How a factory error in China created a virus

Don’t turn that frown upside down. A stuffed horse has gone viral in China thanks to a random mistake by a factory worker.

The mouths of one batch of toys were mistakenly sewn backwards, creating a small army of “crying” toys with sad faces that have captured hearts as a mascot for the Lunar New Year.

The horses were designed as toys with happy faces to commemorate the upcoming holiday of February 17, the start of the Year of the Horse in the Chinese zodiac.

A customer who received the defective product decided to keep it, posted it online, and from there the “crying horse” became famous.

The hashtag “crying horse” had been used on Douyin, China’s domestic version of TikTok, more than 200 million times as of Wednesday, and garnered more than 100 million views as a trending topic on Chinese social media platform Weibo.

The horse’s sad expression appears to have resonated with Chinese social media users, who have been bringing the stuffed toy to work and school to express their displeasure with a relentless work culture.

The toy is red, an auspicious color in Chinese culture, and its body is decorated with golden embroidery wishing its owners to “get rich quick.” One of the toys costs 25 Chinese yuan, or about $4, according to Chinese media reports.

The toy is available in both the frowning version and the original smiling version, and many people have decided to buy them in pairs.

“People joked that the crying horse is how you look at work, while the smiling one is how you take care of yourself after work,” Zhang Huoqing, the owner of the store that first sold the toy, told Reuters news agency. Zhang’s store is located in Yiwu, home to China’s largest small goods wholesale market.

Since it took off online, customers from South Africa, Spain, Russia and South America have visited the store to buy the popular toy, although it was accidentally knocked over, Zhang told Chinese media. Both domestic and foreign demand have forced it to add more than 10 production lines and create around 20,000 units a day, according to Chinese state broadcaster CCTV.

“The expression of the crying horse shows feelings of injustice, defiance and stubbornness that reflect the true feelings of most ‘niu ma’ working today,” commented a Weibo user based in Sichuan, using a term meaning “ox and horse” that refers to people who overwork their jobs. “And it looks very cute, which is why it created such an explosive reaction.”