Since 'niu(B/bi)' has already been covered so well, I would not have brought it up again were it not for the fact that, following up a link in a recent post that led to several earlier links, Sergey has put forward a striking new suggestion about where the Chinese expression may have come from.Ī discussion of 'meat floss donuts' in this post, ' Walmart China talk ' (9/16/15), led Sergey to an earlier post, ' Where's the bull?' (6/2/15), and from there he found still earlier references (the ones that are also cited two paragraphs above. The origin of this usage is quite vulgar for explanations, see here, here (with links to other posts in which the term is treated), also here and here. Nonetheless, I would recommend scrupulously avoiding it in situations where you are expected to be polite and formal.Īlthough 'niu(B/bi)' may amount to 'awesome', it is far more colorful and crude. Although 'niu(B/bi)' is used so frequently, in mixed company, on packaging, and so forth that it has lost much of its original shock value, it now means not much more than 'awesome'. You can say just 'niu' by itself, where 'niu' actually means niú 牛 ('cow'), but that's an elision of 'niuB' or 'niubi', which in turn means 'cow pussy'. In recent years, this has been one of the most common modifiers and exclamations in Chinese.

Niubi free