Course:ASIA319/2022/"Scum" (渣)

Introduction

渣 (Pinyin: zhā) is a commonly used term in contemporary Chinese culture, often adding a negative connotation with regards to one's character or abilities. It is also a popular Internet term used by young generations of Chinese speakers. A closer look into the current use of 渣 in popular culture gives further insight to how traditional meanings are modified and utilized, and how it reflects the current culture and values. On the other side, there is also the way the use of 渣 has impacted culture, socially and politically. In addition, 渣 in pop culture is also exemplary of concepts that are trans-temporal and transcultural, with similar concepts being portrayed by other terms in Chinese in the past, as well as similar terms being used to invoke similar meanings in other languages.

The Genesis of 渣

In the contemporary Chinese popular culture, 渣’ s modern meaning and applications are suggested to originate in the Chinese word “人渣”, from 鲁迅 《书信集·致杨霁云》：“ 中国的文坛上，人渣本来多。” (English translation: Lu Xun's Letters to Yang Jiyun: "In China's literary world, there are many scumbags." From then on, 人渣 (scumbag) has become a term used to describe those people who are the “scum” of human society, and 渣 individually has been given the adjective form, thus having more application scenarios. In popular culture, the term 渣 has also become almost the most common way of describing a bad character.

Etymology and Dictionary Meanings of 渣

Etymology

渣 (Pinyin: zhā) is Chinese own originated word. It is a pictophonetic character contains a semantic part 氵 (water) and a phonetic part 查 (raft). Therefore, the original meaning of 渣 is related to water.

Dictionary Meanings

The Meaning of 渣 in the old Chinese culture is the name of river. The Contemporary Chinese literal meaning of 渣 is the scrap after removing the essence or residue of a stream.

Applications

People always use it as a noun and adjective in Chinese, but it usually has the same meaning. To be used as a noun, it refers to the scrap and dregs removed from the residue of the stream. For example, 油渣 (dregs of fat), 面包渣 (bread crust), 奶渣 (dregs of milk), 煤渣 (coal cinder). To be used as an adjective, it refers to the people who is lowest in the earth (人渣). After the pop culture developed, 渣 also got several pop cultural meanings and often used as a suffix to describe the previous connected word. For example, 学渣 (people who are bad at learning), 人渣 (dustman), 渣男 (cheater), 睡渣 (people who get insomnia).

Generally speaking, 渣 is used to describe a person who is of moral depravity or whose behaviors are contrary to the general norm of social and/or human ethics. At the same time, 渣 can also be used to depict someone who is not very skilled in a certain area. Although in this regard it is describing “dissatisfaction” as well, the emotions in this are not as strong as in the other aspect, but mostly meant for ridicule.

In Chinese contemporary culture, the antonym word for 渣 (scum) is 神 (deity). Deity here refers to the best person in a group. Every word take 渣 as suffix can all connect with 神. In this way, those word becomes to 学神，睡神，男神or女神；refers to the best person in that specific group.

Counterparts of 渣 in Other Languages

English: scum/scummy

The Collins English Dictionary: Scum is a layer of a dirty or unpleasant-looking substance on the surface of a liquid. If you refer to people as scum, you are expressing your feelings of dislike and disgust for them.

Urban Dictionary: Scum is the epitome of a worthless, good-for-nothing human. They are at the bottom of the hierarchy of humans.

Vietnamese: cặn bã

(English translation) The useless, ugly, lowly, worth discarding, such as the dregs and scum that, after being filtered, take all the essence: remove the literary scum, the scum, the scum in society.

Japanese: クズ

The Chinese characters for "クズ" are written as "屑（crumbs）", which means slag, useless things, and waste. In the scenios of love, the word is more aimed at people who have a chaotic relationship with others and who are not responsible in a relationship. Similarly, if a person is of inferior character and has no bottom line, they could be called "クズ".

Cross-Linguistic Similarities

Similar to Chinese, English, Vietnamese and Japanese also have the concept of scum with highly allied social meanings. All the four languages also chose the image of "scum" to describe people who do outrageous behavior. In almost all contexts, scum is associated with strong negative value judgments. For the common application scenarios of scum: love, this word reflects that some people do things that corrupt morals in love, which are strongly condemned by victims and even the general public. Moreover, as there are also buzzwords in popular culture of many countries to describe 渣, indicating that the "culture" of 渣 is not only limited in China.

