高富帅gāo fù shuài

Tall, rich and handsome

gāo fù shuài!高富帅！Tall, rich and handsome!

高富帅 means “tall, rich and handsome”: the dream boyfriend. Its partner, 白富美, means “fair-skinned, rich and beautiful”: the dream girlfriend. Both are usually said as a joke.

Took off: 2012
Started in: Baidu Tieba forums
Today: Now everyday Chinese

What it means

Each word packs three adjectives into three characters. 高富帅 is 高, tall; 富, rich; 帅, handsome. 白富美 is 白, fair-skinned; 富, rich; 美, beautiful.

People use them to tease a friend with a new car or a good haircut, or to joke about what everyone seems to want. There is also an opposite, 矮穷矬, “short, poor and ugly”, which people use about themselves.

How people use it

Both words are still common, mostly as teasing. Meant seriously they sound shallow, so use them about friends, with a smile.

里昂

看我新买的车！
kàn wǒ xīn mǎi de chē!
Check out my new car!
哇，高富帅啊
wā, gāo fù shuài a
Wow, look at Mr. Tall, Rich and Handsome.
二手的，才三万块
èr shǒu de, cái sān wàn kuài
It’s secondhand. Only 30,000 yuan.
那也是高富帅
nà yě shì gāo fù shuài
Still tall, rich and handsome.

More examples

她男朋友是个高富帅。
tā nán péng you shì gè gāo fù shuài.
Her boyfriend is tall, rich and handsome.
你以为我是白富美啊？我也要上班的。
nǐ yǐ wéi wǒ shì bái fù měi a? wǒ yě yào shàng bān de.
You think I’m some rich beauty? I have to work too.
换了新发型，感觉自己是高富帅了。
huàn le xīn fà xíng, gǎn jué zì jǐ shì gāo fù shuài le.
New haircut. I feel tall, rich and handsome.

Where it came from

The words grew on Baidu Tieba forums, in joking posts by young men who compared themselves with the 高富帅 they could not compete with. In April 2012 a Sina News story called 高富帅 a hot new internet word, seen all over forums and Tieba.

咬文嚼字 put 高富帅 on its list of the ten most popular phrases of 2012. That December, China News Service wrote that 高富帅 and 白富美 had come to mean the men and women with the best chances in dating.

The original. There is no single image: the words came from forum posts. People’s Digest explained them in its review of the internet words of 2012. People’s Digest (in Chinese)