Taiwan Number One

Taiwan Number One ("TAIWAN #1", Chinese: 台灣No.1), an American gamer Angrypug's slogan that angered Chinese while playing H1Z1 in 2015, has since become a buzzword expressing anti-Chinese and pro-Taiwanese sentiment.

Origins

H1Z1 was released on Steam's early access program on January 15, 2015. However, the game company did not provide dedicated servers for players from Asian countries such as China, Japan, South Korea, and Taiwan when dealing with players from all over the world, causing many players from these regions to join the game servers in the United States, Europe, and Australia. This has resulted in a large number of players from these regions joining the US, Europe and Australia game servers. While many players usually gather together because they are accustomed to using the same language, players from mainland China and Taiwan occasionally kill each other or even cheat each other in the course of the game due to differences in political awareness, even though they also use Chinese.^[1] In the summer of 2017, the game was officially banned from being streamed on all major platforms under the jurisdiction of mainland China.^[2]

On October 18, 2015, American game streamer Angrypug deliberately played the ROC (Taiwan) national anthem and displayed the ROC flag by shouting "Taiwan Number One" while playing an H1Z1 game on a Twitch broadcast, prompting mainland Chinese gamers to shout "Fuck" and "操你妈" in both English and Chinese language. Taiwanese netizens enthusiastically cheered Angrypug, and afterwards, Angrypug often shouted "Taiwan Number One" at the game.

Other

On January 26, 2016, American game streamer curvyllama played H1Z1 on a Twitch broadcast; after curvyllama killed an opponent, the opponent cursed "操你妈" in Mandarin Chinese, and curvyllama, realizing that the opponent was a mainland Chinese player, fired back with "Taiwan Number One".^[3]

In August 2017, Taiwan won 26 gold, 34 silver and 30 bronze medals at the 2017 Summer Universiade, and Taiwan's President Tsai Ing-wen shouted "台灣No.1！" to praise the performances of national players such as badminton queen Tai Tzu-ying, who was ranked No.1 in the world at the time.^[4][5]

See also

• Anti-People's Republic of China
• Taiwanese nationalism