Top 10 Chinese Catchphrases You Have To Know - Ninchanese

At Ninchanese, we aim to teach you both at the same time, so today, we’re showing you some really funny and popular Chinese catchphrases. They’re really handy if you want to chat online or talk to your Chinese-speaking friends. And they are great to learn, because they always reflect current issues and help you understand Chinese culture better . Besides, it’s not as easy for us, foreign learners to know these things if we aren’t living in China.

 

One day, you suddenly start seeing a new word or an expression pop up everywhere online or hear teenagers use it all the time and you don’t even know what it means yet. Chances are, you’ve encountered a catchphrase; a popular slang word or expression that everyone starts suddenly using to talk about a concept.

In China, new slang and catchphrases emerge at break-neck speed and become immediately immensely popular on Weibo and other online forums. So if you want to speak really modern Chinese, being familiar with Chinese catchphrases as well as the things you learn in class will help you a lot.

Nincha’s here to help though so don’t be worried, you’ll know all you need to know! Here we go!

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Chinese catchphrase #1 : It’s a Duang thing

“DUANG”

duāng

“boing,”  “ta-da!”

Our first must-know Chinese catchword is a word you’ve probably come across already, and not necessarily in a Chinese text. It was a big hit not only in China but also in some parts of the world (hello 9gag): DUANG.

Duang, this strange little word (pronounced: dwong) suddenly hit the Chinese Internet by storm and became viral throughout China. You can now hear people use it jokingly in the streets, on TV shows, everywhere!

This word doesn’t actually have a meaning, it is a modal word like “Oops”, “ta-da” or “boing!”, a mimetic word to show your excitement or to describe something that happens all of a sudden. A majority of Chinese netizens also seem to use it as an adjective before another word to emphasize it.

For instance,

他 duang 的一下摔倒了。

tā duāng de yī xià shuāi dǎo le. 

“Duang”, he fell down all of a sudden.

DUANG first appeared in a Jackie Chan interview. In the interview, to show how he felt about a shampoo advertisement, he used this word to explain how magical the shampoo could be. Just like magic, after DUANG a second your hair turns black again.

Now, if you google Duang, in addition to Jackie Chan’s face, you’ll see this everywhere:

Since Duang didn’t have a character associated with it in Chinese, netizens came up with this: It’s a combination of Jackie Chan’s name in Chinese + Duang written on top. ^^

Later on, out of nowhere, a netizen remixed this advertisement with the music of 庞麦郎 Pang Mai Lang’s “My sneaker” “我的滑板鞋” (wǒ de huá bǎn xié) – a spoof music that is unreasonably hot in China right now. In it, you hear “Duang” repeated over and over with a bunch of special effects. It’s really quite something. So let’s get duangggggg now!

For example, you can say:

门“duang”的一下就开了。 mén duāng de yī xià jiù kāi le. Tada(duang)! The door is open.

Chinese slang #2: Tired like a dog

累成狗

leì chéng gǒu

tired like a dog

Nowadays in China, a lot of sayings are used to express how tired or bored we feel, but the most popular slang expression is this one: “累成狗” (leì chéng gǒu, tired like a dog).

This Chinese catchword works more or less like an adjective, and means “like a dog” (Adjective + 成狗). So you can add anything you want in the front, like 饿成狗 “hungry like a dog”; 热成狗 “hot like a dog”; 穷成狗 “poor like a dog”, anything you want. This slang expression works just like 热死了rè sǐ le “I am hot to death”. Both 成狗 and 死了 are used here after the adjective to add emphasis.

You might be wondering why a dog? I didn’t find the answer as to how this all started, but just picture a tired little puppy face with its little tongue hanging out of its mouth, lying on the ground. I think it perfectly sums up our feeling.

For example you can say:

昨天作业超级难，我累成狗了！

zuó tiān zuò yè chāo jí duō, wǒ lèi chéng gǒu le!

Yesterday’s homework was super hard, I was tired like a dog!