Brother B

Hanging out with Weibo's most famous cretin

B Ge (B哥), or "Brother B", has 103636 followers on Weibo, China's Twitter. He posts silly videos of him goofing around, such as pretending to down a bottle of cooking oil on the Beijing subway, or blowing up a condom into a balloon in the supermarket. Today he posted his newest video – featuring, to my everlasting and unerasable embarrassment, yours truly.

That ill-omened day I was in a southerly suburb of Beijing with a young Chinese singer I'm writing about. He got a call from a friend – Brother B – to see if he wanted to hang out. So Brother B drove by with his girlfriend, and we all piled into his car to grab dinner at a restaurant (inexplicably) an hour's drive away at the north-east other end of Beijing. En route, during a cigarette stop over, Brother B asked if I would act in one of his videos.

When I say "asked", I should clarify: out of nowhere he told me to pretend to talk on my phone and then immediately started filming. Then he opened the boot of his car, rummaged around and took out a fake machete. Stowing it in his bag, he introduced the video to camera. "Dear viewers, in front of me is a foriegner, watch as I go up and speak some English with him."

In the video, my character – who doesn't speak Chinese – is robbed of his iPhone, glasses, wallet and even the shirt off his back. Erm, you might have to watch a few other Brother B videos to get his buffoon-like persona and find it funny. In fact, wait. Just, don't watch it. Please?

Later on, back in the car, we chatted. Brother B is Jiao Shuangxi (his first name means "double happiness"), 27, from Beijing. He's been doing these videos for 6 years, but they took off about a year ago. Now he has a deal with a video site, ku6.com, to produce two or three a week. He also goes on Chinese talk and talent shows a lot, but his stable income comes from hosting wedding receptions as a comic speaker.

The name "B Ge" is actually quite clever. "B" – the English letter, or any one of several characters pronounced "bi" – is used in the word "NiuB", which literally translates as "cow's cunt" but means "fucking awesome". (If that sounds weird, more here.) But it can also mean "2nd", and to call yourself 2nd (er 二) is a self-deprecating way of saying you're a loser. And it's precisely that loser demographic of young Chinese that Brother B's cretin-like persona speaks to. Although he did tell me that Jiao Shuangxi and Brother B are "the same person".

I asked him to send a video greeting to all the foreigners on the Anthill. Here it is.

"大家好，我是B哥, 牛B的B，大哥的哥，我这人没什么优点，就是喜欢外国人，喜欢印度人，喜欢英国人，喜欢美国人，因为外国人啊胸肌比我们中国人的发达，所以，我喜欢外国人。

"我的兄弟礼凯，在此祝福外国的朋友：一帆风顺，两全其美、三阳开泰、四季平安、五福临门、六六大顺、七星高照、八面来财、九九同心、十全十美、百事可乐、千事吉祥、万事老外。"

The translation, of course, should be in all caps:

"HELLO EVERYONE, I’M BROTHER B, AS IN NIU B! I HAVE NO STRONG POINTS, BUT I DO LIKE FOREIGNERS, INDIANS, ENGLISH, AMERICANS! BECAUSE FOREIGNERS HAVE MORE ADVANCED PECTORAL MUSCLES THAN US CHINESE, SO I LIKE THEM! GO SINO-FOREIGN RELATIONS!

"MY BROTHER LIKAI [my Chinese name], I GIVE THIS BLESSING TO FORIEGN FRIENDS: [He then delivers a tongue twister string of traditional Chinese greetings, ordered from one up to ten, then 100,1000 ... and for 10,000 he switches in the word for "foreigner" as a pun.]

There you have it. Follow B哥 on Weibo here.