Commemorate the date
The race numbers for Lin Yuwei and Wu Yanni form '64' - a common allusion to the incident which happened on 4 June.
Derek Cai, BBC News
Chinese authorities are removing from the interwebz a photo of two of its athletes embracing at the Asian Games. Or, at least, from that part of the interwebz lying behind the Great Firewall of China.
As they wore their lane numbers, 6 and 4, on their shorts, the two came together to make 64; seen as a reference to 4th June, the anniversary of the crackdown on the 1989 protests, which culminated in the massacre at Tiananmen Square. Except it only works like that in the USA, otherwise 64 would be interpreted as 6th April, innit?
Ummmm, not quite. Mr Cai doesn't mention it, but the date format used in China is year-month-day—not day-month-year or, god forbid, month-day-year—so 64 is indeed 4th June behind the Great Firewall, where it really matters. Nevertheless, the fact that Chinese authorities are so shit-scared of these two numbers together amuses me no end.
I do wonder what they'd make of 46 though.
A little something to make the hairs on the back of President Xi's goons' necks stand on end: 1989‑6‑4