Meaning:

    Originally from a TV commercial for a hair shampoo starring Jackie Chan in 2004, the written character for this onomatopoeic word doesn’t exist in Chinese. When Chan used it, he roughly meant “then, after a second, with miraculous special effects we often used in movies, we get (shiny black hair) ...” Chinese netizens recently rediscovered the term and merged it with a popular song named “My Rollerskates,” which quickly went viral online. They even invented a character by putting Chan’s Chinese name (成

    龙) together to form a new character for it. Literally, “duang” means “applying special effects.” Metorphorically, it means “big surprise, unbelievable.”

    Example:

    A: 你春节去哪儿玩了？

    Nǐ chūnjié qù nǎr wán le?

    Where did you go during the Chinese New Year holiday?

    B: 哪儿也没去，duang的一下假期就没了。你呢？

    Nǎr yě méi qù, duāng de yīxià jiàqī jìu méi le。Nǐ ne?

    I didn’t go anywhere. The holiday was gone in a blink. How about you?

    A: 我去了厦门，在一处海滩看到一种神奇的蓝色海洋微生物，景色美到duang。

    Wǒ qù le xiàmén, zài yīchù hǎitān kàndào yīzhǒng shénqí de lánsè hǎiyáng wēishēngwù, jǐngsè měi dào duāng。

    I went to Xiamen. I saw a kind of miraculous blue ocean microbe on the beach, and it was unbelievably beautiful.