Hangzhou Normal University Launches Probe After Charity Recipient List Matches Online Name Database

Hangzhou Normal University has launched an investigation after a list of recipients for a charity grant published by its College of Humanities was found to exactly match the names and sequence from a publicly available online document titled "10,000 Common Chinese Names."

The controversy emerged on Friday when Internet users pointed out that a 2022 list of beneficiaries of a public welfare fund project, released by the university's College of Humanities, contained multiple names identical in both content and order to a section of the "10,000 Common Chinese Names" document hosted on Baidu Wenku, a widely used document-sharing platform.

By Friday evening, the original list had been removed from the college's official website, according to a report by The Paper, a Shanghai-based digital news outlet.

The Paper also found that the university's alumni association had announced via its public WeChat account in June 2022 that the aid project – jointly applied for by the Hangzhou Normal University Alumni Association and the College of Humanities – had been approved as a provincial-level public welfare project. It received a grant of 450,000 yuan (US$63,000) from the Zhejiang Provincial Department of Civil Affairs' welfare lottery charity fund for that year.

In a statement issued on Saturday, Hangzhou Normal University confirmed it would investigate the circumstances surrounding the charity fund recipient list. The university pledged to address the matter in accordance with regulations and promised to make the findings and outcomes of the review public.

This incident highlights a broader, recurring phenomenon in which names from the "10,000 Common Chinese Names" database, particularly from Baidu Wenku, are copied and pasted into various official documents, public announcements, competition results, penalty lists, and exam records across China. This practice has sparked widespread discussion online.

A specific group of five names – Zhang Jiwei, Lin Guorui, Lin Wenshu, Lin Yanan, and Jiang Yiyun – has gained particular notoriety online. Appearing at the top of the name list, they are duplicated most frequently, leading netizens to jokingly refer to them as "the busiest five-person team on the Internet."

Their appearances are numerous and span different contexts. They were recently identified as members of an equipment procurement review panel in Zhuxi County, Hubei province, on December 3. In 2021, they supposedly won top prizes in a vocal music competition held by an art education institution. In 2023, their names surfaced on a registration list for a children's New Year Gala event at a Shandong-based training center. Most recently, in December 2025, the same five names, in the same order, were listed as special award winners in the first "Huaxia Cup" National Calligraphy Competition.