A man using a computer at an Internet cafe in China's Shanxi Province. (Photo : Reuters)
The word "duang" may start appearing on the various-sized screens of the world's Web travelers after the meaningless slang term spread like wildfire across the digital connections that span China this week.
Not only was the word among the highest positions of Sina Weibo's hashtag rankings, but data captured by the popular Baidu search engine showed that 586,000 queries had been entered as of Thursday.
"Duang" does not convey meaning, but is rather the human imitation of a sound that appears in a parody video. The video's creators based their edit on a 2004 shampoo advertisement that stars global action-film phenomenon Jackie Chan.
Chan is first depicted flashing a shiny hairstyle composed of fake hair over the hit Mandarin-language song "My Skating Shoes," which has also garnered attention on the Internet. The parody then shows Chan confessing over a constant "Duang" sound:
"I refused to endorse this product when they first came to me because of my thin hair, but the director insisted, saying special effects could be used to make my hair look healthy on the screen. Now you see. It's all special effects. It's not real."
When the original advertisement was first aired almost a decade ago, the Chinese censorship officials turned their attention toward the production because they interpreted it as a misleading promotion of shampoo.
During a time when the actor is reacquainting himself with his recently released son, Jaycee, who was jailed for drug-related charges, Chan has been contending with the floods of "duang" comments that were sent to his Weibo account.
The celebrity was most likely surprised by the belated attention after filming the production in 2004.
