Chen Tzu-jian (Retina): Building a Palace of Mockery on the Ruins of State Media, Then Demolishing It at Its Peak

30-Second Overview

Chen Tzu-jian (Retina), born May 8, 1994, in Shuili Township, Nantou County, who always dreamed of becoming a news anchor, is one of the most thoroughgoing political deconstructors of Taiwan's digital era. In his third year of university he participated in a cross-strait exchange trip to Quanzhou, Fujian, where watching CCTV's Xinwen Lianbo every night sparked an idea; he and Dong-yen Shenje (動眼神經) and others founded the Eye Central Television Station (眼球中央電視台) on August 5, 2015, grafting the flat official tones of CCTV onto reporting contemporary events using terminology from the Republic of China constitution — "mainland area," "fallen area," "bandit pseudo-regime" — for eight years pushing the absurdity to its extremes and helping millions of young people see, through laughter, the fracture between law and reality.¹

In 2018, at age 23, he entered CTS to become the youngest anchor in the history of the CTS Midday News; on May 31, 2023, at the peak of 1.21 million subscribers and over 300 million cumulative views, he personally shut down the channel. After discontinuing updates, he shifted to public television, hosting Hello! Can I Ask You? (co-hosted with Da-Pei, nominated for Best Lifestyle Program Host at the 59th Golden Bell Awards) and the PTS Youth Channel's Detective Club at Chengren High School S1 (August 2024 to January 2025) and S2 (from November 2025, nominated for Golden Bell 60 youth program). On October 17, 2025, he led his production team up the red carpet at the 60th Golden Bell Awards. In March 2026, he wrote 35 lines of "no cilantro" instructions when ordering food delivery, successfully baiting the restaurant owner into responding "under investigation," extending his status as a cultural symbol. From April 2026 he has been living in Tokyo for a year with dog Yuzi, sharing daily life including Tokyo Tower and cherry blossom walks, saying with feeling "I've finally fulfilled a dream."⁷⁸

In the summer of 2015, Chen Tzu-jian (from Shuili Township, Nantou, a graduate of Shuili Junior High School, National Dali Senior High School, and National Changhua University of Education's Department of Chinese Literature, who always dreamed of becoming a news anchor) and Ho Shan-jung (Dong-yen Shenje) participated in the "Second Overseas Travel Journalist Internship Program and Challenge" cross-strait exchange trip to Quanzhou, Fujian, watching CCTV's Xinwen Lianbo every night at 7 p.m. with other participants. The flat official tones and propaganda-laden style of broadcast struck this group of Taiwanese university students as utterly absurd. He imitated it on the spot to make everyone laugh, and decided to bring this style back to Taiwan, using it to deliver constitutional cold jokes about "the ROC having jurisdiction over Outer Mongolia."¹

That was the birth moment of the "Retina" persona. He wore a Zhongshan jacket and slicked back his hair, gravely addressing the camera to call Taiwan "Taiwan Province of the Republic of China" and China the "Red Bandit-Occupied Zone." His online name "Retina" came from severe myopia in college causing retinal holes, and a friend's comment "replenish what fate has denied you" inspiring the choice.¹

The "Ghostification" and "Weaponization" of Official Historical Narrative

Before Chen Tzu-jian, political satire in Taiwan mostly stayed at the surface level of imitating individual politicians (as in programs like Ah-Q Show). Eye Central Television Station, however, chose a deeper path: imitating the system itself.

He extracted the dull, youth-forgotten legal terminology (compatriots in disaster areas, inspections, bandit-puppet, mainland area) and used it as the official language for broadcasting contemporary events. When these terms were used to describe Taiwan in the 2020s, audiences instantly recognized that the historical narratives claiming to represent "orthodoxy" appeared so absurd and anachronistic in a democratic society.

This was more than comedy — it was a collective de-authoritarianization psychological treatment. Through repeated use of "mainland area" to mean the mainland, "fallen area" to mean China, he allowed millions of young Taiwanese, through laughter, to see the vast gulf between what the law said and what reality was. The channel accumulated over 300 million views across eight years, becoming the most successful digital political deconstruction project in the post-Sunflower generation.²

Moving Between "Fake Anchor" and "Real Anchor"

From March 5 to December 31, 2018, the 23-year-old Chen Tzu-jian landed at CTS as a weekday anchor for the CTS Midday News, setting the youngest-anchor-in-the-daytime-slot record for that station. This was an experimental crossover at the time: an internet celebrity who built his career by satirizing media, entering the core of a traditional television station.³

During his time at CTS, he completely set aside Retina's satirical register, returning to the discipline and precision of a professional journalist. Though it lasted only nine months, it proved his deep command of "professional narration." In March 2019 he returned to CTS, hosting the talk show Late Night Jokes under his real name, and in October that year co-hosted the 54th Golden Bell Awards ceremony with Huang Tzu-chiao and Cheng Yin-sheng, performing the sketch "War Between Internet and TV — Content Is King." CTS had originally planned to create a new-style political satire program tailored for him in 2019.⁴

In a 2025 Podcast interview on Tang-Yang Chicken Bar, he clarified that the real reason he left the CTS anchor desk was that while in Tokyo viewing autumn foliage in November 2018, he realized he "didn't want to be stuck in an environment that would never improve" — at 23, he felt insufficient sense of achievement and wanted to see and learn more before he turned 30. He explicitly denied the widely circulated rumors that "being excluded by other anchors," "poor ratings," or "violating internal rules by accepting sponsored content" were the main reasons; he only acknowledged that, having been favored by management, he was effectively an "isolated bird" easy to resent. This experience also showed him the structural limitations of traditional media's pursuit of "neutrality" and the fundamental conflict with the digital era's pursuit of "authenticity."⁴

Why Leave at the Peak?

