Looking for a success mantra for youth

Diaosi, gaofushuai and baifumei are terms that people usually use to denote different groups of Chinese youth. The terms not only describe the social status of youngsters, but also point to some underlying social problems.

Not surprisingly, the three terms were among the top 10 Internet buzzwords of 2012, according to the list prepared by the National Language Resource Monitoring and Research Center on Network Media of Central China Normal University.

Gaofushuai (tall, rich and handsome guy) and baifumei (white, rich and beautiful girl) derive their literal meanings from Chinese. But diaosi has a special and complex meaning in China's cyberspace. The word diaosi was first used on Baidu tieba, a Chinese bulletin board system (BBS), to describe fans of former Chinese soccer player Li Yi, who were infamous for using dirty language, or people using the Internet as a platform to bemoan their unsatisfactory career and life. But later diaosi came to mean a "loser" who lacked good looks, wealth and social resources.

Interestingly, the majority of people using the Internet on the Chinese mainland are happy to embrace the loser's label, and only a few say they are rich. Many white-collar workers, graduate students and intellectuals love to call themselves diaosi. Even Han Han, the best-selling author, famous racing driver and popular and handsome advertisement star, has called himself "a pure diaosi from a rural area of Shanghai".

Gaofushuai and baifumei can only be "another" person for most of the people using the Internet, and the term even has a pejorative connotation. For example, Guo Meimei, infamous for her charity scandal, is called a baifumei.

But the popularity of the term diaosi is something more than self-mockery. It conveys youngsters' discontent with inequity and the wealth gap.

The significant difference between gaofushuai, baifumei and diaosi is not whether a person is rich or not, but how he/she has amassed wealth, if any. In particular, gaofushuai and baifumei refer to youngsters who were born with the proverbial silver spoon in their mouth, while diaosi are those who were born into families that were neither affluent nor resourceful.