An image of an opossum standing by a window with its paws clasped behind its back has become China’s latest viral meme, and a stand-in for everyday frustrations.

The meme, whose original source is unclear, began spreading across social media and workplace chat groups in late May. In the image, the marsupial stares blankly out of a window, appearing deep in thought.

Netizens began to pair the image with captions. One category twists well-worn motivational sayings into world-weary jokes, such as: “I may not have made money, but at least I got tired,” instead of “I may not have made money, but at least I didn’t work for nothing”; “Things have taken a new step backward,” as opposed to “Things have taken a new step forward,” and “Let everything happen — just not all the time,” replacing “Let everything happen.”

Another subset of captions centers around avoidance and resignation. Popular examples include: “My 1-kilobyte brain is thinking,” and “How can I shoulder responsibility? I have narrow shoulders.”

Posts tagged “opossum meme” on lifestyle platform Xiaohongshu, also known as RedNote, have generated more than 100 million views. Brands have also joined the trend, using AI to modify the image so that the animal is drinking bubble tea or replacing it with company mascots for marketing campaigns.

Raine Zhu, a 20-year-old undergraduate student from Shanghai, told Sixth Tone that her favorite version of the meme is the one with no caption at all — just the opossum standing by the window — because it is the most “versatile” and “weirdly funny.”

“It’s a small animal, but it somehow looks like a human and expresses a very human kind of melancholy,” she said.

Chinese social media users have long used animals in memes and internet slang. Capybaras have become symbols of emotional stability and indifference, while niuma, literally “cattle and horses,” has emerged as a popular term for overworked and underappreciated employees. 

Another common term is malou, a dialect word for monkey used to poke fun at and alleviate stress from life’s hardships. The meme dates back to 2022 when an online tangerine seller was being pressured by customers to deliver his fruit during the busy Spring Festival season, to which he replied, “Take it easy, we’re doing our best; even a malou’s life matters.”

Cats also play a starring role. One particularly viral image features two cats in conversation: one wide-eyed and stern, the other timid and hesitant. Internet users have recast the two as mother and daughter, teacher and student, and husband and wife, using them to channel anxieties about academic pressures, family tensions, and the challenges of finding work in a competitive job market.

Editor: Marianne Gunnarsson.

(Header image: Visuals from Xiaohongshu and VCG, reedited by Sixth Tone)