Mandarin Monday: Explaining China's Newest Word, "Dirt-Poor and Ugly"

Get your duang out of here, Jackie Chan, there's a new made-up character taking the internet by storm. Swaths of Weibo users are currently gunning for qiǒu, a combination of the three characters poor ‘穷’ (qióng) and ugly ‘丑’ (chǒu), and dirt ‘土’ (tǔ), to be selected as 2018's unofficial character of the year under the hashtag #2018年度汉字qiou#.

By combining qi from qióng and ǒu from chǒu netizens have created a word equivalent to calling oneself "dirt-poor and ugly," apparently a sentiment with which many of China's netizens sympathize. Some are even asking one another if the neologism defines them, but masking it inside an innocent question about pronunciation: "This character... is it like "me"? (这个字…是不是念“wǒ”？).

The word joins a long list of others that have become part of online world's tradition for subversion through the act of self-deprecation. As with the term diǎosī before it, by describing themselves down and out, young netizens are contrasting themselves to the rich, beautiful, and successful celebrities often fawned over online and peddled by the Chinese media as role models.

It's very unlikely that qiǒu will be officially selected as 2018's word of the year given the negative and unsocialist values it exemplifies but (good news for those of us gunning for the little guy) it will probably live a long and happy life online, where creativity against the powers that be continues to flourish.

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Images: the Beijinger, Weibo, International Business Times