渣 in Chinese Popular Culture: Multiple Applications and Meanings

人渣、渣男 Scumbag

A prime example of the use of 渣男 is the 湾区渣男 ("The Bay Area Scumbag") story.

The story of “The Bay Area Scumbag” was a trending topic on Chinese social media Weibo in March 2022. The story is about a man's hostile behaviors towards his ex-wife and their parents, he had since been referred to by Chinese netizens as “The Bay Area Scumbag”, trending on Sina Weibo (one of the websites that have the most page views in mainland China) for a few days. Netizens spontaneously used "scumbag" to refer to him, showing the public's extreme dissatisfaction with him and his behavior. By having this mark, this man is socially viewed as having low character and values.

恋爱脑 Lovestruck

This new internet buzzword on Chinese internet is used to describe irrational love for another person, even if the other person is not the ideal object. (eg, believing that love is more important than anything else). Generally speaking, such lovestruck people are more likely to be severely influenced by 渣男, the scum. Recently, with the awakening of female consciousness, the audiences are more and more averse to seeing such a heroine in entertainment media, be it TV series or web novels. Instead, female-oriented series are becoming popular. For instance, to attract more audiences (while they are actually not that into such plots anymore), even some history-themed TV series depict historical figures as 恋爱脑 too, which are greatly criticized and disliked.

File:Cinderella & Prince Charming.jpg

Many girls still expect to meet a prince charming boy in their life. This life attitude let them be more likely to meet scum bag.

高富帅 Prince Charming

This contemporary word on the Chinese internet is used to describe a perfect man who a young woman might dream about meeting. Many females tend to dream of a tall, rich and handsome boy to meet. Generally speaking, many 渣男 may act as this Prince Charming archetype in order to appear more popular and attractive. The audience may use this word to generalize the large group of males director in TV series or web novels that many girls tend to fall in love with.

海王 Playa

This contemporary popular word on the Chinese internet described a group of scumbags, this group of people only doing the catching and release works. They are the playboy archetype, enjoying their plenty of fish in the sea mentality and never got a serious relationship. Recently, young people tend to use this word more often than scumbags because this word is more appropriate to be used in many expressions. For example, in a popular TV series Nothing But Thirty, Liang Zhengxian treats relationships too nonchalantly and is scolded as 海王 by audiences. Certainly, his behavior could be considered as scummy in this context.

Social, cultural, and political problems

人渣/渣男: Scumbag Social Image

One of the main reasons why a scumbag is popular in the dating market is that he tends to bring a lot of emotional values to women. In the eyes of the public, the group that contrasts with the scumbags is called "honest people", that is, they obey the rules in the marriage and love market, swallow their voices, and lack decisiveness and autonomy. Their status is far less popular than "scumbags". As netizens answered, "Life itself is not easy to fall in love, of course, you have to find someone who makes you happy." 

There are several social reasons behind the popularity of the word "scumbag" in recent years. First, in modern society with high work pressure and life pressure, people's need for love has changed from traditional childbearing to a higher level of pleasing themselves. In this case, for many people, looking for a partner is more to relieve stress, and scumbags can better meet this need. In addition, in the general perception, the group of scumbags usually represents a high added value, that is, they are gentle and considerate to girls and have good material conditions. With the development of the high-end economy, the consumerist economy has also made the groups represented by scumbags who can bring good material enjoyment to women in the dating market more popular than honest people with moral values ​​that conform to social expectations. The increasing prevalence of scumbags in society can also explain the rise of social materialism in China .

The Big Three of Scumbags in TV Dramas

"Pick-Up Artist" (PUA) Culture

PUA originally referred to men's behavior of self-improvement of emotional intelligence through systematic learning and practice. Later, it generally refers to people who are good at attracting and fascinating the opposite sex. In recent years, it often refers to manipulation through psychological control; one party makes the other party’s feelings collapse and become irrational, resulting in self-deprecation and the formation of dependence. It is usually used in romantic relationships, but in fact, PUAs in the workplace are not uncommon. Scumbags often gain the trust of their partners through intimacy and then use PUA to control and manipulate each other.

