Summer, 2025. Seomyeon Station, Busan, Republic of Korea. A sudden business trip brought me here by chance.<\/p>\n\n\n\n
On the first day, I could hardly move my feet to explore, but the underground mall pulled me in at once\u2014 a d\u00e9j\u00e0 vu dream of plastic, pink, stars, hearts, ribbons. Every corner overflowing with cuteness.<\/p>\n\n\n\n
As an Asian who has lived many years in the United States, I found myself drawn to it irresistibly, even when I couldn\u2019t explain why.<\/p>\n\n\n\n
Alone in a foreign city, with no one I knew, I wandered for hours. At one maid caf\u00e9, I learned to write my name on a tiny card and draw a big heart beside it.<\/p>\n\n\n
\nMaid cafe style namecard by Yi Chen<\/figcaption><\/figure><\/div>\n\n\n
<\/p>\n\n\n\n
All these soft things wrapped around me, and I fell into a dream.
After leaving Busan, the feeling stayed for more than two months. I bought cute clothes, trinkets, and covered my laptop with stickers.
Each morning I dressed carefully, and the moment I clipped something lovely onto myself, my spirit felt redeemed.
It wasn\u2019t exactly the same, but I began to understand the quiet happiness of those who decorate every corner of their lives with the things\u2014or people\u2014they love.<\/p>\n\n\n\n
On Harahara Tokei<\/strong><\/h2>\n\n\n\n
While tracing the tiny orders within digital seams, a word from 1970s Japan kept returning to me\u2014 Harahara Tokei.<\/p>\n\n\n\n
\nThe original Harahara Tokei, Japan, 1970s<\/figcaption><\/figure>\n<\/div>\n\n\n\n
<\/p>\n\n\n\n
It feels like an echo, reverberating across decades, mirroring what I now see.<\/p>\n\n\n\n
The original Harahara Tokei was a zine from the 1970s, compiled by the radical group The East Asia Anti-Japan Armed Front.<\/p>\n\n\n\n
Its context was explosive, a history of despair, of hard resistance.<\/p>\n\n\n\n
But the act of \u201cmeasuring time through anxiety\u201d still rings true today\u2014 only now it belongs to those customizing WeChat in their ita-like way.<\/p>\n\n\n\n
What once turned outward in tragic destruction has folded inward, becoming a quiet, everyday anxiety, constant yet invisible.<\/p>\n\n\n\n
I borrow this word, its tension and pulse, to count the gentle, silent tuning of our time.<\/p>\n\n\n\n
Customized V<\/strong><\/h2>\n\n\n\n
During that period when I was \u201censlaved\u201d by soft, healing things, the algorithm quietly led me to a hidden world\u2014 one called Pain WeChat, or more widely known as Customized V.
It was not mere beautification, but the act of injecting plugins into the WeChat client\u2014 breaking through its native boundaries to rebuild one\u2019s own experience.
Yet this was not without barriers. You had to jailbreak or root your device to remove its built-in locks, or issue your own developer certificate to earn the right to install what the system forbids.
Over the years, this gray zone has grown into a small but complete ecosystem. For most people, its greatest allure lies in the promise of total visual autonomy\u2014 to reskin WeChat completely.
On Rednote, I found a flood of healing, aqua, and gothic-cute themes. They blended Chiikawa, Sanrio, and other adorable IPs, creating a soft, dreamlike, fuwafuwa world that instantly caught both my eyes and my heart.<\/p>\n\n\n\n
Perhaps it was professional instinct, but I think back to my childhood fascination with skinning Windows XP, hacking Nintendo DS and Wii themes\u2014 silent beginnings of what would later make me a product designer. That moment cracked open the gate of memory: the child who once longed to define their own digital world had returned. But what truly startled me was the subject behind this technical landscape. Almost all the sellers\u2014and most of the users\u2014 were young women. In public imagination, such technically hard acts and such a soft-coded demographic rarely overlap. It was precisely this dissonance that drew me in, and I began several days of immersive observation.<\/p>\n\n\n\n
Through Rednote, I contacted a girl and paid ten yuan for an installation package of Customized V. Yet that was only a ticket\u2014 the expedition had just begun.<\/p>\n\n\n\n
Then came the solitary passage through a sacred digital forest: to secure my device a passport (an enterprise developer certificate), to migrate my chat logs without losing a trace, until finally this altered, reborn WeChat could take root in my own digital territory.<\/p>\n\n\n\n
J’s story<\/h2>\n\n\n\n
These meticulous, lonely, and self-aware gestures felt like a coronation of digital sovereignty\u2014 a small, private ceremony to reclaim control over my own interface.<\/p>\n\n\n\n
Sadness rose up in me, and before I could stop myself I typed:<\/p>\n\n\n\n
\u201cYour posts feel so painful.I wish I could give you a hug.\u201d<\/p>\n\n\n\n
She was surprised\u2014 I hadn\u2019t messaged her to buy anything\u2014 but almost immediately she replied with kindness. She shared the entire plugin file with me for free, and even sent a screen-recorded tutorial, showing me step by step how to build my own customized V.
