Chinese Frog Mascot

Submission 4,721

About

Chinese Frog Mascot refers to a costume trend that originated in China in May 2023 and grew popular on TikTok in August 2023. The costume was reportedly created by a woman named Ms. Tong as a means of showing her frustration with the Chinese job market. The costume grew to be popular amongst street vendors and street performers, with videos of the frog saluting people and dancing wildly being shared on TikTok and Twitter.

Origin

According to Radii Magazine, the green frog costume was created by a Chinese woman named Ms. Tong after she grew frustrated with the job-hunting process. A mother to twin children and a graduate of Nanjing Art Institute, Ms. Tong's unsuccessful attempts at returning to the workforce led to her drawing and making the costume for the frog costume, and subsequently going out on the streets to market it.^[1] A photo of Ms. Tong being interviewed by the Chinese state-run newspaper the Yangtze Evening Post can be seen below.

Videos of the frog stomping and saluting random people on the street went viral on Chinese social media, as seen in a YouTube repost by China.org.cn (seen below).

In May 2023, reports of vendors being reprimanded for being public nuisances and told to remove their costumes by Shanghai police went viral on Weibo and Chinese media. According to the South China Morning Post, people were "enraged by a video of an adorable costumed street vendor selling inflatable baby frogs being moved on by Shanghai city officials."^[2]

Spread

In August 2023, X users began reposting videos from the TikTok page @frogg.ech and @echbao123, which are themselves likely sourced from Chinese social media apps like Weibo and Douyin. On August 23rd, 2023, X^[3] user @vashethestamped posted a frog costume video captioned, "no someone needs to tell me who and what this is because i’ve become obsessed with him," gathering over 4,000 likes in two weeks (seen below).

On August 29th, 2023, X^[4] user @maxafrass posted a frog video with the caption, "You don’t understand how fucking obsessed with this frog I am," gathering over 73,000 likes in a week (seen below).

On September 4th, 2023, X^[5] user @INDIEWASHERE posted a frog video with the caption, "me after the first sip of my iced brown sugar oat shaken expresso latte from Starbucks," gathering over 102,000 likes on X (seen below).