土豪 我們做朋友吧

“土豪 我們做朋友吧” has become increasingly popular on Chinese internet since Aug 2013.

土豪 (Tu-Hao), which means uneducated/uncivilized new riches, is a word describing self-made millionaire grassroots. Those people are usually born in 1950s~1960s. Experiencing Cultural Revolution during their youth, aka no schooling/ no supervising, they seized opportunities under Deng XiaoPing's economic market reform and become upper-class at the dawn of 21st century.

Beside the real society, this word applies to online gaming community. With the popularityof in-game purchase, people spending more hard money on virtual goods are also called Tu-Hao by people spend less. Those online 土豪 are more likely to be young, i.e. born 1980s and 1990s.

Some other tags also apply to this class, no-taste, snobbish, arrogant, showing-off. They don't look like a group that other people might like. But looking at the second half of this sentence, " 我們做朋友吧", which means 'let's make friends' or 'can i introduce myself to you', showed another direction. It's obvious that "I" want to become a friend of yours simply because you are rich. After that, I can get rich soon.

My worry on the massive spreading of this sentence, is, how anxiously Chinese people are eager to make more money and become rich but there's no way to do so. Previously, from 拼爹 to 屌絲的逆襲, they are either self-made rich or family fortune inheritance. But this time, it's all gone, they lost hope of struggling and hard working. Their hope is to find a rich friend. This is quite understandable in a nation with less inter-class movements. The ruling class's mind is like, "if you are rich, fine, let's leave it as is. A rich wannabe? Sorrry, you are what you are born."