But not as ferries from the sky. In the wake of the Gucci Bag Lady on the AirAsia flight fiasco, other auditioning influencers are joining the fray. The most problematic is the group of young women who are identified as the xiaofenhong or “Little Pinks”

The fervent, nnamed supporter of Li Shurong. Screen shot: Douyin

Like so many, from our island to the peninsula above and further afield, you probably thought the “Gucci Bag Lady” or 李书荣 (Li Shurong) was a catastrophe. The upgrade, however, is something far more staggering. It is rare to see someone with the natural talent to make an infamous predecessor look like a minor inconvenience, yet here she is—the familiar specimen. She hides behind a filter that essentially transmogrifies her, and behind a wall of ignorance so blatant, it makes any brick within it look intellectually dense. Just days after Ms. Li’s latest sermon on the infallibility of her own entitlements, another of her irreproachable ilk has emerged to monetise the outrage, ready to mobilise a roomful of glowing pitchforks. She didn’t build the fire; she arrived to sell enflamed 小串串 (xiao chuanchuan)—barbecued skewers of dangerously spiced, populist rage.

This unidentified “小粉红 (xiaofenhong)” or Little Pink, as she is widely called in China, has transformed what was essentially a dispute over the abuse of personal conduct—specifically, the right to speak at a deafening volume—into a slight against national pride. To be sure, she was not debating 是非 (shifei, right or wrong), but 身份 (shenfen, identity). It was a low blow: She demonstrated a regrettable, arrogant bias, attacking an entire diverse region that comprises 11 nations when she described bitingly Malaysians as “东南亚村民” or Southeast Asian villagers. In her comment of the onlookers in the AirAsia cabin, she asked “旁边那些东南亚的村民们，他［们］为什么朝大姐翻白眼?” Those Southeast Asian villagers standing by, why did you roll your eyes at the big sister? It is hard not to see this as a calculated deployment of derogatory tropes. By resorting to the deliberate slur, “villagers”, she bypassed substantive critique to go straight to performative, provincial bigotry. Was she shouting, “我是 (I am) China”, too?

By resorting to the deliberate slur, “villagers”, she bypassed substantive critique to go straight to performative, provincial bigotry

From the tone of her voice and her word choices, this Little Pink appeared to have projected her own acute provincialism onto those who are not standing on her already unstable side of the divide. She seems to prefer the company of tectonic plates to the actual humans she so casually discards. This, however, grants her no diplomatic immunity to disparage the local geography, especially when the region in question has not asked for her cartographic critique. She personally proved that, increasingly, localised dispute can metastasize into regional stereotyping. What happens in a flight cabin cannot stay there. Protected by a landmass, she was unable to see that her rhetorical escalation is dangerous because it shifts the frame from individual accountability to collective denigration. 一叶障目，不见泰山. To be blinded by a leaf and unable to see Mount Tai. By obscuring individual responsibility behind a frond of collective grievance, she ensured the real issue remained safely out of sight. That, after all, is the entire objective of this Little Pink and her fragile fraternity.

The term 小粉红 (xiaohongfen) is a widely used, often contentious and derogatory label in the Chinese Internet lexicon. It refers to a specific subset of young, hyper-nationalist Chinese Netizens, usually female, and often eager to hit back. In China, it is generally believed to be a term that emerged around 2008 from the female‑dominated online forum 晋江文学网 (Jinjiang Literature Web), one of China’s most influential online literature websites, where pink was once the default site colour and web novels were the main draw. The reading materials and those opened for discussion were mainly romance novels, especially what has become known as BL (Boy Love) stories. Over time, the platform’s user base began curating pairings of Chinese political figures, with some segments of the community developing BL narratives centered around the leaders. What began as a localised label for fervent, patriotic Jinjiang readers has grown into a catch-all name for China’s digital youth—a generation whose political manifesto is written primarily in meme-speak and fueled by a rich diet of pop culture. It is a demographic defined by a highly reflexive, tunnel-vision patriotism, often manifesting as a form of armchair imperialism that uses the internet as both their battlefield and their echo chamber.

She personally proved that, increasingly, localised dispute can metastasize into regional stereotyping. What happens in a flight cabin cannot stay there

For these individuals, their national identity is just another fandom to be curated, defended, and fought over with the same fervor they once reserved for fashioning or fawning over fictional characters. In the case of she who scoffed at SEA as a massive village, the right to insult any spot on a regional map, even the entire region, was not enough. As she cataloged their failings with a collector’s zeal, she added poor English pronunciation to her pique-list. “而且东南亚人自己的英语真的挺差的”—the English spoken by Southeast Asians is really quite bad, she insisted. She referred to a female passenger in the rear (thought to be Ivy Ng, who shared on her socials what happened in the cabin) and said disdainfully that her English “差到要死 (chadao yaosi)” or really terrible. The disgruntled muttered something that was unintelligible. We listened to that word/phrase 15 times and all we could guess was that she was trying to utter “qualifier”. We went through Ms Ng’s post and did not hear her use that word or anything close. Her entire speech was conducted in mainly Mandarin. Was this simply a case of creative cartography, mapping out a vowel bungle that didn’t exist?

It was not enough that she insulted a whole region of a 4.5million square kilometers that she called “小地方 (xiaodifang) and 殖民地 (zhimindi)” —a little place and a colony—and the level of English spoken here, she proclaimed that Southeast Asians speak “下等人的英语 (xiadengren de yingyu)” or English of the low class, or, base. It should be noted that she specifically used “下等”, not even the moderately better grade “低等 (dideng)” or inferior. One is a judgment, the other is a comparative. By using 下等, the influencer wasn’t just criticising English proficiency; she was branding the Malaysian girl and roughly 705 million Southeast Asians as fundamentally bottom-scrapping lesser: We, the villager grade. From “small place” and “colony” to base, the rhetoric regrettably outlines a very typical and distorted use of ‘great power’ chauvinism. This fits the Little Pink pattern of turning a linguistic critique into a nationalist hierarchy. Language becomes a proxy for civilisation, and “下等” is deployed to mark outsiders as culturally beneath China. Misguided can’t be more magnificent.

Mocking others’ English or cultural traits as anything but “low”, while not demonstrating linguistic superiority, even in her mother tongue, is like a tragic comedy where the lead actress manages to 嗲 (dia, sound ‘cute’) her way through the dialogue while insisting that everyone else has an accent. What’s truly hilarious and blithely ironic is that, instead of measuring Southeast Asian English against her own or her compatriots’, the 小粉红 invoked Prince William and, gasp, Donald Trump as admirable benchmarks of terrific speech. If she had to invoke Western elites as yardsticks of English fluency, the battle she was trying to wage was already lost before it could begin. You see, they have sycophants in China, too, the ungradeable tourist who can’t tell the difference between an English palace and the White House. But has she even heard Donald Trump, whom she gleefully called “特朗普大爷 (telangpu daye), Uncle Trump”, speak? It is impressive to hold up unfiltered babbling as a role model while simultaneously obliterating her own quick-fading authority. She spent the entire livestream desperately trying to label everyone else a villager, yet, as the dust settles on her performative tantrum, the only person who never actually left the village is she.