Nisu (泥塑) is an online subculture of female fans fantasizing about male celebrities being female, often in the role of a lover, a sister, a daughter or even a stepmom.
It’s been known in fan circles since 2016, but only narrowly entered public consciousness around 2019. As an online trend, it involves everything from sharing photoshopped feminized pictures of the idol (long, dark, curly hair with pale skin is usually the norm) to writing sexual first-person narrative fan fiction. “My baby is so soft and pretty,” one Weibo user gushes, “I just want him to be my wifey.”
A series of GIFs of male idols, shared on Weibo. Caption reads: “wife (guys).”
…nisu comes from the older concept of su (苏). Without going too deep down the rabbit hole of fan fiction terminology—su is a term used by fans to imagine themselves being in a relationship with celebrities or fictional characters. It was originally a Chinese shorthand for “Mary Sue” (玛丽苏), a fan-fic trope of idealized self-depiction. Nisu, then, is a homophone of 逆苏 (“reverse-su”) and it is the gender of the celebrities/fictional characters that is reversed here.
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Criminal law professor Luo Xiang (罗翔) has over 13 million followers on video platform Bilibili, but few of them are there to prepare for China’s crazy tough bar exam. They’re there for entertainment…
Usually around 5 minutes long, his videos are a cross between Michael Sandel’s “Justice” lectures and the courtroom stories of videogames like Phoenix Wright: Ace Attorney. Each features a surreal case study, delivered like a deadpan stand-up comedy set. The protagonist is the diabolical Zhang San (张三, the Chinese equivalent of “John Doe”), as famous and beloved as its creator. In a video about “endangering public safety,” Zhang San releases 985 vipers into a park to celebrate his son’s admission to a top university. If the snakes are not venomous, Luo Xiang smirks, Zhang San walks away free. The absurdity of these stories is intentional—lure you in with an easy laugh, then drop the heavy intricacies of Chinese criminal law.
A meme circulating on Weibo mashes up Luo Xiang (left) with the criminal prosecutor Miles Edgeworth (center) from Phoenix Wright: Ace Attorney.
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Like Michael Sandel, Luo always connects hypothetical scenarios to bigger legal or philosophical questions. He repeatedly emphasizes that law should be grounded in people’s lived experience and common sense. It should respond to the times, and not fossilize into a system for pure “rationalbro” logical reasoning.
Luo Xiang and his usual video backdrop, recreated in Animal Crossing: New Horizons by Bilibili user 振金直男奉日天.
