友谊的小船说翻就翻yǒu yì de xiǎo chuán shuō fān jiù fān

The boat of friendship tips over

yǒu yì de xiǎo chuán shuō fān jiù fān!友谊的小船说翻就翻！There goes our friendship!

友谊的小船说翻就翻 means “the little boat of friendship can tip over just like that”. You say it, as a joke, when a friend lets you down over something tiny.

Took off: 2016
Started in: A Weibo comic
Today: A classic

What it means

The pattern 说 + verb + 就 + verb means “just like that”, with no warning. You also hear 说走就走, “to leave on a whim”.

It is almost always a joke: your friend eats the last dumpling, and the boat tips over.

How people use it

Most people know it, and it still works in chat. Keep it for small betrayals. After a real falling-out, it sounds like you don’t care.

Two cartoon birds in a boat that tips over

More examples

你居然不等我，自己先把新一集看了？友谊的小船说翻就翻。
nǐ jū rán bù děng wǒ, zì jǐ xiān bǎ xīn yì jí kàn le? yǒu yì de xiǎo chuán shuō fān jiù fān.
You watched the new episode without me? So much for our friendship.
你把最后一个饺子吃了？友谊的小船说翻就翻！
nǐ bǎ zuì hòu yí gè jiǎo zi chī le? yǒu yì de xiǎo chuán shuō fān jiù fān!
You ate the last dumpling? Our friendship is over!

Where it came from

The phrase was already online in early 2016, as half of a longer line: 友谊的小船说翻就翻，爱情的巨轮说沉就沉, “the boat of friendship tips over, the ship of love sinks”.

On March 31, 2016, the artist 喃东尼 posted a set of comics on Weibo. In them, two penguins are best friends in a small boat, until a small thing tips the boat over. The comics spread on WeChat and Weibo, and people started to write their own versions.

咬文嚼字 put the phrase on its list of the words of 2016.

A three-panel comic: a black penguin and a round yellow bird sit in a wooden boat; the penguin keeps a snack to himself, and in the last panel the boat lies upside down — The original meme image. Comic by the artist Nan Dongni, posted on Weibo in 2016. Source

Sources

The Paper: the 2016 list by 咬文嚼字 (in Chinese) (thepaper.cn)
The Paper on the penguin comics, April 2016 (in Chinese) (thepaper.cn)
The China Project: the buzzwords of 2016 (thechinaproject.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.