‘Rat rat, I’: Chinese youth claim the rat as spirit animal in latest internet subculture

On Chinese lifestyle app Xiaohongshu, a young woman posts a selfie with the caption, “Rat rat I am about to get laid off by my employer.” In a 42-second clip with over 16,000 likes on Douyin, the Chinese version of TikTok, a creator comments on her parents’ favoritism of her brother with a photo of a hamster: “When rat rat wears a cute dress for Chinese New Year, her relatives tell the rat’s mother that she should stop sending the rat to school and prioritize finding a husband for her.”

Welcome to “rat rat,” the newest meme sweeping across Chinese social media.

How did it begin? Last month, on Bilibili, a youth-oriented video-sharing platform, a college student posted a video in which she narrates her story of growing up in poverty. “I, rat rat, always wanted to live in a big city but those places are notoriously unfriendly to rats,” she says. “When a rat appears, everyone rushes to beat it. Rats are the kind of creatures that belong to sewers and are only allowed to roam freely when it’s dark.”

This particular video garnered more than 2.36 million views and nearly 6,000 comments on Bilibili. Remarks such as, “Rat rat, I can totally relate,” and, “I’m also a rat but I want to tell you to hang in there,” flooded the comments section. On Chinese social media, the “rat rat I” #鼠鼠我啊# (shǔ shǔ wǒ ā) tag (which can also be rendered as “I, rat rat”) has evolved into a meme called “rat rat literature” (鼠鼠文学 shǔ shǔ wénxué) in the past few weeks, prompting countless videos and posts, featuring a new set of neologisms, that have tallied millions of views.

Why exactly are Chinese internet users referring to themselves as rats?

“Instead of lashing out against the class inequality and unfairness in a literal and stern manner, they are resorting to parody and memes to subtly — and somewhat lightheartedly — express their dissatisfaction and disillusionment,” Sheng Zou, a researcher on Chinese digital media and pop culture with Hong Kong Baptist University, explained to The China Project.

In China as elsewhere, the rat is often perceived in a negative light: a food-stealing, clothes-nibbling, dam-destroying, disease-spreading pest. During the Four Pests campaign, a national initiative launched by Máo Zédōng 毛泽东 in 1958 to improve sanitation and public health, rats were among the creatures targeted, along with sparrows, flies, and mosquitoes. “A rat crosses the street, everyone chases it down,” says a Chinese idiom, which is longhand for “everyone detests a lowlife.”

The small rodent signifies the lower class — exactly where a growing number of young Chinese consider themselves belonging to in the social hierarchy.

Playing cute while telling the saddest stories

Before taking on its final form, the rat-inspired meme was an obscure in-joke that had nothing to do with the animal. Back in 2020, Bilibili users started using the phrase “Uncle uncle I” to mock the site’s CEO, Chén Ruì 陈睿, who was heavily criticized for prioritizing monetization over optimizing user experience. “Uncle uncle I love money above all” became a popular phrase.

“Uncle uncle I” then made its way to Baidu Tieba, a Reddit-like Chinese forum that was popular in the 2010s and is now past its heyday. Over there, the phrase “Rat rat I” — a homophone for the original joke — emerged as a vehicle for relaying stories of real-life disappointment. Because Tieba’s user base is primarily male, an early popular theme of “rat rat literature” centered around men experiencing unrequited love.

“Rat rat I had a crush on a girl but I am so useless. I can’t get anything done and everything I do ends up annoying people,” one of these posts reads. “In the end I can’t even be friends with her. I screwed everything up. Rat rat I have to live in a swamp alone forever.”

At the beginning of this year, Xiaohongshu users discovered the term and it quickly took off. By then, the meme has expanded into a unifying symbol for people who have suffered through trauma or hard times. Impoverished upbringings, bullying in schools, abusive parents, medical predicaments, unemployment, and a general feeling of hopelessness are common subjects.

One of these posts reads, “Eight years ago, rat rat I became partially paralyzed. I’m from a poor family in the countryside and my parents can’t afford rehabilitation equipment.” Another says, “Rat rat I once envisioned an eventful life for myself but I’ve now realized that I’m just a regular rat with endless work and overtime hours.”

In contrast to the depressing undertone of these stories, puns and visual jokes often drive the humor in “rat rat literature.” Photos of adorable hamsters are frequently used to accompany a post. Wordplay of the word “rat” is also rampant. “Library” (图书馆 túshūguǎn) is now referred to as “killing rats building” (屠鼠馆 tú shǔ guǎn), and “dawn” (曙光 shǔguāng) is now “rat light” (鼠光 shǔ guāng).

“The term ‘rat rat’ implies cuteness; so are the visual representations of a cute hamster, which are part of the subculture,” Zou said. “The apparent lightheartedness and acts of ‘playing cute’ are central to the online meme and parody culture in China.”

From “diaosi” to “rats rat,” a long history of self-deprecation

Self-deprecating humor has long been a fixture of Chinese internet culture. Over a decade ago, the phrase “diaosi” (屌丝 diǎo sī) — literally “penis hair” — originated as an insult for poor, unattractive young men with dim future prospects. But as the term gained traction on the internet, Chinese youth from all backgrounds started to call themselves “diaosi” as a way to mock themselves as “underprivileged losers.” Eventually, the word became a way to describe the ordinary Chinese citizen who faces everyday struggles and hardships.

Last year, in a viral online discourse about Chinese celebrities enjoying advantages when applying for coveted public sector roles, a renowned journalist invented the phrase “small-town test taker” (小镇做题家 xiǎo zhèn zuò tí jiā) to refer to people from rural China who are good at exams but can’t compete with the privileged few from urban areas. Like “diaosi,” the phrase was insulting at first, but people marked as “small-town test takers” soon embraced that label and began forming online communities.

“‘Rat rat literature’ fits well into the long-standing tradition of self-deprecating humor among Chinese online users, which indicates a community ethos or solidarity among those who identify as ordinary people or working class,” Zou said. But he added that there are small differences between “diaosi,” “small-town test taker,” and “rat rat” that should not be overlooked.

“‘Diaosi’ is a rather vulgar term (or somewhat scatological); ‘small town test-taker’ is a subtly sarcastic term; ‘rat rat’ implies cuteness above all. Both ‘diaosi’ and ‘small town test-takers’ can be used by an outsider or outgroup to denigrate people with lower standing, but it is not so much the case for ‘rat rat,’” he said. “In fact, both ‘diaosi’ and ‘small town test-takers’ were initially discriminatory terms leveled at particular individuals or groups, and they were later re-appropriated as self-mocking terms; but ‘rat rat’ seems to be a more self-referential term to begin with.”

Identifying as a “rat rat” can be a coping mechanism that allows people to accept hardships as a fact of life. This nihilist mentality has defined a generation of young Chinese, as evidenced in the rise of “demotivational culture” (丧文化 sàngwénhuà), a social trend emerged in 2017 that’s characterized by a reduced work ethic, a lack of self-motivation, and an apathetic demeanor. In 2021, an iteration of this subculture took off. Featuring the same defeatist attitudes, the “lying flat” movement — which encourages participants to reject grueling competition in favor of a low-desire life, an analogue to “quite quitting” — gained popularity among China’s burned-out and overwhelmed youth.

“I think such tendencies speak to people’s increasing disillusionment with the ‘involuted’ society filled with fierce competition, overwhelming pressure, almost unattainable societal expectations, and widening class inequalities,” Zou said. “It betrays a sense of helplessness and powerlessness as well as the realization that structural inequality is hard to alter with an individual’s effort or hard work alone.”