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Duang, The New Chinese Character No One Understands But Everyone Is Using

No One Knows What This New Chinese Character Means, But It's Everywhere

A mysterious Chinese character is being shared by millions online – despite the fact that nobody quite knows its meaning.

The character -- called "duang" -- is so new it's not even in the Chinese dictionary. Yet it's been used online over 8 million times on China's main social network Weibo, and has been looked up 600,000 times on China's top search engine, Baidu.

Chinese internet users seem to be formulating their own meanings for the character, but the majority seem to use it as an adjective before another word to emphasize it (i.e. - that girl is "duang pretty").

Others are more confused: "Everyone's duang-ing and I still don't know what it means! Looks like it's back to school for me," said Weibo user Weileiweito.

There is a theory it originated with movie star Jackie Chan, who was in a 2004 shampoo commercial where he defended his sleek hair using the rhythmical-sounding "duang," according to stuff.co.nz. The word reappeared in the zeitgeist lately when Chan posted it on his Weibo page and Twitter.

Twitter has, of course, gone nuts about the word:

Well duang, we're still perplexed by this whole thing.

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