Students In China Are Defying Tradition And Taking The Most Chaotic And Unhinged Graduation Photos
The trend started as a slang phrase from northeastern China but has turned into a full-blown online trend.
This year, students graduating across China are getting creative and very weird with their graduation photos.
Instead of the traditional photos where everyone lines up in neat rows with their teachers, many students are now recreating iconic scenes from TV dramas, cartoons and even viral news clips.
The trend, known online as “搞抽象”, literally “doing abstract”, mixes irony and nonsense.
The trend started as a slang phrase from northeastern China but has turned into a full-blown online trend.
Popular inspirations range from Chinese cult TV classics like “Empresses in the Palace” and “Tiny Times”, to global hits like Pixar’s “Turning Red” and Tom and Jerry.
Some people even copied the photo of US president Donald Trump lifting his fist after surviving his assassination attempt.
Another group of student posed like the Leonardo da Vinci painting “*The Last Supper”*, but in a school lawn.
“I just wanted to do something abstract,” Yang Yuling, a master’s graduate from Southwest Minzu University told Almost.
She said first saw the trend on Chinese social media app Rednote, and decided to try it with her classmates.
“It was actually so much fun,” she said.
Some students have even gone so far as to create entirely new concepts.
One photo series showed a student’s soul leaving their body, while another showed someone blowing up their school.
Many humanities majors took pictures of themselves throwing their diplomas in the trash, making a dark joke about not being able to find jobs after graduation.
The unhinged photos often look silly at first but many of them are a smart way to comment on real issues like school stress, unemployment or boring traditions.
In a time when everything feels stressful and uncertain, and under the tightly controlled internet in China, it appears young people in China are turning to abstract humor to safely express themselves.
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Kassy Cho
Kassy Cho
