Sinica: Chinese Phrase of the Week

“It doesn’t give you heartburn” — Phrase of the Week

Andrew Methven — Sun, 25 Oct 2026 10:31:03 GMT

Artwork by Zhang Zhigang for RealTime Mandarin

Our phrase of the week is: “It doesn’t give you heartburn” (不烧心 bù shāoxīn)

Context

Micro-dramas (短剧) have become hugely popular in China over the last few years. Episodes are typically 90 seconds to two minutes long. The format emerged on Douyin and Kuaishou around 2018. It grew rapidly during the pandemic in 2020 and 2021. And by 2024, the total revenue of the micro-drama industry overtook China’s box office for the first time.

Now micro-dramas are being transformed by AI, with more than 90% of the output being made using AI tools. These have made it cheap to adapt fantasy and sci-fi web novels that were once far too expensive to film. In the first half of 2026 alone, nearly 222,000 new AI micro-dramas went online, and 1,055 of them surpassed 100 million views.

And now AI micro-dramas are giving rise to new online slang. One such phrase seems to be everywhere online at the moment:

“It’s a bit on the pricey side, but it doesn’t give you heartburn.”
贵是贵了点，但吃了不烧心。

And with that we have our Sinica Phrase of the Week!

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What it means

“It doesn’t give you heartburn” is a new internet meme. Broken down, it translates as “not” (不 bù), “burn” (烧 shāo), “heart” (心 xīn).

Together, “burn” and “heart” (烧心) mean “heartburn” as in the English, which is the burning feeling caused by excess stomach acid brought about by poor quality food or drink.

The phrase “it doesn’t given you heartburn” started out in a common micro-drama plot which features a street-food stall owner who insists on using good quality but more expensive ingredients. As his costs go up, he raises his prices to cover them. And customers drift off to the rival stall next door, which keeps prices low by using poor quality, cheaper ingredients.

Eventually, though, customers realise this end up coming back to the original street seller. Even though his prices are more expensive he is reliable, provides good quality, and his food “doesn’t give heartburn” (不烧心).

“It doesn’t give you heartburn” has now spread into everyday use. It took off as a meme across the Chinese internet in early October, and by October 16, videos under the Douyin topic had passed 2.84 billion views.

As it spread, the meaning has evolved to convey a sense of being “reliable” or “honest”, or someone or something which won’t let you down.

One writer at Sanlian Lifeweek (三联生活周刊) even applied it to a car:

“This car is a bit on the pricey side, but driving it doesn’t give you heartburn.”
这车贵是贵了点，但是开着不烧心。

In other words, it’s “reliable”.

The meme has even crossed the Taiwan Strait. Taiwan’s Want Daily (旺报) reported that it had become an all-purpose way of judging whether something is dependable.

It’s also used sarcastically, for example:

“Working overtime is a bit tiring, but it doesn’t give me heartburn.”
我加这个班，累是累了点，但是它不烧心。

Here it means “it’s not a big thing”.

The linguist Peng Jiafa (彭家法) says the phrase owes its success partly to the huge reach of short dramas. But it also reflects public concern about food safety. Its newer meanings, “reliable” (靠谱) and “honest” (讲诚信), describe exactly what consumers want, and are not sure they will get.

Which brings us back to the dramas themselves. Cheap, repetitive and churned out by the thousand, they are hardly high quality. But for the millions glued to their screens across China, they don’t give you heartburn.

Andrew Methven is the author of RealTime Mandarin, a resource which helps you bridge the gap to real-world fluency in Mandarin, stay informed about China, and communicate with confidence—all through weekly immersion in real news. Subscribe for free here.

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“More haste, less speed” — Phrase of the Week

Andrew Methven — Sun, 18 Oct 2026 10:53:21 GMT

Artwork by Zhang Zhigang for RealTime Mandarin

Our phrase of the week is: “more haste, less speed” (欲速则不达 yù sù zé bù dá)

Context

One of China’s top car review platforms, Dongchedi (懂车帝), is at the centre of an ongoing media controversy. It began on the 8 October, when the platform published a 100–0 km/h stopping distance test for the new Maextro V800 (尊界V800).

