Recycled buzzword tuhao shows changing attitude of newly rich
- By Ni Tao
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E-mail Shanghai Daily, November 18, 2013
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"TuHao" is a newly-emerged proper name for Chinese to describe nouveau riches who consume regardless of cost and consequence. |
Suppose you are clad from head to toe in name brands.
You wear a Versace shirt underneath a Giorgio Armani jacket. Your Hugo Boss slacks are fastened with a belt from Hermes.
On your wrist is a Vacheron Constantin watch. An LV bag dangles from your shoulder.
You strut on the latest TOD’S ballet flats. All these fashion items are topped off in extravagance with the new golden iPhone in your hand. Then get prepared for making heads turn on the street, and in rare cases, even encouraging someone audacious enough to approach, circle his arm around your shoulder, and say, “tuhao, let’s be friends!”
Until recently, tuhao wasn’t the favored word to greet those Chinese fond of displaying wealth.
Literally translated as “rustically rich,” it became a popular substitute for nouveau riche virtually overnight.
It seems that the phrase tuhao has colonized the Internet since early September, as there are references to it here and there all over cyberspace, especially in chat rooms and web forums.
The phrase owes its popularity to the online gaming community, where players use it to mock fellow gamers who buy expensive virtual “equipment” to compensate for their mediocre skills.
Tuhao quickly caught on as a buzzword in social media.
As it gained traction, tuhao replaced nouveau riche in describing, unflatteringly, those bling-bling Chinese who shop till they drop overseas but hardly have any class or sophistication to show for their conspicuous consumption.
Evolution of neologism
The rise of tuhao as a new social class has attracted media such as the BBC to probe the evolution of the neologism.
In fact, tuhao isn’t a new invention, but has fairly recent and revolutionary origins.
During the land reform era in the 1950s, tuhao specifically referred to the landlords and gentry that bullied those beneath them, as BBC reported.
So this word often evokes the unsavory image of a despicable landlord mercilessly crushing his social inferiors.
The redux of tuhao is notable in the sense that the term has been largely stripped of its political connotations, although the negative undertone remains culturally.
Members of the Chinese online community have an uncanny ability to find new usages for old language, and for tuhao, they have adapted it in a way that no longer encapsulates the antagonistic, class-struggle view of the wealthy, but suggests more of a love-hate relationship.
Still, tuhaos are sneered at for their loud manners and gaudy tastes, but that very disparagement is usually tinged with light-hearted humor and jealousy.
Nowadays, whenever someone draws attention by mindless flaunting of fancy purchases online, he or she usually gets called a tuhao, to be followed, at times, by the catchphrase “let’s be friends!”
Besides placing themselves at the pointy end of people’s ire, the clan of tuhao is also stoking such feelings as envy, jealousy, self-mockery as well as aspirations to join their ranks.
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