Zhang Sanjian WeChat accounts

Zhang Sanjian public WeChat/Weixin accounts. Their authenticity was confirmed only by association with an unverified Teashop Wechat account. The account never mentions Zhang Zhehan by name.

There have so far been two separate Zhang Sanjian accounts:

• 张三坚 ("Zhang Sanjian") First account, registered on December 24, 2021/January 14, 2022 according to different sources. Original link: https://mp.weixin.qq.com/s/XJP0M7neWCyn4mp1egzTdA. Banned on April 12, 2022. Published a total of 19 posts, including 9 videos.
• 张三坚回来了("Zhang Sanjian is back") Second account, registered on April 11, 2022. Profile link: http://weixin.qq.com/r/_B0EAfjEUTAtKLxib0h8. Published a total of 14 posts as of January 16, 2023, the first five of which are no longer available, likely due to the blog being limited to the latest 10 posts.

The accounts have in total posted 33 times, mostly essays disguised as movie and book reviews, and guitar playing videos. In the videos, the face of the player is not visible. There is some highly questionable content in essays:

• Mental illness
• Private family details
• Politically sensitive views
• Religious content*
• Image from a condom ad
• Shading an ex-colleague

*The CCP requires party members to be atheists; Zhang Zhehan's mom is a party member.

Ownership and authors

An ID needs to be verified in order to create a public WeChat account. Due to his cancellation, Zhang Zhehan cannot use his ID to get verified in Chinese social media.

The first account's existence was shared by an unverified Teashop account: not one of the three official, verified ones, but rather an account that earlier shared photos of Kele before he became the "official" store mascot.

The first account was banned on April 12, 2022. A replacement account appeared a few days later, however its registration date is April 11, 2022, one day before the original account was banned. There were rumors about the deletion as early as April 9. This inconsistency suggests that the deletion of the first account was pre-planned.

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  Twitter post from a ZSJ fan foreshadowing the deletion

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  Icon and name of the second account

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  Registration date for the second account

Careful analysis of the vocabulary and grammar patterns reveals that the essays were not written by Zhang Zhehan. Most probably they were written by multiple different people involved in running the account, including Zhang Peichao. See Debunks below for more info.

Posting timeline

• 2022-01-16: 开篇 ("The opening")
• 2022-01-22: 最后的决斗 ("The Last Duel")
• 2022-01-28: 兄弟dei，一切都会变好的！("Bro dei, everything will be alright!")
  • Contains a guitar playing video of the song 平凡之路. The player is filmed from the neck down.
• 2022-02-01: 新春快乐 虎年大吉!!! ("Happy Chinese New Year and Happy Year of the Tiger!!!")
  • Contains a guitar playing video.
• 2022-02-04: 心灵奇旅 ("Soul")
  • Contains a guitar playing video.
• 2022-02-07
• 2022-02-11:
  • Contains a guitar playing video.
• 2022-02-14: contains a guitar playing video.
• 2022-02-16
• 2022-02-22: contains a guitar playing video. There is a lamp and couch in the video that were matched with the interior of Lexus's apartment
• 2022-02-26
• 2022-03-03:
• 2022-03-07: an apparent mispost containing an ad for an ADHD lecture in Shenzhen. Alleged to have been posted by Zhang Peichao.
• 2022-03-08
• 2022-03-14: contains a guitar playing video.
• 2022-03-21
• 2022-03-29: contains a guitar playing video.
• 2022-04-05: contains a guitar playing video.
• 2022-04-08

The following posts were published on the second account:

• 2022-04-21
• 2022-04-25
• 2022-05-05
• 2022-05-11
• 2022-05-18
• 2022-05-25
• 2022-06-07
• 2022-06-29
• 2022-07-23
• 2022-08-02
• 2022-08-12
• 2022-11-23
• 2022-12-15
• 2023-01-16

Post content review

2022-01-16: 开篇 ("The opening"). Contains a review of a book by Michael Sandel entitled "Justice: What's the right thing to do?" and a paragraph describing how the Zhang Sanjian struggled with typing it up and posting it, losing the whole text in the process. This was connected to Zhang Zhehan and his earlier struggles with technology. The essay was posted just days after Li Xuezheng's account was muted on Weibo.

2022-01-22: 最后的决斗 ("The Last Duel") Contains a review of the 2021 Ridley Scott movie "The Last Duel".

2022-01-28: 兄弟dei，一切都会变好的！("Bro dei, everything will be alright!") An essay inspired by the book mentioned in the title. Zhang Sanjian wonders about accepting fate and everything that life brings, weathering bad times while waiting for good times to return, then mentions an anecdote from a friend's wedding where he was supposedly sat at a table very distant from the bride and groom. At the end, he talks about an ex-colleague who--while loyal in times of success--does not show up when bad times come. This was interpreted as a veiled reference to Gong Jun and caused many to reject the account as not belonging to Zhang Zhehan.

2022-02-01: the second guitar playing video was filmed on three different cameras, one at a diagonal angle, ensuring that the viewer can see a lamp and drapes that match the ones in Lexus's apartment, feeding into the rumors that Zhang Sanjian was staying with Lexus. The shirt worn by the guitar player seems to match a shirt that Zhang Zhehan owned before, with an English phrase "Who are you?" on the chest. The guitar player has a standout mark on his right forearm which Zhang Zhehan did not have prior to his cancellation. This mark was explained in a later essay.

Debunks

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