813 Incident

On August 13, 2021, serious accusations against Zhang Zhehan, the lead actor in Word of Honor, went viral on Chinese social media. This incident became known as the 813 incident or simply 813 and had severe and ongoing repercussions for Zhang Zhehan, but also impacted his fanbase.
==The Events==
Tourist photos of the actor, taken in 2018 near the notorious Yasukuni Shrine in Japan, were posted on weibo, along with many other claims about his alleged unpatriotic behavior. The Chinese public appear to have been genuinely outraged that he posed near a shrine to generals who committed war crimes against Chinese people during World War II. He was blacklisted from the entertainment industry and branded a traitor by many. Misinformation, apparently spread by paid accounts called yxh or marketing accounts, fueled the outrage--for example, initial reports that the photos showed him in an area where he would have had to pay to enter, thereby proving that he went to the shrine on purpose, seem to have been incorrect. (In reality he seems to have been taking cherry blossom photos in a popular tourist area that happened to be near the shrine.) Someone also edited misinformation into Baidu Baike (China's version of Wikipedia) to bolster their claims about Zhang Zhehan associating with anti-Chinese war criminals and visiting other Japanese shrines with anti-Chinese history.
As a result of the blacklisting, Zhang Zhehan's filmography was removed from Chinese streaming sites, including Word of Honor itself. Zhang Zhehan is also a singer, and his music was removed from Chinese platforms and Spotify. Nirvana in Fire was edited to remove his scenes. The actor's social media accounts were also shut down. Even his name became a forbidden phrase that could not be posted on some websites.
Of note, Zhang Zhehan was blacklisted by the China Association of Performing Arts (CAPA), a non-governmental association, rather than by the relevant government agency, National Radio and Television Administration (NRTA). In November 2021 Chinese and international fans were excitedly discussing the fact that Li Xuezheng, a prominent industry association executive and filmmaker, was publicly questioning CAPA's authority to blacklist people and various procedural justice issues. On weibo Li Xuezheng's hashtag #人民的公义# "justice of the people" had 3.5 billion views as of December 7. Bilingual fans were providing translations of new developments on twitter. Fans thought that the hashtag was being intentionally excluded from weibo's hot search. On December 24, Zhang Zhehan filed a police report for defamation in Beijing., Lim Yian Lu, Yahoo News, 27 December 2021. Li Xuezheng's weibo account was suspended in early 2022, with investigations and lawsuits supposedly ongoing, but with no conclusion made public. 
Zhang Zhehan started releasing music again in December 2022Wikipedia:Zhang_Zhehan, accessed 18 February 2023., but according to rumors one of his filmed but unreleased shows was planning reshoots with a different actor, youtube video by Marcus Here!, Feb 7, 2023..
Fans believe that the timing of the 813 allegations (right before the anniversary of Japan's WWII surrender, when nationalism was at a fever pitch) was deliberate sabotage by anti-fans and/or industry insiders. An early fan theory was that industry rivals or companies who hadn't expected Word of Honor to be such a runaway success wanted to shift the public's attention to newer dramas coming out. Another version pointed to CAPA's interests in gaining power/money.
==Fandom Impacts==
The incident was extremely visible on Chinese social media, and news quickly spread among fan communities in other languages as well. Fans were devastated. Responding to the news, one Word of Honor fan on fail_fandomanon said,
An immediate and major impact on the fandom was the loss of access to canon material. Word of Honor is still available to international fans, but the show and related media was removed from Chinese streaming sites. Not only official media, but also fanworks were deleted, including fan videos on bilibili. Fanfiction posted on lofter and wland was also impacted, with the sites planning to either delete tags and/or the stories themselves., 18 August 2021., tweet by ieatwhitecats, 18 August 2021., tweet by ieatwhitecats, 18 August 2021. Rumor has it that Lofter did not actually delete text posts.
In cfandom, fans of Zhang Zhehan decided to keep quiet and not defend him, for fear of making the situation worse:
A lot of English fandom also locked down and became less accessible after 813. Various fan forums and events have had to add rules around how to handle 813 and related developments. For example, see the Word of Honor subreddit: (August 15, 2021).
Meanwhile, the reputation of popular cdrama youtuber Avenuex was forever tarnished in the eyes of some English-speaking Word of Honor fans; her video on 813 spread the misinformation from weibo about Zhang Zhehan to English-speaking spaces. She supposedly lost hundreds of Youtube subscribers after posting the video, Nov 29, 2021., though it doesn't seem to have made a dent in her numbers long-termAt the time she had an estimated 80K subscribers and a year later has 99K subscribers. , medium post by 1000snow, 22 August 2021. (Accessed 30 December 2022.). WOH fans started criticizing this and other aspects of her YouTube videos. See this on fail_fandomanon. Some fans even thought she was being paid to spread misinformation., anonymous thread, fail_fandomanon, 2021-11-30. (There's no evidence she was paid.) 
