‘Dirt poor and ugly’ Chinese rail at inequality
A RECENTLY coined slang word for “dirt poor and ugly” has been labelled the word of the year in China, fast becoming an emblem of the growing socio-economic divide.
Millions of Chinese have adopted the word as they “qiou,” a creative mash-up of “qiong” – poor – and “chou” – ugly – with a “tu” – dirt – squished inside.
Once combined, the term forms an amusingly self-deprecating adjective. The made-up word has gone viral as many self-identify with a term that re- flects the angst of a growing swathe of people who feel left in the dust as the country’s socioeconomic divide continues to widen.
“After one year of hard work, I managed to add two zeros to my bank balance, as well as a negative sign in front,” one user, Gutou, posted online. “Feels like I can’t even afford to eat dirt – I’m living off air pollution,” wrote a woman from Xi’an, a city of 12million.
Another described moving away from his hometown, subsisting on meagre rations, and eating heartily only when his boss picked up the tab. Income inequality has been exacerbated as China’s economy raced up the ranks to become the world’s secondlargest. Plenty of individuals profited from the economic growth spurt, but it stratified an elite class. The top one per cent of Chinese households own more than a third of the country’s wealth, according to a Peking University study.
China’s Gini coefficient, a widely used measure of income distribution, has risen more steeply over the last decade than any other country, found a working paper by the International Monetary Fund.