Explanation of Chinese social media buzzwords

[FlyingSesame]

Happy 牛 year! ? 

 

Buzzwords on Chinese social media can be baffling to even more advanced Chinese learners. I’ve made a list for the top trending ones in the past year, which I hope will be helpful to your learning (or at least make the learning more fun!)

 

逆行者(Ni4 Xing2 Zhe3): counter-marcher

内卷 (Nei4 Juan3): involution

打工人(Da3 Gong1 Ren2): working man

名媛 (Ming2 Yuan2): Socialite

凡尔赛文学 (Fan2 Er3 Sai4 Wen2 Xue2): Versailles literature

直播带货 (Zhi2 Bo1 Dai4 Huo4): Live-streaming shopping 

 

If you are interested, here is a much longer article in which I wrote about how these buzzwords came about, the social background and what they actually meant to people in China. Enjoy!

https://www.flyingsesame.com/chinas-2020-in-social-media-buzzwords/

 

[889]

Can you explain what "involution" and "Versailles literature" mean as top-trending terms on Chinese social media?

 

[markhavemann]

Seems a bit like you are marketing your own website by posting a tiny bit of information here in the hopes that people will click through to your site...

[Flickserve]

打工人 seems to have come from a colloquial Cantonese expression - 打工仔

 

https://youtu.be/uzk7QJtHxec

 

lyrics here.

 

 https://mojim.com/twy101187x41x5.htm

 

 

[roddy]

3 hours ago, markhavemann said:

Seems a bit like you are marketing your own website by posting a tiny bit of information here in the hopes that people will click through to your site...

Agreed. More content, less clickbait, please.

[FlyingSesame]

17 hours ago, Flickserve said:

打工人 seems to have come from a colloquial Cantonese expression - 打工仔

Indeed, 打工仔 used to describe those who do menial jobs or migrant workers on production lines in factories. Now this is how overworked Chinese young professionals refer to themselves, with a bit of self-deprecating sense of humour. 

[FlyingSesame]

21 hours ago, 889 said:

Can you explain what "involution" and "Versailles literature" mean as top-trending terms on Chinese social media?

Involution is an academic term to describe the process when extra input no longer yields more output (originally from study of rice paddy labourers in Indonesia). Netizens in China now use it to describe the ultra fierce, yet meaningless competition in which they have to take part, with no gain but also no way out.  

 

Versailles Literature is an odd one, as it has nothing to do with Versailles in France at all. Instead, it was inspired by Japanese comic “The Rose of Versailles”, which depicts Marie Antoinette’s life of luxury. In the context of the Chinese social media, it refers to bragging by complaining. So essentially a subtle way of showing off (e.g. someone complained on social media that she had to move to a bigger house with private garage to accommodate her Tesla, as there are not enough electric charging points in her current neighbourhood).