Say it with a smiley

More meanings implied

As the director of the photography center at Zhejiang Daily, a local newspaper, Xu doesn't share memes, emojis or stickers, himself. He delivers instructions with brevity and accuracy to his team at work. He says: "A sentence formed with only words seems very serious and formal; that's me indicating that the conversation is purely work related."

However, there are over 20 sets of stickers that he frequently uses in his leisure time.

He swipes through his collection and picks out his favorite－a set of stickers of a black-and-white monk. In the ones he uses most commonly, one portrays the character hugging the world with open arms with wishes of love and peace written above his head, the other has him standing on a wooden boat with a relaxed body, looking straight ahead with the phrase "let it be" in the background.

He believes that just like the little monk, a large number of stickers carry independent meanings, sometimes supported with explaining text.

Since last year, an emoji derived from the famous "doge" meme has garnered favor as a new way of expressing sarcasm or irony on microblogging platform, Sina Weibo.

Users flatter someone they actually don't like or agree with using words, and follow up with the doge emoji to indicate that they mean the opposite.

Such a phenomenon is known as "doge saves life". A female, who uses the screen name Shuanglisushu, claims that doge has been used as a shield to protect oneself being attacked by people who have different opinions, and also as a clue for people who know the trick to understand the real thought behind the words.

Zhang Shiheng, 21, from Zhejiang province, sometimes uses a friendly, but empty smiley face emoji as a polite way to end a conversation.

"QQ shows whether the user is online, invisible or offline, but WeChat doesn't. It's rude if I suddenly quit responding, but it's also a bit weird to say 'goodbye' formally, or show that I have no interest to dive deeper into the current topic," says Zhang.

The emoji culture has become so popular that individuals have developed their own styles of using them. So, perhaps, like handwriting used to lay the writer's personality bare on the page, a person's online persona can be derived from their use of emojis and stickers. What does yours say about you?