This advertisement announcing a free furniture promotion appeared in The Beijing News today:
“Read blogs and snatch 400,000 yuan worth of free Boloni sofas” (click for full ad image).
The promotion is being held at “secret locations” in five Chinese cities this week. A Sina blog mentioned in the ad will have daily announcements of the specific address, and readers who are quickest to reply to the blog posts will win a free sofa.
The ad plays on the phrase 抢沙发 (lit. “snatch the sofa”), which in Chinese net-speak means to grab the first post in a comment thread. In tiny type at the top of the ad, one possible etymology is mentioned: a transcription of the English words “so fast.”