蓝瘦香菇
Feeling blue
蓝瘦香菇。I want to cry.
蓝瘦香菇 is a sound-alike for 难受想哭 (nán shòu xiǎng kū), “I feel awful and I want to cry”. The characters on their own mean “blue, thin, shiitake mushroom”.
- Took off
- 2016
- Started in
- A video from Nanning
- Today
- A classic
What it means
People write it when they feel sad or let down, usually about something small: a lost game, a bad test, a cancelled plan. The odd spelling keeps it light.
How people use it
Most people now see it as a 2016 meme, and you hear it mainly as a joke. If you use it, use it about yourself. It came from a real person’s accent, and pointing it at the way someone speaks is unkind.
周末的烧烤你怎么不来了？
Why aren’t you coming to the barbecue this weekend?要加班，蓝瘦香菇
I have to work. Feeling blue.
[Sticker] A sad blue mushroom: “I’m a blue, thin mushroom”给你留一串
I’ll save you a skewer.
More examples
我今天考砸了，蓝瘦香菇。
I bombed my test today. Feeling blue.
演唱会的票没抢到，蓝瘦香菇。
I didn’t get concert tickets. I want to cry.
Where it came from
In early October 2016, a young man from Nanning in Guangxi posted a short video about a breakup. In his regional accent, 难受，想哭 sounded like 蓝瘦，香菇. The clip moved from QQ and Baidu Tieba to Weibo within days, and parodies and stickers followed.
China News Service covered it that month, and 咬文嚼字 put “蓝瘦，香菇” on its list of the ten most popular phrases of 2016.
Related memes
Sources
- Zhejiang Online / China News Service, October 2016 (in Chinese) (china.zjol.com.cn)
- The Paper: the ten phrases of 2016 (in Chinese) (thepaper.cn)
Checked November 2026. The picture at the top is our own drawing of 灯灯. The original meme image belongs to its owner and is shown to explain the meme. To ask us to remove it, write to legal@dengdeng.app.
Ten Chinese memes
One Chinese internet meme every three days for a month: where it came from, what it means and how to use it.
