"What's the penalty for arriving late?"
"Death."
"What's the penalty for rebelling?"
"Death."
"Hey brothers! I got news for you! We're late!"
Watch this:
“Don’t be scared. Don’t be scared.” Facing riot police in full gear, he comforted her, patting her shoulders.
But he’s a kid too.
https://twitter.com/hongkongching1/status/1196382081594490880
more gif here
https://twitter.com/hashtag/hkpolicestate?f=tweets&vertical=default
[A group of peasant soldiers was marching somewhere in China long ago.
“What’s the penalty for arriving late?”
“Death.”
“What’s the penalty for rebelling?”
“Death.”
“Hey brothers! I got news for you! We’re late!” ]
The overly-neat, tied-up-with-a-ribbon, parable-driven nature of Chinese historical narrative makes me suspicious as to whether the events described actually happened, but the “calling a deer a horse” loyalty test always gave me a kick, regardless of the truth.
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Zhao_Gao#Calling_a_deer_a_horse
Its analog in the recent past would be this passage from the Solzhenitsyn’s Gulag Archipelago:
[ At the conclusion of the conference, a tribute to Comrade Stalin was called for. Of course, everyone stood up (just as everyone had leaped to his feet during the conference at every mention of his name). ... For three minutes, four minutes, five minutes, the stormy applause, rising to an ovation, continued. But palms were getting sore and raised arms were already aching. And the older people were panting from exhaustion. It was becoming insufferably silly even to those who really adored Stalin.
However, who would dare to be the first to stop? … After all, NKVD men were standing in the hall applauding and watching to see who would quit first! And in the obscure, small hall, unknown to the leader, the applause went on – six, seven, eight minutes! They were done for! Their goose was cooked! They couldn’t stop now till they collapsed with heart attacks! At the rear of the hall, which was crowded, they could of course cheat a bit, clap less frequently, less vigorously, not so eagerly – but up there with the presidium where everyone could see them?
The director of the local paper factory, an independent and strong-minded man, stood with the presidium. Aware of all the falsity and all the impossibility of the situation, he still kept on applauding! Nine minutes! Ten! In anguish he watched the secretary of the District Party Committee, but the latter dared not stop. Insanity! To the last man! With make-believe enthusiasm on their faces, looking at each other with faint hope, the district leaders were just going to go on and on applauding till they fell where they stood, till they were carried out of the hall on stretchers! And even then those who were left would not falter…
Then, after eleven minutes, the director of the paper factory assumed a businesslike expression and sat down in his seat. And, oh, a miracle took place! Where had the universal, uninhibited, indescribable enthusiasm gone? To a man, everyone else stopped dead and sat down. They had been saved!
The squirrel had been smart enough to jump off his revolving wheel. That, however, was how they discovered who the independent people were. And that was how they went about eliminating them. That same night the factory director was arrested. They easily pasted ten years on him on the pretext of something quite different. But after he had signed Form 206, the final document of the interrogation, his interrogator reminded him:
“Don’t ever be the first to stop applauding.”]