‘Hearts made of bubbles’: critics who claim Apple’s website showing long-braid customer service assistant ‘insult’ to Chinese people ridiculed online
- Image is featured on various Apple regional websites to promote company’s employment diversity and not targeted at Chinese customers, according to report
- Those who think photo is an insult are the real discriminators, says one online observer
A picture of a customer service assistant on Apple’s website who sports a long hair braid has sparked a tangled debate in China, with some online observers criticising the tech giant for promoting a humiliating reminder of the Qing dynasty.
The controversy began on September 17 after an unidentified online observer said the image of an Apple Watch specialist on the tech giant’s official website was an “insult” to Chinese people, news site ifeng reported.
Between the 1600s and the early 20th century, men of the dominant Han ethnic group in China were ordered by the Manchu emperors to shave their heads and wear a pigtail, or braid, on the back, called a queue.
The hairstyle, regarded as a sign of submission, is a reminder of a humiliating chapter of Chinese history.
The queue hairstyle was also worn by the fictional character Dr Fu Manchu, a supervillain created by the British novelist known as Sax Rohmer, who used the character to propagate “yellow peril”, in which people of East and Southeast Asia were portrayed as a menace to the Western world.
However, ifeng reported that the specialist portrayed on the Apple website is in fact an indigenous person wearing a traditional hairstyle.