Last week, an article published by China’s popular Ren Wu magazine was scrubbed from the country’s internet. In the piece, Ai Fen, director of Wuhan Central Hospital's emergency department, claimed that she was the first person to alert fellow medical professionals to the emergence of a new kind of virus, back in December. She added that she was quickly admonished by senior staff for spreading rumors and “threatening stability.”

The Chinese government has tolerated little criticism of its handling of the coronavirus outbreak, but internet users within the country have found a variety of innovative ways to beat online censorship. Almost immediately after the Ren Wu piece was blocked, people began to repost versions of it on the social media platforms Weibo and WeChat, using Morse code, QR codes and ancient Chinese symbols. Some translated the article into foreign languages, including Korean, Japanese, English and German, while others peppered it with emojis, making the text harder for censorship programs to track down. 

"I was looking at all the people posting different versions of the article while lying in my bed,” one internet user, who wished only to be named as Turtledove, told Coda Story via a message on WeChat. "Then I got up and started translating it into ancient Chinese writing."

Turtledove used a combination of the earliest known forms of Chinese text, usually seen inscribed on ritual bronzes and oracle bones. They then posted the new version of the piece on WeChat. It attracted more than 40,000 views in just one hour before it was spotted and taken down.