ETYMOLOGY
The term's evolution mirrors China's complex social dynamics in the digital age. Emerging around 2013 during the craze for palace drama Empresses in the Palace, viewers coined "scheming women" to describe characters like An Lingrong. Later on Baidu Tieba, netizens merged it with the "-biao" suffix from "green tea bitch", creating this linguistic grenade.
Its viral moment came via a 2014 Tianya Forum post detailing a female coworker who fainted strategically to gain supervisor sympathy. The top comment declaring her "an aircraft carrier among scheming queens" propelled the term into mainstream lexicon. TV series like Ode to Joy and Nothing But Thirty later cemented its cultural presence through controversial characters.
This phrase thrives because it captures modern anxieties about social authenticity. It's weaponized against romantic rivals stealing partners with calculated vulnerability, coworkers masking ambition with false camaraderie, or reality show contestants sabotaging others with poisoned kindness.
Examples:
"She pulled that faint-in-front-of-the-boss stunt? Textbook scheming queen behavior.""That trainee crying while giving expired milk tea to competitors? That's PhD-level emotional jiujitsu."