Do you know about Oolong the rabbit? Or maybe you remember him? He was famous for balancing things on his head. Isn’t he cute?
He’s dead, though; he died several years ago. He was good at what he was, which was a rabbit.
P.S See comments for Oolong bio and life story in depth
Other posts by nichol
What a great post! The best here so far…
It made me think about what is it I am good at. Defintely not in balancing things, be it on or inside my head…
I dunno what to think…
If its real its nice, but its even better if its all a big joke. a page on wikipedia, a pic on the new york times…too funny
please tell me its all made up!
This is actually a reprint from author’s blog. You can contact him directly there with those questions, (click on his signature, its an active link), or find it here amongst other nice posts:
http://thehumanproject.wordpress.com/
It is not a joke, I guess.
Why a humble rabbit can’t enter wikipedia? I disagree on this point.I love Oolong and would like to have this article as the point of reference.
He’s more than a rabbit now, actually. He’s a cultural phenomena. I would suggest to put his star in Hollywood’s Walk of Fame, if I could.
Yep, Oolong is nice. I made a little research on the subject and found something for Mezcal and others interested in the subject, but mainly to please myself. Oolong really stays in my mind, and completely substitueted even crocodiles on loose (update: only 10 out of 38 are still free, no victims so far). To cut it short. Here are the compiled results. Lets start from the history, as it is as amazing as Oolong himself:
1. Enthusiast’s account
Oolong was a bunny in Japan with an unusual talent: He could balance almost anything on his head. His owner discovered this on May 24, 1999, and began taking pictures of his pet’s “head performance”, with an increasingly remarkable array of household objects perched atop Oolong’s head. He posted all the pictures on a web site; several of them are here:
1) http://www.fsinet.or.jp/~sokaisha/rabbit/990524/990524.htm
2)This collection of nearly 340 pictures of Oolong looks the most comprehensive: http://www.gookalian.com/oolong/gallery/albums.php
In an interesting example of the Mahir-esque chaos dynamics of online popularity, the site was small and unvisited for four years, save by the owner and his small group of friends. One day a blogger from Syberpunk — a blog devoted to “quirky Japanese culture” — stumbled across the site, was utterly amused, and decided to keep it a secret, too. He sent pictures of Oolong to all his friends, but wouldn’t say where he got them. Then one day, as he writes, he accidentally posted a link to the Oolong site. It was the Patient-Zero moment: Delighted hipsters began excitedly forwarding the link to their friends, and millions of visitors swarmed over to check it out. Rarely is it possible to so precisely identify the moment when a Net meme is born.
Sadly, many people started emailing Oolong’s owner to accuse him of cruelty to animals, while others wrote Onionesque paeans to his subversive genius. Interestingly, both reactions annoyed the owner, and he wrote a public letter, including this rather sweet passage:
Oolong is so calm and patient — he never gets angry when I take pictures of him. When I put various objects on his head, he stays still for a minute. This is just a result of an intimate relationship between me and Oolong. The main theme of my site is not to show these ‘headperformance’ links, and it’s not my hope to propagandize nothing but the strangeness of his headperformance over the world. Oolong’s headperformance — many foreigners seem to feel it ‘crazy’, but Japanese people feel it just cute and funny. It is the difference of international feeling.
http://www.collisiondetection.net/mt/archives/2005/04/oolong_was_a_ra.html
2. The Syberpunk guy’s who “discovered” Oolong account
I first discovered this website in June 2001. I had been searching for random images when I came across his photograph.
From that point I knew I had to find out the story behind this photo. I looked at the url of the picture, and traced back to the original site. What I found was simply amazing. Picture after picture of the cutest rabbit I had ever seen. And many with various objects balanced on his head, also known as “Head performance” by his owner.
I spent the next 3 hours going completely through every single picture on the site, reading every caption and comment and saving them all to my computer. I checked back every week waiting hopefully for each new installment too.
I checked the counter on the site, and I was suprised at how very few visitors there had been to the site…I realised this was an untouched website, probably only visited regularly by the owner and his friends in its 4 years on the net. I decided then to keep the site a secret, and I did for the next few months.
Then I began sending a few friends his picture. Many of you have probably seen it around before. It was my favourite picture, and despite my friends asking where I got it, I would not tell them. I wanted Oolong to remain a secret. Then one time I made the mistake of linking directly to the url of the picture at Oolongs website.
From there the url was sent around, and people found out about the main site, and all the pictures. A few people posted links to Oolongs site on some message boards, and from there it exploded. Oolong got over 150 thousand hits in just one week.
Oolong’s owner posted this message following his rise in popularity:
Hello Everyone,
I am not good at English, this message got big help by my friend who lives in USA.
Thanks for visiting my Japanese website. This is a site devoted to me and my rabbit, Oolong. I built this site mainly for Japanese rabbit lovers, but realize that I have a lot of international visitors who are curious about me and Oolong, judging from the thousands of hits I receive daily and many e-mails written in English from all over the world. Oolong is 7 years old and was born in an outdoor rabbit group in a park in Hokkaido. Hokkaido is the northern-most island in Japan. He is a tough,healthy rabbit since he had a wildlike childhood. Recently, however,he has developed abcesses on his cheek, and has had to undergo two surgeries last spring. It doesn’t still fully recovered, but is getting well now.I want to reassure everyone out there about the nature of my site. This is a site to demonstrate the natural days of Oolong and me. Period. To my surprise, I realize that this site has been spread around some American chat forums and/or passed around as office humor. I am really surprised at the number of visitors that come to my site, but I hope no one misunderstands the nature of my site. Some visitors have written me e-mails, accusing me of being cruel to my rabbit and that I am abusing my pet. This was never my intention when I included numerous links to photographs, showing Oolong’s unique ability to hold objects on his head. This is not a site to mock
rabbits, or demonstrate animal abuse. I’m sure you understand it if you see whole my site.
Oolong’s owner.
It made me feel sad, and I felt somehow I had caused the peaceful little world of Oolong to become an object of mockery among the internet community.Here are some facts about Oolong.
Oolong
Species: Oryctolagus cuniculus (Domestic Rabbit)
Age: 7
Birthday: July 28
Sex: Male
Location: Hokkaido, Japan.
Owner: Hironori Akutagawa
Origins of Name: Oolong is a kind of tea. Most popular in China.
(http://www.syberpunk.com/cgi-bin/index.pl?page=oolong)
We went through Oolong’s site with my wife, as it’s in Japanese. Apparently his owner head few exhibitions of Oolong’s photos in Tokyo and other places and there’s a little merchandise business around now, selling Oolong memorabilia. We were 2.430.219th visitors to his new site in last 3 years, if I’m not mistaken. Bye for now, Boris