Show me the bunny

Beijing student Wang Liyuan was tickled when a cousin from Tianjin sent her an instant message last December featuring an animated cartoon bunny making extravagant gestures to express happiness. But that's not why she found it amusing.

The emoticon was her work. Created as a diversion and circulated to a friend, the simple bunny figure made the rounds on the internet to her cousin and eventually bounced back to Wang, a 21-year-old animation student at the Beijing Broadcasting Institute.

'My cousin went on about how cute the icon was before commenting, 'It looks like your style'. I answered, 'Of course it does. I drew it',' Wang says, giggling over a coffee at a cafeteria near her school. 'He encouraged me to draw more. He said many of his friends were using it.'

Those supportive words changed Wang's life. Her creations, featuring the whimsical emoticons called Tuzki, have spread through chat rooms like a virus, initially among the mainland's hundreds of millions of internet users, especially those using QQ and MSN, and then around the world.

The name is an amalgamation of tu, Putonghua for rabbit, and zki, derived from Zebatinski, a character in her favourite novel, Isaac Asimov's Spell My Name with an S. Although lacking a nose and mouth, the simple bunny figures express many sentiments that people can relate to - frustration with dimwits, gloom over a heavy workload, or just silly fun.

Wang has developed 47 expressions involving Tuzki and the bunny figures are also being used on postcards and T-shirts. She says the Tuzki share many of her personality traits and reflect her experiences. 'To some extent, I am Tuzki.' However, they're also channels for acting out - something she can't bring herself to do. She'd love to express herself through loud, exaggerated gestures, she says, waving her arms in the air to indicate happiness. 'I can't really do that in real life.'