凡尔赛fán ěr sài

Versailles (the humble brag)

hǎo fán, yòu zhòng jiǎng le.好烦，又中奖了。Ugh, I won again.

凡尔赛, “Versailles”, is the Chinese internet’s name for a humble brag: a complaint that is really a way to show off. 凡尔赛文学, “Versailles literature”, is the style of writing that does it.

Took off: 2020
Started in: Weibo
Today: Now everyday Chinese

What it means

A Versailles post sounds modest or even annoyed. “My husband bought another car. I told him I only drive one.” The point is the car.

Calling something 凡尔赛 is mild mockery. People also call the style 凡学, “Versailles studies”, as if it were a school subject.

How people use it

It is still common, now mostly as a label: 你太凡尔赛了, “you’re being so Versailles”. You can also use it about yourself after a small brag, to show you know what you did.

琦琦

唉，男朋友又送我花了，家里都放不下了
āi, nán péng you yòu sòng wǒ huā le, jiā lǐ dōu fàng bu xià le
Ugh, my boyfriend sent me flowers again. There’s no room left at home.
你这也太凡尔赛了吧
nǐ zhè yě tài fán ěr sài le ba
That’s such a humble brag.
我是真的很烦！
wǒ shì zhēn de hěn fán!
I’m honestly annoyed!
好好好，凡学大师
hǎo hǎo hǎo, fán xué dà shī
Sure, sure. Master of Versailles studies.

More examples

你这句话太凡尔赛了！
nǐ zhè jù huà tài fán ěr sài le!
That’s such a humble brag!
她说自己太瘦了，买不到衣服，真凡尔赛。
tā shuō zì jǐ tài shòu le, mǎi bu dào yī fu, zhēn fán ěr sài.
She says she’s too thin to find clothes that fit. Such a humble brag.

For the word itself and how to reply to it, see 凡尔赛 in the slang dictionary.

Where it came from

The name is linked to The Rose of Versailles, a Japanese manga about the French court. A Douban group about the writing style formed in May 2020, according to reports at the time.

The meme spread in early November 2020, when Weibo users shared a series of posts by one blogger about her rich life and devoted partner. Her calm, complaining tone became the model, and the tag #凡尔赛文学# got hundreds of millions of reads. 咬文嚼字 put 凡尔赛文学 on its list of the ten most popular phrases of 2020.

The original. There is no single image. The typical example is a screenshot of a Weibo post that complains about a villa, a nanny or a gift that is too generous. The Paper reported on the trend in November 2020. The Paper (in Chinese)