Workplace PUA is also a hot topic in Chinese society. The most famous one is the ByteDance workplace PUA incident. ByteDance is the parent company of the popular social short video app Douyin. The incident originated from a post by Liu Dong, a graduate of Peking University, on Tieba. In January 2021, Liu Dong handled the intern recruitment at ByteDance. The internship period expired in mid-April, and he expressed his need to leave the company in the near future due to the busy graduation. Dong continued working and looking for a successor. Later, on May 11, Liu Dong once again made a request to him for his recent resignation. At this time, the leader proposed to me that since the newly recruited backup was not found by me, I could not resign, and I needed to find a second backup for this position. The reason for the need for two backups was "Your work ability is too poor. , looking for two backups is to make up for the shortcomings of your work" "You can't do what others can do" .

Liu Dong could not accept this kind of verbal violence, so he officially submitted a resignation application in the ByteDance human resources system on May 12, but he did not mention the issue of workplace violence in the reasons for his resignation, taking into account his feelings. Academic busy personal reasons necessitate leaving the office. After that, the senior management of ByteDance continued to ask Liu Dong to continue to find another backup before he could apply for resignation, and the resignation application and salary certificate were withheld during the approval process .

Related Studies

Studies in the fields of linguistics and humanities often find relevance in the use of 渣, particularly with regards to its use on Internet platforms.

Internet Words and Cultural Values

Inspired by other studies establishing a link between language and thought, as well as thought and culture, Korányi conducted an analysis on the influence of Chinese cultural values on the meaning and usage of new Chinese Internet words. 渣 was determined in this analysis to have had its meaning indirectly influenced by the Chinese cultural value of honesty, or an adherence to the facts . For instance, the term 学渣, referring to students who are lazy or have weak learning ability, can be considered “an honest reflection of one’s academic performance and ability” . 渣 was one of many examples that were given to demonstrate how these new Internet terms are influenced by the various Chinese values, implying that even modern language and terms still inherit ahttps://wiki.ubc.ca/Course:ASIA319/2022/%22Scum%22_(%E6%B8%A3)?veaction=edit&section=17 lot of traditional culture in their meaning and usage.

Below is a video further explaining the Chinese cultural value of integrity/honesty:

Trans-temporal and Cross-Linguistics

渣男 used in a meme

A similar meme in English, carrying similar meanings and connotations

In Yue’s analysis of memes as a form of intercultural communication, 渣男, or “rubbish man,” was mentioned as a concept that has been represented in culture through different terms through time, such as ⼤猪蹄⼦, or “big trotter,” and 渣男 is the most recent version in pop culture . As a meme, this term is also considered trivial due to the fact that it can be conveyed with other terms that carry similar meanings . While the term itself is local to Chinese culture, its essence, in this instance a man who does not treat women well, can be globally and cross-linguistically transmitted in memes .

Portmanteau Neologism

In their paper, Ji and Knight analyzed the human encoding of obfuscated language for online communication to avoid censorship . One of the techniques mentioned in the analysis for generating creative language is portmanteau neologism, whereby existing words are fused to form new ones . The words being fused via this method are often compatible phonetically and semantically, as well as “terse, representative, expressive, interesting and easy to remember” . 渣男 (dirt + man) is an example of a term generated via this method, with an opposing term of 暖男 (warm + man) being a fusion of words that highlight the comparison and contrast between the two terms .

Conclusion

渣, whose literal meaning referring to dregs or residues, finds its use in Chinese popular culture adding a low, negative connotation to other terms, such as 渣男 (playboy/cheater) and 学渣 (someone bad at studying). Its meaning is cross-linguistics in some cases, with terms in English, Vietnamese, and Japanese of similar literal meaning being used similarly in their respective cultures. The various portmanteau forms of 渣 are widely used in social media platforms and various entertainment media, such as web novels and TV dramas, especially when discussing the characters involved. 渣 also has a link with the Chinese cultural value of integrity or honesty, which plays a part in how it is often utilized .

The popularity of 渣 or "scum", namely 渣男, is largely due to the fact that social news reports of partner abandonment or infidelity are not uncommon. Some people even think that scum is a common phenomenon and take pride in it (slag is the embodiment of their own charm). Men's scum is usually manifested in love disguise, seduce women through false performance and use it for fun, but its essence is infidelity to feelings. Female scum is more about having multiple partners at the same time and making false promises to each partner. A large part of the scum of Chinese society is due to the emptiness of people's spiritual world at the same time of high economic development, which leads to the emergence of a wrong concept of love. People will think that scum is reasonable and worth learning from. In the research process, the common method used by scumbags is to control the object through PUA, and this method is also used in the workplace. In future research, if the prevention of PUA in the workplace is a topic worth exploring.

References

This resource was created by Course:ASIA319.