After mathematician Wang Hong from Guangxi, China, won the Fields Medal, the official newspaper of the CPC Guangxi Zhuang Autonomous Region Committee, Guangxi Daily, featured a front-page report titled ‘Wang’s Conjecture’ which became a hit in China, with a copy of the physical newspaper being resold for as much as 65 yuan RMB (about 39.24 MYR). Chinese media described this as a modern version of ‘worth its weight in gold in Luoyang’.
Known as the ‘Nobel Prize of mathematics,’ the Fields Medal welcomed two Chinese winners for the first time: young mathematicians Wang Hong and Deng Yu won this highest international honor in mathematics last Thursday. Wang Hong also became only the third female recipient in nearly a century.
On Saturday (July 25), Guangxi Daily published a long front-page feature entitled ‘Wang’s Conjecture’.
This article went viral on the Chinese internet, praised as ‘a great headline, a great article’, with the single character ‘Wang’ in the title not only being Wang Hong’s surname, but also crowning her as the ‘Queen of Mathematics’. Many netizens posted on social platforms asking to buy the print edition of this issue, ‘Wang’s Conjecture’.
On second-hand platforms, many sellers marked up the newspaper, with the highest price reaching 65 yuan. The retail price of Guangxi Daily is only 1.35 yuan per copy (about 81 sen).
In response, Guangxi Daily responded to netizens on Weibo on Tuesday, saying: ‘(The newspaper) is already being printed in overtime! The machines are about to catch fire.’
Earlier, Guangxi Daily posted on Weibo on Monday: ‘Why is everyone scrambling for it? Because what’s recorded is not only the glory of Wang Hong winning the Fields Medal, but also a real life where being ‘a bit slower, taking a detour’ can still reach the finish line.’
However, some female netizens reminded: ‘Change ‘Queen of Mathematics’ to ‘King of Mathematics’, please. If a man won, no one would call him the math man-queen.’ ‘Wang’s Conjecture’ first went viral on the female-dominated Xiaohongshu platform, and in the process of spreading, there were quite a few feminist voices online mocking men.