What does YYDS mean in Chinese? • China Admissions

This article is a guest post by BLCU Chinese Language Teacher Angela. Listen to it here:

I have a feeling that I can’t understand generation Z anymore!

If you were chatting with young people online in China and they suddenly sent you “XSWL”, what should you reply?

Wǒ bù míngbai “XSWL” de yìsi, suǒyǐ wǒ bǎidù le yíxià.

我不明白“XSWL”的意思，所以我百度了一下。

I don’t understand the meaning of “XSWL”, so I baidu it, or I search it online using baidu.

In English you can say, I don’t know what it is, so I google it. In China, the most common search engine is baidu. We’ll say 百度一下(bǎidù yíxià).

“XSWL” is the abbreviation of Chinese pinyin “xiào sǐ wǒ le笑死我了,” which means “it’s so funny.”

I have a list of those abbreviations that are popular online. Let’s have a quiz and see if you know the meaning.

DBQ

YYDS

YJJC

U1S1

……

Here is the answer:

DBQ

对不起(duìbuqǐ) which means sorry in Chinese.

YYDS

永远的神(yǒngyuǎn de shén)

永远(yǒngyuǎn) means forever, 神(shén) means god or something is magically great. 永远的神(yǒngyuǎn de shén) is similar to English saying “the greatest of all time”.

YJJC

一骑绝尘(yí jì jué chén)

It’s a Chinese idiom that means someone or something is outstanding among others. 骑( jì) means a person riding a horse. Originally it means among many horse riders, one runs very fast, and the people behind can’t even see the dust raised by his horse.

Dàwèi de chéngjì tèbié hǎo, zài zhěng gè xuéxiào yí jì jué chén, méi rén bǐ tā qiáng.

大卫的成绩特别好，在整个学校一骑绝尘，没人比他强。

Dawei’s test result is very good. He is a top student in the whole school. No one is better than him.

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Savannah Billman

Savannah Billman has a master's degree in Chinese Law and Society at the Yenching Academy of Peking University. She holds a B.A. from NYU Shanghai and has also written for The World of Chinese, TechNode, SupChina, and Sixth Tone.

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