Chinese Net Memes

Here are some Chinese internet memes, as presented by More Suzhou magazine (February/ March 2010 issue):

What, brother, is smoking, is not a cigarette, but loneliness!
(...) gē chōu de bú shì yān, shì jì mò

In July of 2009, someone posted a picture of a guy eating a bowl of noodles on a Baidu forum, and titled it, “What, brother, is eating, isn’t noodles, but loneliness!” After that, it ran out of control. People began to use this sentence on many other occasions, such as, “What, brother, is loving, isn’t you, but loneliness.” And “What, brother, is loving, isn’t beer, but loneliness.” This has become lots of peoples’ signature on MSN, QQ, and other social networking sites. (...)

Jia Junpeng, your mom is calling you to go home to eat!
(...) jiǎ jūn péng nǐ mā mā hǎn nǐ huí jiā chī fàn

Jia Junpeng may or not be a real person but, on July 16th, 2009, an empty post named “Jia Junpeng, your mom is calling you to go home to eat!” appeared on a World of Warcraft forum on Baidu Tieba. It was viewed by 390,617 people in the following few hours, and had over 17,000 replies. By the next day, there were 7,100,000 hits, and 300,000 replies. After that, it became the most popular network greeting online, and had permeated all sectors of society, including the media, who spent a lot of time on in-depth analysis of this quotation. (...)

Out buying soy sauce
(...) wǒ shì lái dǎ jiàng yóu de

It literally means, “I’m just out buying soy sauce.” The phrase took the Chinese Internets by storm in 2007, thanks to a Guangzhou TV news clip of a reporter asking a man on the street his opinion on the Edison Chen sex scandal. The man famously replied: “I don’t give a shit. I’m just out buying soy sauce.” Chinese Internet users have taken up the phrase as a cynical euphemism for “It’s none of my business.” or “Who gives a shit?” (...)

Distraught
(...) xīn shén bù níng

One day on CCTV’s, “Focus Interview,” there was an interview with a college student about how Google doesn’t filter out pornography. He said, “I think the harm of online pornography is particularly large. I have a classmate who used to obsess over dirty porn. He visits those website a lot a lot, he was very distraught for a long time.” So after that, whatever happens, people all say “distraught,” ...


From:Chinese Net Memes