葛优躺gě yōu tǎng

The Ge You slouch

jīn tiān jiù gě yōu tǎng ba.今天就葛优躺吧。Today I’m just slumping.

葛优躺 means slumping on a sofa with no energy at all, the pose of someone who has given up on the day. It is named after the actor Ge You, whose slouch in a 1993 sitcom became one of China’s best-known memes in 2016.

Took off: 2016
Started in: A 1993 sitcom
Today: Now everyday Chinese

What it means

The name means “Ge You lying”, and people use it as a verb: to 葛优躺 on the sofa all weekend. It describes the pose and the mood together: tired, a bit lazy, and not sorry about it.

How people use it

Today it is an everyday phrase for lying around at home, especially on a holiday. Later words for the same feeling are 躺平 and 摆烂.

亮亮

周末出去玩吗？
zhōu mò chū qu wán ma?
Want to go out this weekend?
不想动，我只想在家葛优躺
bù xiǎng dòng, wǒ zhǐ xiǎng zài jiā gě yōu tǎng
I don’t want to move. I just want to slump at home.
又葛优躺？
yòu gě yōu tǎng?
Slumping again?
这周太累了
zhè zhōu tài lèi le
This week wore me out.

More examples

周末我只想在家葛优躺。
zhōu mò wǒ zhǐ xiǎng zài jiā gě yōu tǎng.
This weekend I just want to slump on the sofa at home.
放假第一天，我葛优躺了一整天。
fàng jià dì yī tiān, wǒ gě yōu tǎng le yì zhěng tiān.
On the first day off, I lay slumped on the sofa all day.

Where it came from

The still comes from 我爱我家, I Love My Family, a Beijing sitcom from 1993. Ge You played a jobless man who stays with the family and sprawls on their sofa. In July 2016, Chinese users turned the shot into a set of stickers, and the pose spread through Weibo and WeChat within days.

That December, the magazine 咬文嚼字 put 葛优躺 on its list of the ten most popular phrases of 2016. It fit a wider mood that year, often called 丧 culture: jokes about being tired and giving up.

The still shows a real actor, and he has gone to court over it. In 2018 a court ruled for Ge You against a travel site that had used the stills in its social media posts, and ordered the site to pay him 75,000 yuan.

The original. A TV still: Ge You in a flowered shirt, half lying on a sofa with his head tilted back and his legs stretched out. The Paper covered the meme in its report on the 2016 list. Moegirl (in Chinese)