Here's a character like no other

If you are thinking of picking up some Chinese during your stay in the Middle Kingdom, there's one character you will definitely want to know. 囧 (jiong), which first appeared on oracle bones about 3,000 years ago, has become one of the most frequently used icons by the Chinese Internet community.

The character has gained iconic status and has come to mean "sad and frustrated", as it resembles a frowning face. The symbol, whose original meaning is "bright", has attracted a lot of online buzz with its new Net definition.

This new meaning has found wide-ranging use in expressions such as, "I was terribly 囧 to find myself in the same elevator as my boss after I had complained to him about a colleague", or "It's really that I was in such a hurry that I threw my handbag instead of the garbage bag into the trash can".

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 (a hot video sharing site), which hosts a daily humorous video on the emerging Jiong culture.

A recent report about Ig Nobel - a parody of the Nobel Prizes by the scientific humor magazine, Annals of Improbable Research - in a Beijing-based newspaper even used Jiong Science as a headline to describe quirky research on such questions as, does drinking coca cola kill sperm and why do people pick their nose. A cartoon of a robot carrying test tubes and wearing a Jiong face, won over many readers.