Beijing-style recline (FILE)

A meme of a disheartened middle-aged man reclining on a sofa, with different subtitles added by netizens, has become an instant phenomenon on Chinese social media, such as WeChat, QQ and the Twitter-like Weibo. The original image is from I Love My Family, a 1993 Chinese sitcom, with Ge You, a Beijing actor, playing the disheartened man. The gesture is now known as the "Beijing-style recline" in the cyber world.

Emoticons, a combo of funny facial gestures and iconic expressions, offer a range of "tones" and emotions that are becoming an increasingly rich form of online communication. Compared to language, emoticons are often more effective and efficient in conveying particular sentiments, such as self-deprecation and irony.

As Chen Yuan (1918-2004), a prestigious Chinese social linguist, wrote in his book Social Linguistics, "In certain special contexts in modern society, one may not be able to use or not be satisfied with using language (verbal or written) as a communication tool. Instead, he or she tends to use various symbols which can directly stimulate the senses of others to get a direct, effective and quick response."

According to Modern Express, a Jiangsu-based newspaper, the top three emoticons in China are the smiling faces of Yao Ming, a Chinese basketball star, Choi Seong Guk, a South Korean actor, and Hanazawa Kana, a Japanese dubber. The reason behind the popularity of this trio appears to lie in their emoticon faces being strikingly exaggerated, distinctive, and contagious.

In China, emoticons were first seen on instant messaging app Tencent QQ in the late 1990s. In those early days only simple ideograms and smileys, known as emojis, offered by messaging apps were used by Chinese netizens in electronic messages.

With the development of the Internet and the popularity of graphics editors, more and more netizens have begun to create complex and unique emoticons.

In addition, guides on editing emoticons are readily available online, continuously expanding the pool of emoticons. It has become a crowd-created language from cyberspace as a greater number of netizens communicate through these images.

Even TV show marketing departments have begun to make emoticons for promotional purposes. The Legend of Mi Yue, a 2015 hit TV drama about China's first ever stateswoman, released two batches of emoticons of its leading actress before its opening.

Copyedited by Dominic James Madar

Comments to linan@bjreview.com