Who is the new face of China’s Year of the Fire Horse? Draco Malfoy, of course

February 17, 2026 – 12:15 PM

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The Chinese Year of the Fire Horse has a new, unexpected mascot: Draco Malfoy.

Associating the Harry Potter antagonist with China’s Year of the Fire Horse might seem odd or whimsical. But it has much to teach us about the complexities of Chinese Mandarin wordplay, online participation and meme-making culture.

A search for

Malfoy memes

manifest his youthful head floating jubilantly, amid a background of red, gold and black calligraphy.

Meaning in images

Classic

New Year prints

Prior to the annual festival, the Chinese character

fu 福

This is because the word for “upside-down” (倒, dao) is word play on the word “arrive” (到, dao) in Mandarin. Hanging the fu 福 upside down means “Good fortune has arrived”.

During last year’s

Year of the Snake

wordplay used

snake (蛇, shé) and earthly beings/humans (巳, sì) to pair snake imagery with phrases about time, events or letting go.

This

Year of the Fire Horse

is historically linked with energy, momentum and breakthrough.

In this way, Malfoy sheds his snake skin from villain to a serendipitous linguistic fit for a year defined by fiery horses and potential prosperity: a modern good luck poster.

Visual remixing

Humor, wordplay and visual remixing are a key feature of Chinese internet culture.

easily remixed

. Malfoy’s titanium white hair and sharp features make him iconic, even in small or edited images.

Another example of homophonic wordplay was during the

#MeToo

movement.

Facing political sensitivity in China, activists embraced phonetic wordplay to

visualise the phrase #MeToo

, juxtaposing images of a bowl of rice (米饭, mi fan) with a rabbit (兔子, tuzi). The Chinese meme, Mi Tu (literally rice bunny) is visually coded “cute” on the surface, yet functions with the potency and strategic agility of a Trojan Horse.

The memes became a political statement, to visually disrupt and address sexual abuse or harassment.

The Grass Mud Horse (草泥马, cǎonímǎ) is a mythological alpaca co-created in 2009 as a linguistic and visual protest symbol.

Its name is a homophone for a well known insult, enabling users to express defiance while circumventing censorship. It became a playful yet powerful

emblem of resistance

to information control, widely circulated through

music videos

, memes and satirical narratives.

The homophonic wordplay of Draco Malfoy performs a similar cultural function — with celebration that evolves tradition, rather than political protest. Users paste

Malfoy’s face

onto fire horse emojis, Chinese calligraphy or zodiac themed layouts. Others animate him riding red horses or link his image with auspicious greetings.

Culturally specific memes

Visual culture is culturally specific

: meaning cannot be transported across contexts without interpretive friction.

Chinese culture has a long history of playful symbolism. The Malfoy memes fit into that tradition using humour and visual puns to express good wishes. It does not replace sacred rituals or religious practices.

It is about renewing hope for the future, and memes are a clever example of how language shapes visual culture and how traditions evolve.

Visual literacy enables us to unlock the cultural keys embedded within symbols and myths, revealing layers of meaning that might otherwise remain obscured.

Online spaces are where a fictional wizard can temporarily join a centuries-old symbolic system built on flexible wordplay and visual humour for the Year of the Fire Horse.

Justine Poplin

, Teaching Associate, Faculty of Education,

Southern Cross University.

The Conversation

under a Creative Commons license. Read the

original article