Chinese Emoji Meanings: Why the Smile Stings and the Lemon Is Jealous
The same ๐ that is usually just a smile in Taiwan often reads as a cold smirk on WeChat. What the smile, the lemon, the tea, the watermelon and the dog mean on the Chinese internet, and where each came from.
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A handful of emoji mean something on the Chinese internet that the picture alone would never tell you. ๐ is drawn as a smile, yet on WeChat it often lands as a cold smirk. ๐, ๐ต, ๐ and ๐ถ each stand for a piece of Chinese slang, and without the slang the message makes no sense. If you joined RedNote (Xiaohongshu) when it briefly topped the US App Store in January 2025, or you message friends on WeChat, you have probably met a few of them already. This guide follows mainland Chinese usage first and notes where Taiwan reads things differently. The short version:
- ๐ slight smile: in mainland China it often signals sarcasm, a brush-off or speechlessness, like a flat "hehe". Avoid sending it on its own to people you don't know well.
- ๐ lemon: the "lemon spirit", someone eaten up with jealousy. It has softened, and people also use it about themselves: "I'm sour" means "I'm so jealous", and it is meant kindly.
- ๐ต tea: possibly "green tea", a person who acts sweet and innocent but is calculating. It is a put-down, not a compliment.
- ๐ watermelon: "eating melon", watching drama unfold from the sidelines without taking part.
- ๐ถ dog face: a "single dog" joking about being single, or a stand-in for the "dog head" sticker, tacked onto a remark to say "just kidding, don't take this seriously".
Why ๐ often isn't a friendly smile in China
To see why, start with the built-in "smile" face in WeChat, the Chinese messaging app: the mouth turns up, but the eyes look down. A 2024 study in the journal Heliyon ran two experiments with 597 Chinese high school students aged 15 to 18. Asked to write sarcastic WeChat messages, the students reached most often for the smile and the tears-of-joy face; asked to rate messages, they read a statement as sarcastic significantly more often when it carried the smile than when it carried the tears-of-joy face. Citing earlier research, the paper describes the smile as having turned into "a mysterious smile" that signals sarcasm or speechlessness.
The Unicode ๐ looks much the same and tends to be read the same way. A 2022 study of Chinese-language tweets from 2016 to 2020 found that people writing Simplified Chinese in mainland China used ๐ in a negative sense more often than people writing Traditional Chinese in Taiwan, and that several ๐ in a row were more likely to be sarcastic. The split even shows in Unicode's own naming data: CLDR, which supplies emoji names in many languages, calls ๐ ๅๅ็ฌ (a blank little smile) in Traditional Chinese and ๅตๅต (hehe) in Simplified Chinese. This site's Chinese emoji names come from the same source.
The word hehe went down the same road. In Taiwan's Ministry of Education dictionary, ๅตๅต is simply the sound of laughter, illustrated with a line from the classic novel Dream of the Red Chamber. In chat it became the reply you send when you can't be bothered: at the end of 2013 a poll on Weibo voted it the year's "most hurtful chat word", and several newspapers ran the story. In mainland Chinese chat, ๐, ๅตๅต and ๐๐๐ often carry the same tone.
Slightly smiling face
In mainland Chinese chat, often a cold smile, sarcasm or a brush-off. In Taiwan it is more often just a smile.
Three smiles in a row
Repeating it makes sarcasm more likely, not less. Roughly: I am being very patient with you.
Hehe
Written laughter that has gone cold: in chat it often means whatever, I'm not engaging.
๐ : the "sweating soybean"
Chinese users call ๐ ๆตๆฑ้ป่ฑ, the "sweating soybean": a round yellow face like a bean, with a bead of sweat on its forehead. It started out meaning what it shows, embarrassment. On some mainland forums and comment sections it picked up an edge and is often used to mean "I'm speechless" or "that's enough", a passive-aggressive way to end an argument. CLDR's Simplified Chinese name for it is ่ฆ็ฌ, a wry smile. The same face can mean "oops, sorry" or "please stop", so think about which reading the other person is used to.
Sweating soybean (grinning face with sweat)
Embarrassed, or on some mainland forums a passive-aggressive "that's enough".
๐: the lemon spirit, or "I'm sour"
Chinese has long used sourness for jealousy. The everyday word for jealousy in a relationship is ๅ้, literally "eating vinegar", and dictionaries explain it by comparing the feeling to the sour taste. ๆ ๆชฌ็ฒพ, the "lemon spirit", is the internet's update: literally a lemon that has become a spirit, jealousy so strong it has taken on a life of its own. The editors of the Chinese language magazine Yaowen Jiaozi put it on their list of the ten buzzwords of 2019. They noted that it began as a jab at other people's envy, then softened, so people sometimes use it about themselves: ๆ้ ธไบ, "I'm sour", really means "I'm so jealous", which is to say "I'm impressed".
So when a friend comments ๆ้ ธไบ๐ under your new car or your holiday photos, it is a compliment, not a dig. Unicode's own Simplified Chinese keywords for ๐ already include ้ ธ, sour. The one thing to watch is the direction. Calling yourself a lemon spirit is self-deprecating; calling someone else one still carries some of the original sting.
Lemon (lemon spirit)
Jealousy. Aimed at yourself it means you are envious in a good way; aimed at someone else it still stings.
"I'm sour"
Leave it under a friend's good news. It means you are jealous in the nice way, so it reads as a compliment.
