The hottest term on Chinese social media right now is “kill-line”: if you go to Xiaohongshu, Bilibili or Douyin, everyone is speaking about it.
Why? It all has to do with the story of Alex, known as “牢A” (“Láo A”, literally “prison A” where A stands for Alex), a Chinese medical/biology student based in Seattle, USA, who worked part-time as a forensic assistant collecting unclaimed bodies (primarily homeless people).
You’ve doubtlessly never heard of him but he probably single-handedly shattered what remained of the “American Dream” myth for an entire generation of young Chinese.
Two weeks ago, after being doxxed and becoming the topic of a NYT article - and legitimately fearing for his life as a result - Alex took the dramatic decision to abandon his medical degree and flee the U.S. for China. All for the crime of… describing what he saw at work.
