蓝瘦香菇

What does 蓝瘦香菇 mean?

Read it as a sentence and it is nonsense: blue, thin, mushroom. Say it in the accent of the video that made it famous, and it becomes 难受，想哭, I feel awful and want to cry. The phrase is used for complaints that are small, theatrical and entirely sincere at once: lost a rank in a game, got turned down for a date, arrived to find the canteen closed. Spelling out the sounds rather than the words is the whole device; anyone who heard the clip can replay the voice in their head.

Where does 蓝瘦香菇 come from?

In early October 2016 a video of a young man from Nanning, Guangxi, spread across Weibo and WeChat. Nursing what looked like a breakup, he told the camera 蓝瘦，香菇 in heavily accented Mandarin, and viewers decoded it at once as 难受，想哭. China Radio International reported on 2016-10-17 that the original protagonist had been identified; the People's Daily opinion page grumbled the same day about how such a forgettable clip could go viral; and by 2016-10-18 CNR was reporting that the phrase had already been grabbed as a trademark. When the Ministry of Education's 汉语盘点2016 list came out on 2016-12-21, 蓝瘦香菇 was on the top-ten internet slang list.

How to use 蓝瘦香菇

• 排了四十分钟的队，轮到我时窗口关了，蓝瘦，香菇。
  Pái le sìshí fēnzhōng de duì, lún dào wǒ shí chuāngkǒu guān le, lán shòu, xiāng gū.
  I queued forty minutes, and the window closed right as it was my turn. 蓝瘦香菇.
• “周末加班两天。”“蓝瘦香菇，我的周末啊。”
  “Zhōumò jiābān liǎng tiān.” “Lán shòu xiāng gū, wǒ de zhōumò a.”
  “Working the whole weekend.” “蓝瘦香菇. My weekend.”