They have been mentioned more than 56 million times on Sina Weibo, China's Twitter. Everyone wants to be their friend, but no one likes them. They seem to be everywhere, throwing around their newly minted renminbi and well-used UnionPay debit cards; yet they are elusive and shun the media.

Their love for bling has become the backbone of the global luxury goods industry, yet they are also the subject of disdain, the butt of jokes, the punching bag for that which is offensive to good taste.

Young and rich: A scene from Tiny Times 2, a popular film which celebrates overt materialism about four Shanghai students.

They are the tuhao - tu means dirt or uncouth; hao means splendour - and they are the Beverly Hillbillies of China. Or something like that: A crowdsourced translation call on China's social media yielded "new money," "slumdog millionaire," the "riChinese" and "billionbilly." When English falls short, French is on hand to help: Tuhao have the artistic sensibilities of the arriviste, the social grace of the parvenu, and the spending habits of the nouveau riche.

Tuhao once meant rich landowner - the villainous landed gentry and class enemy of communist China's proletariat - but the term's modern revival began with a popular joke that made its rounds on Chinese social media in early September.