Jiong: Chinese Internet is so 囧 these days

I first came across the character 囧 (jiǒng / jiong3) on chinaSMACK and proudly sported a chinaSMACK t-shirt in Hong Kong to impress my friends and relatives with how “with-it” I was.  Here’s chinaSMACK’s definition:

A popular Chinese character/pictogram often used on the Chinese-language internet to express being shocked, amused, or stupefied. Possibly originated from Taiwan, and similar to “Orz” which looks like a person kneeling/bowing.

Before we continue, a quick confession if I may.  I furtively include ChinaSMACK in my Google Reader, and enjoy Fauna’s “hot intenet stories, pictures & videos…of what’s popular, scandalous, or shocking that have the Chinese talking.”  So while CN Reviews is posting about weighty topics like China’s financial crisis I dream of trolling KDS and Tianya for hot stories like Fauna!

Via a post on the China Observer, I just read another great post on Jiong on GOLDENCHINABRANDS blog.  Here’s their examples of how to use jiong:

• “I was terribly 囧 not to have known this before”
• “It made me so 囧 I didn’t buy this cool bag”
• “I was terribly 囧 to find myself in the same elevator as my boss after I had complained to him about a colleague”
• “It’s really 囧 that I was in such a hurry that I threw my handbag instead of the garbage bag into the trash can.”

Min Guo also translated some information from Baidu Baike on the origins of the word Jiong:

Original meaning: bright. The shape of the character is similar to a “window” where light can come through, thus the meaning “bright”. It was used as another character “炯”(jiǒng).  The current Internet meaning is more similar to another character “窘”(jiǒng) which has the same pronunciation. “窘” means “embarrassed, disconcert”.   The appearance of  “囧” looks like a human face with astonished open-mouth and slouched eyebrows。

GOLDENCHINABRANDS blog highlights how this character has become a movement:

This character has also given birth to a great many expressions appropriate for a variety of social situations. Bloggers are using it in their blog names, such as Jiong Pig. More than 500 Jiong BBS were born overnight, such as “Jiong Village” on baidu.com. And some Net users have even built an official website for Jiong, such as “Jiong Everyday” on youku.com, which hosts a daily humorous video on the emerging Jiong culture.

Denis Yu of CIC also spoke at CNBloggerCon and mentioned the Jiong phenomenon at CNBloggerCon.

Go read the GOLDENCHINABANDS post for more examples.  For now, I’m just fashionably 囧 wearing my chinaSMACK t-shirt.  So now you too can use 囧 correctly.  Lets see if our chronicle of the jiong phenomenon is a sign that jiong may be jumping the shark.