Chinese Language Stack Exchange is a question and answer site for students, teachers, and linguists wanting to discuss the finer points of the Chinese language. It only takes a minute to sign up.
Sign up to join this community
I came across 江信江疑 in this tweet about a meme. It clearly has something to do with Jiang Zemin / 江泽民. It seems to be quite commonly used; my guess is that it's something people say on Internet that refers to politicians, or heads of government, and their trustworthiness (or lack of it). But this is just a guess.
What does 江信江疑 actually mean? What's its "back-story"? Is it just used online, or could it be used in spoken Putonghua? Perhaps a few sample sentences would be useful too.
I'm basing my answer on the article 江信江疑是什么意思 which gives a reasonable explanation.
It's a play on words. It begins with
half believing, half doubting / skeptical
将信将疑
jiāngxìnjiāngyí
The line 将信将疑 comes from the poem 吊古战场文 by Tang-dynasty poet 李华.
However the meme replaces 将 (jiāng) with the surname 江 (Jiāng) which has the same pronunciation and is the family name of Jiang Zemin (江泽民). Then it's added as a caption to memes where 江泽民 looks skeptical, such as:
I'm not really sure how the meme evolved beyond that to what you see on Twitter.
