Blocked by police, Chinese campaigners get creative In response, some 300 activists and ordinary citizens, marshalled through the internet, have tried to visit him, but have all been repelled, according to Wang Xuezhen, a 30-year-old who has tried to reach Mr Chen several times. Last November 12, on Mr Chen's birthday, the authorities managed to halt the flow. "There were armed police that day in Linyi [the nearest city], and only senior leaders can order armed police, so we know there is no way to go now," said a 39-year-old English teacher who goes by the name "Pearl," one of the main campaigners of "Operation Free Chen Guangcheng." Five days before his birthday I was followed by the police. They went with me wherever I went, even driving me to work. They offered to pay for a nice holiday for me if I did not try to visit Chen, and when I turned them down they simply locked me up," she said. So Mr Chen's supporters have changed tack, creating an artistic and subversive campaign designed to "go viral" over the internet. More than 4,000 of the bumper stickers have been handed out. Spray-painted graffiti of Mr Chen has begun to pop in Chinese cities. A flash mob of romantic couples, all wearing sunglasses like Mr Chen's, appeared at the beginning of December in the main square in Linyi, unsettling the police enough to result in a group detention. Helium-filled balloons printed with Mr Chen's face have been released around his village and a blind musician, Zhou Yunpeng, has written a protest song. Each day, new photographs are posted on Weibo, China's version of Twitter, of people with his initials, CGC, written on their bodies or posing with pictures of Mr Chen. "The police do not notice the stickers," said Pearl. "And if they ask what Free GCC means, we say it is free KFC," she added. In the past, dissidents have traditionally been quite confrontational with the government, very direct, like two armies facing each other. But we should learn how to express ourselves and protest in an orderly way, to use art and entertainment more freely," she said. It is like Occupy Wall Street. The authorities, meanwhile, have yet to work out a response. Pearl's blog has not been censored, and nor has her Weibo account, which has some 15,000 followers. "They are inserting protest into the mundane aspects of every day life," said Joshua Rozensweig, an independent human rights researcher in Hong Kong. If you have lots of people wearing sunglasses, some people are going to realise it is a statement and others may not get the point. But what are the authorities going to do? Can you round up everyone wearing sunglasses? And then the message will spread across the internet. This new type of art-as-protest owes a debt to Ai Weiwei, the dissident artist, and spooked the Chinese government last year, when anonymous messages called for a "Jasmine revolution." Supporters were urged simply to "take a stroll" in designated public areas, leaving the authorities unable to tell who was protesting and who was not. "You get people doing something that looks ordinary but to the people who understand the meaning it is anything but," said Mr Rozensweig. Wen Yunchao, a social media expert and one of China's best-known bloggers, said viral campaigns dilute the risks of participation and are more effective at beating the censors. "The changes are being driven by the new sorts of media available and this type of campaign will develop more frequently with the development of Weibo," he said. However, it remains to be seen whether such campaigns tailored to the internet are effective, Mr Rozensweig noted. "They are short-acting phenomenons and people's attention can quickly move to something else," he said. And of course you depend on the internet, which is something the authorities have ways of controlling.