Commemorate the date

• 04.10.2023 10:07 UTC+02:00
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Vincent Thian/AP

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 a photo of two of its athletes embracing at the Asian Games from the interwebz. Or, at least, the part 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 4^th 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 6^th 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 4^th 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.