The character "duang" is so new that it does not even exist in the Chinese dictionary. But it has already spread like wildfire online in China, appearing more than 8 million times on China's micro-blogging site Weibo, where it spawned a top-trending hashtag that drew 312,000 discussions among 15,000 users. On China's biggest online search engine Baidu, it has been looked up almost 600,000 times. It's been noticed in the West too, with Foreign Policy seeing it as a "break the internet" viral meme - like a certain Kim Kardashian image, or a certain multicoloured dress.
最近大熱的“duang”是一個在漢語字典中并不存在的新詞，不過這個字甫一出現就以燎原之勢在中國的網絡上迅速傳播開來。這個字在中國的社交網站微博中出現了八億多次。有15000名用戶使用了它，并引發了31.2萬次討論。在中國最大的在線搜索網站百度，這個字的搜索量達60萬余次，該現象同樣引發了西方媒體的關注，《外交政策》雜志將其稱作“引爆互聯網”的病毒式傳播事件，與之前金·卡戴珊的美臀照和著名的“白金黑藍之爭”的裙裝同等待遇。

But what does it mean?
可是這個字到底是什么意思？

"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.
“每個人都在“duang”，可我連duang什么意思都不知道，這讓我仿佛又重回了校園時代。”微博用戶Weileiweito說。

Another user asked: "Have you duang-ed today? My mind is full of duang duang duang."
而另一位用戶發問“今天你“duang”了嗎？”我現在滿腦都是“duang，duang duang。”

"To duang or not to duang, that is the question," wrote user BaiKut automan.
“Duang還是不duang，這是一個問題，”BaiKut如是說。

"Duang" seems to be an example of onomatopoeia, a word that phonetically imitates a sound. It all seems to have started with Hong Kong action star Jackie Chan, who in 2004 was featured in a shampoo commercial where he said famously defended his sleek, black hair using the rhythmical-sounding "duang". The word resurfaced again recently after Chan posted it on his Weibo page. Thousands of users then began to flood Chan's Weibo page with comments, coining the word in reference to his infamous shampoo appearance.
Duang是一個擬聲詞，用來形容一種聲音，來源于香港影星成龍在2004年時拍的一則洗發水廣告，他用了duang來形容烏黑亮麗富有動感的頭發，而最近成龍在微博上再度使用了duang這一詞匯，引得千萬網友紛紛訪問其微博頁面，在該條微博下面評論，并造了這個字來指代他拍的那個洗發水廣告。

The word appears to have many different meanings, and there's no perfect translation, but you could use it as an adjective to give emphasis to the word that follows it. A kitten might be "duang cute", for example. Or you might be "very duang confused" by this blog.
duang這個字好像有很多種意思，到目前為止并沒有一個確切對應的英文翻譯，不過，你可以把它當做形容詞用，用來強調跟在它后面的那個詞，比如你可以說一只小貓是“duang萌”，看到這里，你也許是“非常duang糊涂”了。

For readers of Chinese characters, the Jackie Chan theme is also apparent from the quirky way in which the word is written: a combination of Chan's Mandarin names.
而duang對應的漢字是什么呢？這個字以一種非常離奇的方式被造出來，將“成龍”這兩個字組在一起就成了duang。

Vocabulary
spawn：引發
onomatopoeia：擬聲詞
sleek：（頭發）光亮的

（譯者：無事此靜坐? 編輯：馬文英）