My first real lesson came from her.
Later I said,
\u201cI\u2019m glad we met, even if it was because of Customized V.\u201d
She replied,
\u201cIt\u2019s okay! You can message me anytime. Next time we can just chat.\u201d <\/p>\n\n\n\n
I don\u2019t know why, but I suddenly started crying. It was so gentle, and I won\u2019t forget it.
We all live inside a system that isn\u2019t ours, trading brief moments of tenderness for a little bit of freedom.<\/p>\n\n\n\n
Custom Themes<\/h2>\n\n\n\n
Installing the customized V was only the beginning of beautifying my phone.<\/p>\n\n\n\nGraphics of weui_color_new.xml, created by Yi Chen<\/figcaption><\/figure>\n\n\n\n
Opening this rewritten version of WeChat, I discovered a special menu for managing plugins. Many theme plugins were already pre-installed\u2014 yet curiously, none of them contained a built-in marketplace, or even a link to purchase new ones.
After some trial and error, I realized that the entire ecosystem operated independently. To use a theme, one must visit external platforms\u2014 Weidian, Rednote, or Taobao\u2014 to buy an authorization code, then redeem it on a designated website before the plugin could download the file successfully.<\/p>\n\n\n\n
To be fair, the most striking aspect of these themes was often the background wallpaper itself. Unfortunately, the UI icons and color palettes rarely showed systematic design consideration. They often produced a curious blend of \u201cdelicate\u201d and \u201ctacky\u201d\u2014 a nostalgic kind of clumsiness.
As a designer by training, I found this both fascinating and frustrating. The lack of coherence sparked a quiet desire in me\u2014 to make my own theme pack.
But I knew nothing about the file structure behind WeChat\u2019s themes, nor did I have the tools to build one.
Even more troubling, the theme packages purchased and redeemed from shops were all encrypted containers. With my current level of technical skill, I couldn\u2019t open or modify them.
That inability to alter became yet another form of unfreedom\u2014 a quiet reminder that even the most personal interface remains someone else\u2019s domain.<\/p>\n\n\n\n
Y’s Story<\/h2>\n\n\n\n
Soon after, I met another girl\u2014Y\u2014 who also sold WeChat theme packs.
Her works drew inspiration from LINE and Kakao\u2019s official skins; they felt more balanced, more polished\u2014 easier on the eyes.
Unlike other sellers, Y handled her business in a more direct way. She simply sells on WeChat: delivery was simply a cloud drive link. What I downloaded was a base package\u2014 a DIY kit of unencrypted materials. Inside were full sets of assets and configuration files, even color parameters one could modify manually. For the first time, I could glimpse the inner structure of a WeChat theme package.<\/p>\n\n\n\n
My conversations with Y untangled many of my earlier questions. These young female creators did not possess deep technical control\u2014 they weren\u2019t the ones cracking clients or coding plugins. Y admitted that the design tool she used had been purchased at a high price years ago; its developer had long disappeared, the source lost in time.
She mentioned that the customized V she bought last year cost nearly a hundred yuan\u2014 the benefit being a one-click web installation. When I casually told her that my developer certificate had cost only twelve yuan (though I had to sign the app manually), she was astonished.
<\/p>\n\n\n\n
Later, out of technical sympathy, I helped her figure out how to switch themes with a single click without renaming any folders.<\/p>\n\n\n\n
When I expressed frustration at the rough, inconsistent quality of existing themes, and my desire to make my own \u2014 it wasn’t just about fixing bad design. I wanted to see if I could build a digital space that felt entirely mine\u2014 something no one else had designed, no one else could revoke.