813 also seems to have encouraged more fans to become tinhats:
813 led to the growth of more conspiracy theories in the fandom generally, not just tinhatting among Junzhe shippers. The lack of reliable news updates, compounded by the likelihood of a genuine conspiracy to destroy Zhang Zhehan's career, caused fans to turn to "melon" accounts and other unverified sources, especially non-Chinese speakers, who had even more limited access to information and relied on a small group of bilingual fans to translate new information. Increasingly questionable theories spread among fans in 2022. For example, Gong Jun, ZZH's costar in Word of Honor, is believed by some to be the mastermind behind 813."Evil Gong Jun is still the other end of the spectrum of outlandish theories. So those who loudly believe ZZH is ZSJ (I say loudly because it's only a specific sort) also believe that evil Gong Jun framed Zhang Zhehan, is a male prostitute who posts nudes and should be banned from C-Ent." , fail_fandomanon thread, 2022-07-25. Unfortunately, Zhang Zhehan's own public statements may have encouraged the spread of this theory; his instagram account, zhangzhehan_super3, became active again in April/May 2022, where he posted a video suggesting nefarious intent or bad behavior on Gong Jun's part. ZZH's posts caused another rupture in the fandom, because until that point, many fans believed that Gong Jun was making veiled references to Zhehan as a supportive gesture or (if they were tinhats) as a sign that he and Zhehan were in a relationship. When Zhehan actually mentioned this alleged CP fanservice on instagram, albeit without mentioning Gong Jun by name, he indicated that they were not friends and Gong Jun was trying to cash in on shippers in a way he found distasteful. (Since these references to ZZH were very oblique, as of December 2022 it's still not confirmed if any of the fanservice was intentional or just fans' wishful thinking. One incident ZZH mentioned in particular may not have even been Gong Jun's doing at all, according to some fans on fail_fandomanon; in one of GJ's September 2021 TV appearances, the show displayed ZZH's baby pictures instead of GJ's onscreen, presumably by accident., anonymous comment, fail_fandomanon, 2022-07-25., anonymous thread, fail_fandomanon, 2022-06-09., anonymous comment, fail_fandomanon, 2022-07-25.) 
Solo fans of Zhang Zhehan or Gong Jun, Zhang Zhehan/Gong Jun shippers, and Zhang Zhehan/Gong Jun tinhats are all motivated to support different theories. Many fans believe the instagram account is controlled by someone else, and his new videos, photos, and music output are either faked, older unpublished material, or somehow coerced. Others believe Gong Jun to be guilty as charged, while a third faction thinks Zhang Zhehan's opinions are genuinely his but incorrect. Anti-ZZH fans appear to think the original 813 allegations are true. Meanwhile, some Word of Honor fans are trying to ignore 813 and focus on the show.
Both 813 itself and the fandom's turn toward conspiracism may have caused other fans to leave the fandom., fail_fandomanon thread, 2022-07-25., fail_fandomanon comment, 2024-01-11. The increasingly stark divisions on the drama side of the fandom also seem to have negatively impacted the related cnovel fandoms: see A Light on You for a 2023 example.
==Fanworks in response to 813==
While 813 and its aftermath may have killed some fans' interest in Word of Honor fandom, other fans created RPF fanworks in response to 813. As of November 2023, the AO3 tag for 813 includes 124 fanworks, of which 122 are also tagged Gong Jun/Zhang Zhehan., AO3 works page, logged-in counts (Accessed 30 November 2023.) RPF fans also set up a few post-813 AO3 collections.
*August 13 2021 (Chinese Actor RPF) fanworks tag on AO3
*, fanart by Hotan_018 (December 4, 2021)
*, fanart by brilcrist (March 12, 2022)
*, fanart by sheepandpencils (March 13, 2022)
==Links==
===2021===
* , wordofhonor subreddit, 14 August 2021
* , fail_fandomanon thread, 14 August 2021
* , wordofhonor subreddit, 15 August 2021
* , medium post by 1000snow, 22 August 2021
* by Bingqing Yang, The Diplomat, 5 September 2021
* , twitter moment, 10 September 2021
* , youtube video by Catharine Orange, 20 October 2021
* , fail_fandomanon thread, 2021-11-25
===2022===
*, Yahoo News, 11 January 2022
* youtube video by Chinese star news (translation of ZZH's instagram video), 3 May 2022
* by tumblr user yukiko-moriarty (an account created solely for posting the deepfake analysis), 2022-05-17
*, 2022-05-05, and by tumblr user bizarrequazar (more deepfake analysis), 2022-07-17
*, medium post by 1000snow, 2022-07-22
*fail_fandomanon discussions regarding 2022 fan theory developments: , , , 
===2023===
*Holiwarka thread: , starting May 12, 2023
==References==
Category:Scandals
Category:Word of Honor
Category:2021 Events