雪糕刺客
Ice-cream assassin
多少钱？！How much?!
雪糕刺客, “ice-cream assassin”, is a pricey ice cream that sits in the freezer next to cheap ones, with no price tag, and stabs you at the till. Now any surprise high price is a 刺客.
- Took off
- 2022
- Started in
- Shop freezers
- Today
- Now everyday Chinese
What it means
You pick a normal-looking ice cream, and at the checkout it costs 20 or 30 yuan. The word turned that moment into a character. The pattern spread: 水果刺客 for fruit, 奶茶刺客 for milk tea.
How people use it
The premium ice-cream fad has cooled, but the 刺客 pattern is now normal Chinese for any hidden high price.
我在便利店随便拿了一支雪糕
I grabbed a random ice cream at the convenience store.多少钱？
How much?二十八块！
28 yuan!又遇到雪糕刺客了
Another ice-cream assassin got you.
More examples
这支雪糕要三十块，真是雪糕刺客！
This ice cream costs thirty yuan. A real assassin!
超市里的水果刺客太多了，我不敢乱拿。
There’s so much overpriced fruit in the supermarket. I’m scared to pick anything up.
Where it came from
The phrase appeared in June and July 2022, during a summer of complaints about premium ice-cream brands that had moved from online shops into ordinary corner-shop freezers. The China Project called it a new coinage in July 2022.
咬文嚼字 put 雪糕刺客 on its list of the ten most popular phrases of 2022, and 语言文字周报 listed the whole pattern.
The original. There is no single image. The meme grew from photos of shop freezers and checkout screens. The China Project explained it in July 2022. The China Project
Related memes
Sources
- The China Project, July 2022 (thechinaproject.com)
- Beijing Daily: the ten phrases of 2022 (in Chinese) (news.bjd.com.cn)
Checked November 2026. The picture at the top is our own drawing of 灯灯. It is not the original meme image.
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.
