Recent days, a video related to “Bamboo Cicada” posted by netizens was taken down due to a complaint from Huawei, sparking a storm of public opinion. On the afternoon of August 5th, Huawei held a new product launch event, and a large number of “Bamboo Cicada” memes flooded the live broadcast, causing the comments section to be temporarily closed. The “Bamboo Cicada meme crashes into the Honor Bound New Car Launch Event” topic once again surged to the top of the hot search list.
According to reports from “Jiangnan Metropolitan News” and “Auto Home,” at 2:30 p.m. on August 5th, Huawei’s Executive Director and Chairman of the Terminal BG, Yu Chengdong, announced at the Honor MPV and Huawei new product launch event that the two flagship MPVs under the Honor brand of Hongmeng Zhihang, V680 and V800, were officially launched that day.
As soon as the live broadcast of the event started, a large number of “Bamboo Cicada” memes appeared in the comments section, inundating the screen with related content. The comments section was urgently closed, and approximately 10 minutes later, the comment function was reopened, but it seemed that a filtering function had been activated.
Reportedly, throughout the event, Yu Chengdong and the executive team did not make any responses to the memes topic.
In recent days, a traditional bamboo toy called “Bamboo Cicada” has sparked a lot of discussions online. The incident originated from the end of 2023 at the Wanjie M9 launch event, where Yu Chengdong claimed that “Wanjie M9 is the best SUV under 10 million,” and as soon as he finished speaking, the audience below immediately made a series of “Wow” sounds. Later, this segment of “Wow sounds” spread and became an internet meme.
At the end of July 2026, netizens accidentally discovered that the “Wow” sound made when the “Bamboo Cicada” toy rotates is highly similar to the audience’s astonished exclamations at Huawei product launch events. Videos like “The best toy under ten million” were then made and spread on platforms such as TikTok.
In response, Huawei complained to various platforms citing “damaging corporate reputation, infringing on image and sound rights” as reasons, leading to some content that was simply showcasing the Bamboo Cicada toy or promoting intangible cultural heritage skills also being taken down.
This move sparked the “Scissors Effect,” with many netizens reposting and causing a surge in purchases of “Bamboo Cicada.” E-commerce platform data shows that sales of “Bamboo Cicada” surged by six times in a week, with total sales exceeding hundreds of thousands of units. Some businesses even incorporated phrases like “Same style as Mr. Yu” and “Best under ten million” into their product titles. Some netizens said that this inexpensive toy may become the most difficult internet meme for Huawei to circumvent.
Faced with the increasingly uncontrollable public opinion, on the evening of August 4th, Huawei’s Hongmeng Zhihang spokesperson released a statement explaining that the complaints were aimed at “malicious editing, impersonation of high-level executive voices, using AI to distort images, false attributions, insults, and defamation,” and not at the Bamboo Cicada toy itself, nor did they request e-commerce platforms to remove the products.
However, the public opinion not only did not calm down but escalated. Netizens questioned, “Is Huawei’s public relations too rigid?” “Why does a big company only take a hard stance in the face of public sentiment?” “They seem a bit out of touch with reality in the Bamboo Cicada event.” “If you enjoy the benefits of traffic, you must bear the backlash of traffic.” “A small-scale meme event has ultimately escalated into a brand trust crisis in their public relations system.”