'U swan, he frog': Comforting Chinglish goes viral

Crude, succinct and very much to the point, Chinglish — a mishmash of Chinese and English long ridiculed for generating confounding and awkward translations — has recently created a buzz on social media for its unique consoling touch.

The online buzz stems from a post on Aug 7 by a foreign blogger on lifestyle-sharing platform Xiaohongshu. The blogger, who goes by the alias YourKris, shared pictures of her being brought to tears while seeing off her boyfriend at the airport. Several days previously, she had posted, "Why he made me sad."

Her comments section was soon inundated with remarks from Chinese netizens who, believing that the blogger was having relationship trouble, left goodwill messages in Chinglish to comfort her.

One commenter attempted to persuade the blogger to move on and focus on the silver lining of potentially connecting with a better man in the future, saying, "The old doesn't go, the new doesn't come."

Another netizen tried to talk her out of weeping, mimicking the tone of a nagging mother: "Cry, cry, cry! Just know cry! Luck is gone by u cry."

One of the most popular phrases in the post's comments section played on a Chinese allegory — a toad wishing to eat swan meat — that describes the pursuit of something that one is unworthy of. "You pretty, he ugly, u swan, he frog," the comment said.

Another expressed concern for the young woman with simple words: "Abandon! Abandon him."

As of Wednesday afternoon, the post on Xiaohongshu had garnered over 267,000 likes and 64,000 comments.

These verbatim translations — ignorant of grammar rules and different cultural connotations — have even spread to social media platform X, formerly known as Twitter.

One X user shared screenshots of the original post and some of the comments that have gone viral. "Imagine going through a rough patch with your boyfriend and thousands of Chinese netizens comfort you," the user said. "This would actually fix me. I can't lie."

Another user applauded the choice of the word "abandon", because urging the tearful woman to abandon her boyfriend would have more impact than suggesting that she should simply leave him.

The metaphor of the swan and the frog has also gone viral on X, with a variety of memes juxtaposing celebrities or cartoon characters deemed unsuited for each other and designating them as either swans or frogs.

Furthermore, the post has prompted many users to inquire about Chinese social media platforms and express an interest in joining them.

Cody, a resident of New Zealand who asked to be identified only by his first name, told China Daily that he could understand common phrases of Chinglish such as "let me see see" and "people mountain, people sea" — which, respectively, mean "let me have a look" and "there are a lot of people" — because he began learning about Chinese culture around six years ago.

"After seeing the posts of 'u swan, he frog', I was confused because I didn't originally know the Chinese equivalent … so I had to ask some of my Chinese friends about it," he said.

"Once I understood the full meaning, it became much more funny," he said. "I think it's such a funny phenomenon that comes from partially broken English, but it is great and has created communities where people are just having fun."

Cody said he noticed an increase in the spread of Chinese culture through X and other social media sites that use English.

"It's great that more Chinese culture is being shared with the rest of the world," he added. "The humor and understanding with everyone makes it fun, and it seems like more and more people are getting into it. It also shows you don't need to perfect English to be understood."