribuneship and political image to the dispossessed, disenchanted class of urban poor and his ability to recognize and respond to this crisis is impressive considering how many senators absolutely refused to do the former much less the latter. Any good that might have come out of his policies though is of course obscured in the historical record by the absolute wild and Violent shit Clodius got up to, and also by the fact that our main source, and our only contemporary source on Clodius is…. Cicero.This post is already getting Long and I haven’t touched on a lot of things like the Pro Caelio debacle, the importance of Clodia, the exact and detailed drama between Clodius/Caesar/Pompey/Cicero/Cato etc etc etc, the extent to which Clodius Bent Or Ignored laws and customs of adoption / other plebeian transfer methods, the importance of the tribuneship and Clodius’s relationship to the legacy of tribunes like Tiberius Gracchus or Saturninus BUT! I do want to say a few more things. First, Clodius also married ~62, when he came back from the East, Fulvia, whom is my favorite historical figure perhaps ever to live on earth. She was instrumental in rebuilding his image after the bona dea scandal, she was by his side so often than in the trial for his aforementioned violent murder, Cicero claimed that Clodius must have been planning something because Fulvia wasn’t there when he was killed, and she was ALWAYS with him otherwise. Fulvia dragged Clodius’s body through the streets of Rome and likely helped incite the riot of Clodian supporters that ended in the burning down of the senate-house. Thus she established herself as the heir of Clodius’s legacy, the inheritor of Clodian politics and political support, which she provided for her future marriage connections. She made sure Clodius didn’t die in vain by compelling her next two husbands, Gaius Scribonius Curio and one Mark Antony, who were associates of Clodius, to take more populist stances w/ their legislature and was especially heavily involved in Antony’s career. AND she got revenge on Cicero in the End according to Cassius Dio (She was also a much more effective military commander than Clodius ever was and I bet he was proud)To cut this off now, check out my Clodius Tag where I lose my whole mind about Clodius and his politics every week or so. I have a lot of Classics Opinions but my Clodius Opinions are the most well-formed and I’d hope the most informed as well. However please don’t ask me Super specific questions until the 28th because I’ve been in an Etruscan Art void for my archaeology class and I left my Clodius BIography at home and won’t be back til then. Also I Run @clodiussuggestion so you can ask Clodius Him Self.