While it may seem confusing at first, Chinese internet slang can be very rewarding to learn and opens up a whole new sphere of communication with fellow Chinese internet users.
And it isn’t that hard to learn. Here are 38 Chinese internet slang words to get you started.
Probably the most common form of Chinese internet slang, and indeed the most confusing at first glance, is “alphanumeric” slang.This form of slang replaces Chinese characters or words with Roman capital letters or numbers and requires an advanced level of Chinese language skills.
The primary purpose behind this kind of slang is to reduce the number of keystrokes needed to build a word.
For the capital letter acronyms, each letter corresponds to the first letter of a pinyin syllable. Numbers are used for words whose pinyin sounds somewhat similar to the character the number represents.
Here are some examples of this slang in sentences:
我必须睡觉！88！ (wǒ bì xū shuì jiào! 88!) I have to sleep! Bye-bye!
995！我不知道怎么做！ (995! wǒ bù zhī dào zěn me zuò) Help me! I don’t know what to do!
我觉得你真可爱 – 520！ (wǒ jué de nǐ zhēn kě ài – 520!) I think you are really cute – I love you!
The best way to practice and identify this slang type is to see it used in authentic Chinese situations. For that I recommend FluentU.
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I can't handle it. Used when you see something so incredible or beautiful that you have no words.
Examples:
我的GG有一位非常漂亮的女朋友。 (wǒ de GG yǒu yī wèi fēi cháng piào liang de nǚ péng you.) My bro has a very beautiful girlfriend.
GCD不让我们抗议。 (GCD bú ràng wǒ men kàng yì.) The Communist Party doesn’t let us protest.
我的朋友TMD醉了。 (wǒ de péng you TMD zuì le.) My friend is f’ing drunk.
那个ZF太腐败。 (nà ge ZF tài fǔ bài.) The government is too corrupt.
Insulting Slang in Chinese
There are quite a few ways to insult someone in Chinese internet slang. Here are some worth knowing, especially if you want to be able to not get lost when reading social media and forum comment sections:
Rich second generation; The sons and daughters of well-connected business and political figures. Their extravagant lifestyles are mocked by the general population.
50-cent party; There is a widely believed theory—with some supporting evidence—that the Chinese government pays online posters to write pro-government posts. They are known as the wǔ máo dǎng or "50-cent party" due to the fact that they are allegedly paid 50 cents per pro-government post.
This is a disparaging term used to describe overly nationalistic young people who buy into government propaganda more than others.
Metaphoric Chinese Slang
Finally, there’s the slang that’s meant to fool the censors. China’s internet is notoriously controlled and restricted. Alongside the censorship of political topics, the Chinese government also actively censors words that it considers to be overly rude or insulting.
Posts using such banned words find themselves rapidly removed from social media, and should a user draw too much attention from the authorities, they could find their online accounts removed too.
The good news is that native Chinese speakers have developed a whole new vocabulary of metaphoric, homophone-based slang to get around this kind of censorship.
This slang has developed into its own unique internet meme, called “The 10 Mythical Creatures of Baidu,” with Baidu being China’s main search engine equivalent to Google. These mythical creatures form the names of strange animals, which are pronounced in very similar ways to censored words.
Pronounced in Mandarin as hé xiè, this word sounds very similar to the word Harmony/Harmonize (hé xié).
The word “harmonize” began to be censored because it was also used to describe something being actively censored (as in, “This popular Weibo account was harmonized”). This led to people using the slang form in its place.
Another very well-known Chinese mythical creature is:
草泥马 / 肏你妈 (cǎo ní mǎ / cào nǐ mā) — The Grass-mud horse
Pronounced in Mandarin as cǎo ní mǎ, this word sounds very similar to 肏你妈 (cào nǐ mā), a crude Chinese insult meaning “f&$k your mother.”
It’s become a popular meme in China used to ridicule government censorship of often mundane content.
Here are some more slang words you’ll see on the internet that are metaphorical, but not necessarily to bypass censorship:
Literally "release a pigeon," meaning to stand someone up or fail to show up for a meeting or appointment.
Where Chinese Slang Can Be Used
Now that you’ve learned many new Chinese internet slang words, let’s take a look at where it’s appropriate to use them, and when you would be better served to use more conventional Chinese vocabulary.
Currently, the most likely place a Chinese speaker or learner would encounter internet slang is on 微信 (wēi xìn) also known by its English name WeChat.
This is a hugely popular messaging and social media app, which has taken China by storm in the last few years.
Rather than mobile phone numbers, Chinese people are now more likely to exchange WeChat IDs and use this service to keep in touch with each other. Given that this is a popular form of informal, interpersonal communication in China, it’s a hotbed of Chinese online slang.
Social Media
Like the rest of the world, social media portals are immensely popular in China.
Websites like RenRen (similar to Facebook) and Weibo(similar to Twitter) are some of the most common ways that Chinese people communicate online.
Much of the internet slang currently in use originated on social media sites like these, and they continue to be filled with unique expressions, which you would never find in offline media.
While public profile pages are somewhat more formal, slang is particularly prevalent in the associated chat functions of these sites.
Dating Apps
It would be an understatement to say that Chinese people take dating (and searching for partners) seriously. As such, there are a huge number of popular dating apps, ranging from the more conventional to so-called “hookup” apps like 陌陌(mò mò).
Within these apps, Chinese speakers generally use a large vocabulary of internet slang and popular double entendres to flirt.
On such apps, knowledge of slang is key to avoiding embarrassing faux pas or accidentally offending a prospective partner.
So what are you waiting for? Get online and start using Chinese internet slang—a whole new world of lingo is waiting for you.
And One More Thing...
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