๐ต: "green tea" is an insult, not a drink
Most platforms draw ๐ต as a cup of green tea. Besides plain tea, on the Chinese internet it can also stand for ็ปฟ่ถ, "green tea": someone who looks pure and harmless but is scheming and uses people. The label took off online in mainland China in 2013. It was originally aimed at women, critics have long called it stigmatizing, and the full phrase includes a slur this site does not print. A hit TV drama revived it in 2020, and Weibo and Douyin filled up with spin-offs such as ่ถ่บ, "tea artistry", and ่ถ่จ่ถ่ฏญ, "tea talk": remarks that sound considerate and are really meant to stir things up.
It is a judgment about a person, and a derogatory one, so this site suggests recognising it rather than using it. If a comment gets a ๐ต in reply, the replier may think the comment is fake-innocent. Don't confuse it with English slang, where tea means gossip and to spill the tea is to share it. The two have nothing to do with each other.
Teacup (green tea)
Used for green tea, it calls someone a sweet-seeming schemer. Derogatory: worth recognising, not worth using on people.
๐: eating melon means watching the drama
ๅ็, "eating melon", means watching from the sidelines. Yaowen Jiaozi put ๅ็็พคไผ, "the melon-eating masses", on its list of the ten buzzwords of 2016 and explained where it came from. People in China often crack melon seeds while listening to others chat, so on forums the people who only read a thread and never posted were said to be "eating melon seeds", which fast typists cut down to "eating melon". It now covers any bystander who doesn't know the inside story or chooses to stay quiet, online or off.
There is no melon-seed emoji. Weibo had a melon-eating sticker first; WeChat added its own [ๅ็], a face biting into a slice of watermelon, in January 2020, in a batch of ten that also brought [ๆฑ] and [ๆบๆด]. In any other app, a slice of ๐ is the plainest way to say it: "๐ grabbing a seat" means carry on, I'm just here to watch.
Watermelon (eating melon)
I'm only here to watch the drama. Carry on.
WeChat code [ๅ็]
Paste it into a WeChat chat and it turns into the melon-eating face. The brackets must be half-width; apps that don't support the code just show the text.
๐ถ: single dogs and the "dog head"
On the Chinese internet ๐ถ calls two things to mind. The first is ๅ่บซ็, "single dog": someone who isn't in a relationship, often said about yourself. A note on the website of the Institute of Linguistics at the Chinese Academy of Social Sciences traces it: the word appeared online in 2011, began to refer to people at the end of 2012, and in 2014 made the year's list of top campus slang. ็, dog, is mostly an insult in Chinese, but here it is affectionate teasing, and it spawned words such as ๅ ็ญ็, "overtime dog", for anyone who has it hard. Couples showing off in front of single friends are "scattering dog food", ๆ็็ฒฎ.
The second is the dog head. A photo of Kabosu, a Shiba Inu, posted on her owner's blog in 2010 became the doge meme, and Weibo turned it into a sticker with the code [doge]. Put one after a remark that could be misread and it means "I'm joking, I'm being ironic, don't come for me": ็ๅคดไฟๅฝ, "a dog head to save your life", which works much like /s on Reddit. WeChat's [ๆบๆด], added in January 2020, is used in much the same way, and many people send it to mean "I'm joking"; one user's reaction at the time was "finally, no more typing the dog head by hand". A 2024 analysis on the Chinese news site The Paper adds a caution: with close friends the dog head is warm, with people you barely know it can read as snide. By coincidence, CLDR's Traditional Chinese name for ๐ถ is ็้ ญ, dog head.
Dog face (dog head)
At the end of a joke, borrowing the dog-head sticker's meaning: don't take this seriously. About yourself: single dog.
Weibo code [doge]
The code for Weibo's dog-head sticker. In apps that don't support the code it stays as plain text.
WeChat code [ๆบๆด]
WeChat's own dog head, added in January 2020. Paste it into WeChat with half-width brackets.
๐: slacking off at work
ๆธ้ฑผ, "groping for fish", means slacking off, and it is used on both sides of the Taiwan Strait. Taiwan's Ministry of Education dictionary lists it: besides catching fish by hand, it means not taking your work seriously and cutting corners, with the example sentence "Stop slacking off during office hours!". In mainland China, QQ made ๆธ้ฑผ one of its official stickers in December 2020. In an app without that sticker, a single ๐ says the same thing: "๐ again today" is roughly "doing as little as possible again today".
Fish (slacking off)
Slacking off at work. "๐ again today" means coasting through another workday.
Do Taiwan and mainland China read them the same way?
The words mostly travel; the tone doesn't always. Most of the slang here took off on mainland forums, Weibo and WeChat, and Taiwanese users run into it too. Google in Taiwan autocompletes searches such as ๐ ๆๆ and ๐ ๆๆ ("๐ meaning"), and it follows ๅ็ with ๅฐ็ฃ็จ่ช, "Taiwanese usage?", a sign that some people there wonder whether it is a Taiwanese expression at all. The one gap that has been measured is ๐: the tweet study above found that Traditional Chinese users in Taiwan put it to negative use less often.
In practice: if someone writes in Simplified Chinese and you are talking on WeChat or Weibo, read these the mainland way. With Taiwanese friends ๐ is less likely to be a jab, but if one of them sends three in a row, reread what you just said. If you want to sound friendly and not be misread, say it in words, or use a face whose eyes are smiling too, like ๐. As for ๐ต and the other put-downs, knowing what they mean is enough.
Next
What a single ๐, ๐ซ or ๐ฅน means on the global internet is in the other article here. If you came to copy an emoji rather than read about one, the full emoji list is searchable by name and copies with one tap.
The illustrations on this page are AI-generated. They are not emoji artwork from any platform.