New Character That Means ‘Poor’ and ‘Ugly’ is Extremely Relatable to Chinese Millennials

This new character, “qiou,” is a combination of three characters: 穷 (qiong) that means poor, 丑 (chou), which is translated as ugly, and also 土 (tu), meaning earth. If put together, the character essentially reads as meaning “poor as dirt and ugly,” according to Shanghaiist.

In Weibo, China’s Twitter-like social media platform, the newly-made character received quite the buzz. One post that reads “this character is based on me,” garned millions of views.

“The time of our youth was a happy one,” said another user according to What’s On Weibo, “because it was not yet clear to us at the time how poor and ugly we were.”

It received even more attention after Chinese media outlet Modern Express dubbed this as the Chinese “character of 2018.”

Despite the millions of views on Weibo, “qiou’s” possibility of winning is realistically slim. Usually, the chosen winner for the Chinese character of the year contains optimism that is reportedly in harmony with the goals of China’s Communist Party.

Previous winners include 享 (xiang), meaning “sharing,” 规 (gui), meaning “rules,” 廉 (lian), meaning “incorruptible.” and 初心 (chuxin), meaning “original aspiration,” which was part of the widely-repeated party mission to “remain true to our ‘original aspiration’ and continue marching forward so our mission can be accomplished.”

Featured image via Weibo