Researchers in China broke scientific ground a few weeks ago by creating two tiny, adorable monkey clones. It would be easy to think that this is purely in the interest of science. But like most things in China, it is also political.
They key is in the names given to the monkeys, Zhong Zhong and Hua Hua. Each name is a doubling of one character.
In the case of Zhong Zhong, that would be 中中. Repeating a character like this creates a kind of cuteness effect in Mandarin. But if you take one character from each name, and put them together, you get the word zhonghua.
Zhonghua is a formal and ancient name for “China.” This term differs from Zhongguo, the name given to the modern nation of China, in important ways. It is more a reference to China as a millennia-old culture, and reminds the Chinese ear of a time in history when the country was the unchallenged world superpower.
So any time these monkeys are mentioned, they are a reminder of the great nation that created them.
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