Y revealed to me a deeper layer of this small economy\u2014 the authorization system.<\/p>\n\n\n\n
To list a theme in the mainstream stores, a creator must first pay a steep authorization fee to obtain the right to encrypt and package their work. <\/p>\n\n\n\n
Each sale requires sharing revenue with multiple parties, making it nearly impossible to break even\u2014 a heavy gamble for young creators with modest means.<\/p>\n\n\n\n
Worse still, the encryption-based redemption model left creators with almost no control. Developers could remove a theme at any time. It was, in essence, the same trap that independent developers face on Apple\u2019s App Store\u2014
the owners of technology using their walls to quietly lock the paths of creativity.
What surprised me most was that even within this tiny gray ecosystem, there were already middlemen of middlemen\u2014 reselling licenses, siphoning profit from the layers below. At the very top, always unseen, stood the mysterious team who built the plugins themselves.<\/p>\n\n\n\n
Later, I bought Y\u2019s Chiikawa Flying Squirrel theme\u2014 a soft violet version\u2014 and proudly posted a screenshot on Rednote.
Soon a comment appeared, accusing the author of \u201cstealing files,\u201d urging others not to buy. I knew how every subculture breeds its own small factions and gossip, so I let it pass.<\/p>\n\n\n\n
Not long after, Y saw my post and left a comment: all her themes were indeed imitations of LINE, and the so-called \u201chater\u201d was a former buyer who had re-shared her files and been caught. Now she was taking revenge.
Y confessed privately: this was the risk of selling loose packages. If she had paid for encryption, such problems would disappear.<\/p>\n\n\n\n
Harahara Tokei<\/h2>\n\n\n\n
In October, during China\u2019s National Day holiday, Tencent launched a new campaign against scams and third-party plugins.
The warning spread quickly across Rednote. Many users of customized V clients began receiving official notices from the WeChat team: some accounts lost access to group chats or friend requests; others were permanently banned.<\/p>\n\n\n\n
According to reports from Telegram groups and users like Y, most bans occurred when someone performed \u201csensitive actions\u201d \u2014such as adding new contacts\u2014while the customized client was active. So far, no method has proven able to completely evade detection.
During this time I learned a new term: \u201clittle eye.\u201d Inside the Tencent Security mini-program, a red eye icon appearing over one\u2019s avatar signals an imminent warning\u2014 a sign that one\u2019s account is about to be restricted.
<\/p>\n\n\n\n
And yet, under such pressure, many continued to wait and watch, discussing when it might again be safe to reinstall their customized V. Some had received warnings five times or more, but their enthusiasm never faded. There was a sense of dependency\u2014 once you\u2019ve used it, there\u2019s no going back.
Personally, I\u2019ve never liked WeChat. If I had the choice, I wouldn\u2019t use it at all. Perhaps that\u2019s why I was willing to take the risk, to try these plugins myself. After tuning its colors and interactions to match my own sense of beauty, I found myself\u2014unexpectedly\u2014liking it. Even, perhaps, a little addicted.
But I also understood what WeChat means for most ordinary users: identity verification, bank access, family ties, work connections, and countless daily necessities. To lose an account is to have one\u2019s life abruptly severed at every layer.<\/p>\n\n\n\n
And still, some choose to take the risk. I began to understand the quiet philosophy behind it:
The future doesn\u2019t matter so much. They just want to live a little more truthfully, to feel a bit more control over the life in front of them.
The Harahara Clock does not measure time in minutes or hours. It measures anxiety as existence. This trembling, this pulse, reveals the being\u2019s awareness of being-in-the-world. Every heartbeat is a silent confirmation of one\u2019s own existence.<\/p>\n\n\n\n
The Stealth of Pain<\/h2>\n\n\n\n
WeChat\u2019s account suspension system resembles a panoptic prison of the digital age.
An individual need not be watched continuously\u2014 the mere possibility of being seen is enough to complete self-discipline.
And yet, the girls on Rednote perform a reverse visibility within this regime of surveillance. Through ita-style cuteness\u2014 a dense layering of plush charms, pink ribbons, and glitter\u2014 they cloak themselves in carefully orchestrated visual fog.
This is at once an accidental escape and a conscious activation of their own Harahara Tokei.
Once visibility is enforced, invisibility becomes a way to exist.
Thus, the attachment of visual themes and the encryption of the ecosystem together weave a new kind of digital invisibility cloak. <\/p>\n\n\n\n
Those fluffy, pastel elements are no longer mere decorations\u2014 they condense into a functional membrane of protection.
Not a shield, but a soft mist,
through which individuals can momentarily breathe and move freely beneath the system\u2019s unblinking gaze.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"
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