zhing-zhong

Of objects, cheap, Chinese and of inferior quality.

Zimbabweans complain, sometimes bitterly, that their new Chinese buses break down with alarming regularity and that the Chinese goods that flood stores and roadside stalls are so shoddy as to be worthless. Indeed, they have coined a term for the phenomenon: zhing-zhong. "To call something zhing-zhong means that it is substandard," said Eldred Masunugure, the chairman of the political science department at the University of Zimbabwe in Harare. "The resentment of the Chinese is not only widespread; it's deeply rooted. It's affecting even other Chinese-looking people, like the Japanese." Professor Masunugure and others say that Harare's few Japanese residents complain of being taunted and called zhing-zhong.

On the other side of Mbare, among the zhing-zhong products from China, the shiny clothes spelling out cheerful poverty, the glittery tank-tops and body-stockings imported in striped carrier bags from Dubai, among the Gucchii bags and Prader shoes, […]

Of a person, low-quality, unfit for their occupation or station in life.

Cheap products of Chinese origin.