孔乙己文学kǒng yǐ jǐ wén xué

Kong Yiji is the title character of 孔乙己, a 1919 short story by Lu Xun. He has studied the classics and failed the exams. He is poor, but he will not do manual work.

At the tavern, customers in a 长衫, the long gown of an educated man, sit inside, and workers in short jackets drink standing. Kong is the only one who drinks standing in a long gown.

In the meme, the gown is your degree. 文学, “literature”, is a joke label for any style of post, as in 发疯文学.

The wave of posts has passed, but the image stayed. 孔乙己的长衫, “Kong Yiji’s long gown”, is still a common way to talk about a degree that makes some jobs feel beneath you.

It is a sad joke. Use it about yourself; said about someone else’s job search, it sounds like mockery.

In the spring of 2023, a short monologue about a degree reached the hot-search lists. Its key line says a degree is a stepping stone, but also a high platform the writer cannot climb down from, and the long gown that Kong Yiji cannot take off.

Other graduates wrote their own lines in the same voice, about degrees and jobs that did not match. The World of Chinese quotes one: without an education I could have done other work, but I insisted on getting one.

《语言文字周报》 put 孔乙己文学 on its list of the ten internet phrases of 2023.