你为什么不

August 2, 2016 2:59 PM

"Biologists have found that human language, like bird song, may evolve to accommodate its environment through acoustic adaptation. In the internet, a similar phenomenon happens to our visual languages: our memes hold something of the digital landscapes they proliferate in. In China, the digitally-active keep folders of 表情 (biǎo qíng) [gifs], which literally means “facial expression.”

An introductory field guide to the Chinese biaoqing.

posted by joshwa (11 comments total)

This article is SUPER FASCINATING
posted by DoctorFedora at 3:27 PM on August 2, 2016

YES IT IS (panda face nose bleed)
posted by Potomac Avenue at 5:36 PM on August 2, 2016 [2 favorites]

This is great, thanks for posting it.
posted by LobsterMitten at 10:55 PM on August 2, 2016

Fascinating read, thank you!
I've seen these once before: Some fun examples from Languagelog involving intentional mistranslations and bilingual puns.
posted by Gordafarin at 1:22 AM on August 3, 2016

I showed this article to my co-worker from Shanghai today and he spent the entire afternoon giggling over it but WOULDN'T TELL ME WHY.
posted by um at 5:36 AM on August 3, 2016 [3 favorites]

Three variations of the same basic biaoqing image, communicating different messages. From left: “Fuck you, my heart hurts so bad.” “I surrender, your posing is too impressive.” “This is really terrifying.”

Ah, so I see that China's been watching the same election coverage that we have.
posted by schmod at 9:13 AM on August 3, 2016

NICE. As a 华侨 (if that is even the word anymore - I'm sure it dates me and my lexicon) it is super difficult to keep up with Chinese online culture and this is great. (Yeah, yeah, yeah, I should just get better at hanzi etc but who has the time, and at this point I'm so far behind what is even the point.)
posted by aperturescientist at 9:21 AM on August 3, 2016

This is great. Saving it for later when I can sit down with my handy dictionary. Though I've already learned that cao3 is used for cao4 in "cao ni ma," possibly as a way to avoid censorship?
posted by the sobsister at 10:51 AM on August 3, 2016

What I love is the cheeky attitude behind the captions. To translate a few:

"I'm so handsome that other people must find it hard to live"
"Are you guys even human I'm just a child"
"So ugly and yet still so willful"
"Folks like me are only be pampered"
"Run away after posing, so fucking exciting"
"The other side doesn't want to talk to you and throw a Wiki entry at you"
posted by of strange foe at 11:42 AM on August 3, 2016 [3 favorites]

Fantastic post!
posted by epj at 8:17 PM on August 3, 2016

Strange Foe, thank you so much for the translations! I absolutely love the first one in particular
posted by DoctorFedora at 1:22 AM on August 4, 2016