Author: Christina Xu

Christina Xu researches and writes about the social interactions and organic communities that form around technology and subculture, especially in the US and China. She designs research project for clients as Vernacular Systems and is faculty at the School of Visual Arts’ MFA in Interaction Design program. Her latest project is Magpie Kingdom, a series of newsletters and reports to help busy people stay attuned to China from abroad.
Chinese Corner

Meek Mill’s Beef, Spicy Chicken’s Duck

Christina Xu

Nicknames for popstars on the Chinese internet – Christina Xu

I went spelunking on the Chinese internet today. What started off as an innocuous search for Chinese Nicki Minaj fans quickly turned into a hunt for the ingenious, hilarious, and often slightly insulting nicknames created by Chinese fans for the American pop stars whose names they can’t pronounce.

After an inappropriate amount of time on Weibo and the Chinese equivalent of Yahoo Answers, I present the greatest of my findings:

Málàjī 麻辣鸡 – Nicki Minaj

A slant transliteration of “Minaj.” Means “spicy chicken” (ma la is a spice combo commonly used in Sichuan cooking).

Chinese Corner

Hey Poser

Christina Xu

What putdown to use when dudes wear shades indoors – by Christina Xu

In Chinese internet parlance, to zhuāng bì (装B) is to put on airs  – worldly, moneyed, educated, eccentric, or any other combination thereof. In other words: to be a f*ing poser.

Zhuāng B is a shorthand for zhuāng níubī 装牛屄: zhuāng means “pretend,” and níubī literally means “cow pussy” but has come to figuratively mean “badass.” The character for the second word, 屄, is hard to find when typing, so it’s often replaced with the more common character bī 逼 or simply the English letter “B.”