Look for 'selfies' among the 'tuhao'

Language is fluid. It evolves and we invent new words to reflect new developments. Often the words can suggest how we think about those new developments. Two examples are "tuhao" (nouveau riche) and "selfie".

In China, tuhao is used mostly as a derogatory term to describe people who have accumulated wealth but not the corresponding good taste to go with it. An example is a man in Chengdu, Sichuan province, who promised to buy 1,000 pairs of shoes for people who showed up when he proposed to his girlfriend. Foreign Policy Magazine aptly equates tuhao with Chinese Beverly Hillbillies, taking its cue from an American television program from the 1960s that followed the lives of a group of backwoods people who suddenly became rich and moved to glitziest city in the United States. The group retained many of its backwoods' crass ways.

Tuhao or nouveau riche has an overall negative connotation, a negativity that may originate from the fact that many of us would like to be rich and our failure to accomplish our goal causes us to be resentful or jealous of people who achieve wealth.