On April 1, 2023 (April Fools' video), Eye Central Television Station announced it would stop updating after May 31. For a channel with 1.21 million subscribers, over 300 million cumulative views, and continuous sponsored content deals, this was a rare "commercial self-destruction." After the final installment of Xinwen Lianbo, the channel formally stopped updating (after discontinuing, the main channel still had approximately 284 million cumulative views and approximately 1.17 million subscribers in early 2025).⁵

Chen Tzu-jian and producer Dong-yen Shenje were candid in farewell videos and subsequent interviews about the main reasons: long-term playing the Retina persona of "maintaining cold detachment toward everything" had created a disconnect between him and the real world; after the channel was corporatized, commercial pressure was high and the team was exhausted (weekly planning meetings felt draining); and more importantly, when political reality (populism, fake news) was more absurd than satire, the "parody" function of satire had failed.⁶

Additionally, during Taiwan's 2023 #MeToo movement, he had experienced sexual harassment by a female employee — she not only repeatedly forcibly hugged him (including "kneeling and bear-hugging" during a 2021 company trip), but also spread outside rumors about the two of them being in a relationship, boasted about her work capabilities, and fabricated various intimate scenarios (touching his thigh, jealousy, implying eye contact inviting sex, ancestral spiritual guidance and other claims). Unbearable, he publicly disclosed this matter after stopping updates to protect himself. He also revealed after stopping updates that he had twice received contact from Chinese capital (including an offer of NT$750,000 to acquire the fan page, with the other party hoping to move the content to Douyin), but declined both times because "one commercial deal alone shouldn't be worth this price" and he had no desire to sell. Ending the channel was the necessary cost of reclaiming his body and re-experiencing the warmth of life.⁶

Post-Discontinuation Transformation and Personal Life

After stopping updates, Chen Tzu-jian quickly shifted to traditional television and personal short-form video. From October 2023 he co-hosted PTS's Hello! Can I Ask You? with Lee Pei-yu (Da-Pei), and was nominated for Best Lifestyle Program Host at the 59th Golden Bell Awards for this program. From August 2024 to January 2025 he hosted the YPTV Taiwan's first immersive reality puzzle-solving program Detective Club at Chengren High School; from November 2025 the program launched S2 (upgraded to a "reasoning survival competition" elimination format, with each episode incorporating escape room and murder mystery elements and exploring campus issues such as power-based sexual harassment, drugs, and senior-junior hierarchies; featuring star lineup including Chu Yu-cheng, Hu Sheng-ming, and Li Yi-lung, with him hosting in the role of "Senior Jian"). On October 17, 2025, he led his production team up the red carpet at the 60th Golden Bell Awards, with Detective Club at Chengren High School nominated for Youth Program.⁸

From July 12, 2024, he launched "News Scene" on Instagram, editing current events in the style of Japanese news subtitles, often with sponsored content; on September 29, 2025, he further launched the vertical short-video format "Retina News." He simultaneously operates his personal YouTube channel "Retina and Yuzi's Daily Life," focused on sharing his dog Yuzi (a female Shiba Inu, former honorary chairperson of the Funhappy Powerless Party) and daily life including his extreme hatred of cilantro. In March 2026, he wrote 35 lines of "no cilantro" in delivery order notes for a large intestine noodle dish, successfully baiting the restaurant owner into commenting "under investigation" — extending his cultural symbol. From April 2026, he has even been living in Tokyo for a year with Yuzi, sharing daily life like Tokyo Tower visits and cherry blossom walks, saying with feeling "I've finally fulfilled a dream."⁷

In a cross-generational forum event in November 2024, he expressed that he currently feels fatigued by current-events content, "unless there's a fun idea, I don't want to make it" — the probability of resuming updates in the short term is low; his work focus has shifted to television and personal short-form video. He also joked that he really wants to collaborate with astrologer Tang Chi-yang.⁸

Further reading

• Pa-jiung (八炯) — from Taiwan-identity YouTuber to exposing the chain of CCP infiltration internet celebrities, another path of weaving resistance into a personal brand
• Ray Du (阿滴) — the bilingual million-subscriber YouTuber's international voice experiment, forming a mirror of "English international outreach vs. Chinese satire" with Retina
• Chih-chi Chang (張志祺) — Zhi Chi 77 host, another solution from the same generation of digital content creators for turning issues into programming

References