Clattering chopsticks, bubbling jiaozi pots, rustling envelopes of money, and the roar of fireworks – sounds like China is celebrating the turn of the year. This time, the Chinese are leaping into the Year of the Tiger. It’s a good time to take a look at the tiger vocabulary that is stalking its way through […]
Scripted murder. What sounds like a sinister, bloody deed is actually a new genre in Chinese entertainment that also involves a lot of human interaction. 剧本杀 jùběnshā is the name of the trend in Chinese – made up of the words for “script” (剧本 jùběn) and “kill, murder” (杀 shā).But at most, only times is […]
Lockdown, finals, overtime madness? Time to take revenge! And what’s the best way to do that? Through revenge purchases, of course! China has even coined a new word for this behavioral pattern. 报复性消费 bàofùxìng xiāofèi “revenge buying” or “revenge consumption” is the name of the popular term, not unlike the English “comfort buying”. It is […]
YYDS! Don’t be surprised if you hear teens in China screeching this cryptic string of letters at concerts. And don’t be surprised either when Chinese fans shower their idols with YYDS comments on the net. That’s not a typo, that’s intentional. YYDS stands for 永远的神 yǒngyuǎn de shén – “eternal god” – and is now […]
The sun shining bright outside? There’s a pleasant breeze going? Then it’s the perfect weather to hang out the washing to dry in the sun, or the kids! Don’t worry. Of course, even in China, the offspring are not actually hung out to dry. But in the colloquial language, they are. 晒娃 shài wá – […]
In the English language, man’s best friend often doesn’t come off well, for example, when you are “working like a dog”, or when someone turned out to be a “mean dog”, when everything else goes “to the dogs” or you end up being “sick as a dog”. Even in Chinese, our barking four-legged friends do […]
Crumbling bridges and ramshackle walls – that sounds like a botched construction job, or tofucrumb construction (豆腐渣工程 dòufuzhā gōngchéng), as the Chinese would say. Borrowed from a byproduct of tofu and soy milk production, the figurative term is 豆腐渣 dòufuzhā (literally “tofu crumbs, tofu residue”). The crumbly press residue (also called okara in Japan and […]
Any gift ideas for Christmas yet? As we all know, the four weeks before Christmas Eve fly by. Maybe this year we’ll just take a relaxed example from the gift-giving habits of the Chinese. Here, the magic word is: 礼盒 lǐhé “gift box” (from 盒 hé “box, box, box” and 礼 lǐ “etiquette, gift, courtesy”). […]
Conspiracy theorists and number mystics beware! Could the series of numbers 1111, which is currently screeching at us on websites and billboards all over China, perhaps encode a deeper meaning? It does indeed. The secret message is “buy, buy, buy” (买买买 mǎi mǎi mǎi)! Because every year on 11/11 – so it’s that time again […]
Monday morning before the first coffee? Are you perhaps sitting in front of this column with panda eyes right now? You heard me right! The panda is not only the fluffy national treasure of the Chinese, but also the eponym for a meme that existed even before social media: namely, thick, black rings under the […]