鼠鼠shǔ shǔ

Little mouse (me, the loser)

shǔ shǔ wǒ a, yòu jiā bān le.鼠鼠我啊，又加班了。This little mouse is working late again.

鼠鼠 means “little mouse”. Young people use it for themselves in self-mocking posts that start 鼠鼠我啊, “this little mouse here”, and go on to list small failures: no money, no date, more overtime.

Took off: 2023
Started in: Baidu Tieba posts
Today: Now everyday Chinese

What it means

Calling yourself a mouse lets you say you feel small without sounding bitter. The cute word softens a sad story. Posts in this style are called 鼠鼠文学, “mouse literature”, and often come with a photo of a hamster.

Puns add to it. 曙光, “dawn”, becomes 鼠光, “mouse light”.

How people use it

鼠鼠 is still a common way to talk about yourself, especially about work and money. It sits next to 吗喽, the monkey, another animal that tired young workers use for themselves. Use it about yourself; calling someone else a mouse can sound rude.

More examples

鼠鼠我啊，今天又被老板骂了。
shǔ shǔ wǒ a, jīn tiān yòu bèi lǎo bǎn mà le.
This little mouse got yelled at by the boss again today.
工资太低了，鼠鼠只想躺着。
gōng zī tài dī le, shǔ shǔ zhǐ xiǎng tǎng zhe.
The pay is too low. This little mouse just wants to lie down.

Where it came from

The wording is a pun. Around 2020, Bilibili users wrote joke lines that began 叔叔我啊, “uncle here”, in the voice of the site’s chairman, whom they called 叔叔, “uncle”. 鼠鼠 sounds close to 叔叔.

On Baidu Tieba the mouse got a new meaning. Users compared themselves to rats in a dark sewer, hidden and unlucky, and early posts were mostly about love that went nowhere. In early 2023 the style spread to Xiaohongshu and Bilibili. The business site Huxiu wrote about why it went viral in January 2023.

Four hamster stickers with sad captions that begin “this little mouse”: one eats a roast sweet potato, one holds a steamed bun, one cries while holding a red electric guitar, and one lies on its back in tears — The original meme image. Hamster stickers from “mouse literature” posts, makers unknown; collected by The China Project in 2023. Source

Sources

The China Project, February 2023 (thechinaproject.com)
Huxiu on why it went viral, January 2023 (in Chinese) (huxiu.com)

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.