The Maextro is a ultra-luxury automotive brand launched jointly by Huawei and JAC (江淮汽车) in May this year. The V800 is the flagship car of the brand, launched in August.

The video published by Dongchedi showed that all three V800 cars tested failed because the brake pedal bracket snapped on each one when braking, in almost exactly the same place. The testers had to use the Park gear to bring the cars to a halt which meant the stopping distance went from a normal 38 metres to 140.

The V800 follows a popular “asset-light” (轻资产) model of producing cars. Huawei brings its superior design and technology capabilities, and JAC builds the cars. This means new vehicles can be brought to market much faster.

The story has drawn attention to the dangers of this kind of rushed vehicle development, known as “rapid-production cars” (速成车). These are models which are designed and brought to market quickly by relying heavily on computer simulations instead of real-world testing.

As one writer concluded, by deploying a very old idiom:

“Fundamentally, this isn’t an engineering issue.
It’s a risk management decision that reflects a carmaker’s priorities.
More haste, less speed.”
这本质上是个风险控制的问题，无关车企的造车能力，只取决于车企们造车的态度。“欲速则不达。”

And with that, we have our Sinica Phrase of the Week.

What it means

“More haste, less speed” is the English translation of a classical Chinese idiom. The individual characters mean “to want” (欲 yù), “speed” (速 sù), “then” (则 zé), “not” (不 bù), “to reach” (达 dá). Literally, it means “want speed, and you won’t get there.”

The idiom comes from the Analects (论语), the collected sayings of Confucius (孔子). Confucius lived from 551 to 479 BCE and is China’s most influential philosopher. He is the founder of the school of thought that has shaped Chinese society for more than two thousand years. The Analects was compiled by his disciples after his death.

In the chapter, Zilu (子路), one of Confucius’s students, Zixia (子夏), is appointed to govern a place called Jufu (莒父). Zixia was among Confucius’s “seventy-two favoured disciples”. He came from a poor family, but was known for his learning and integrity.

Before he set off to take up his new post in Jufu, Zixia asked his teacher for advice on how to govern, to which Confucius responded:

“Do not be in a hurry. Do not chase small gains.
If you seek haste, you will not reach your goal.
If you chase small gains, great things will not be achieved.”
“无欲速，无见小利。欲速，则不达，见小利，则大事不成。”

Confucius’s point was to not push for quick results, and not let small advantages distract from the bigger picture.

The idiom appears often in later writing. Sima Guang (司马光), the Song dynasty statesman and historian best known for the Comprehensive Mirror to Aid in Government (资治通鉴), used it in a letter to a friend:

“More haste, less speed.
How can an illness of half a year be cured in a single morning?”
夫欲速则不达，半岁之病岂一朝可愈？

Millenia later, Mao Zedong (毛泽东) used the idiom in a speech on cultural work:

“‘More haste, less speed’ does not mean we should not be fast.
It means we must not act blindly, because blind action is bound to fail.”
“欲速则不达”，这不是说不要速，而是说不要犯盲动主义，盲动主义是必然要失败的。

In modern Chinese, “more haste, less speed” is a warning against impatience and cutting corners. It’s also used in a shorter four-character form (欲速不达). In English, it can also be translated as “haste makes waste”. But we prefer the British “more haste, less speed”, which keeps the idea of speed as in the original Chinese expression.

Today, China’s carmakers are competing against each other to get new models on the road as quickly as possible. The “asset light” model of the V800 means the new vehicle has got to market faster, but without the usual rigorous real-world testing.

Which is a warning to other car makers that it’s not just about how fast you can design and launch new products to market.

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"Tourist-trap souvenir trio" — Phrase of the Week

Andrew Methven — Sun, 11 Oct 2026 10:31:10 GMT

Artwork by Zhang Zhigang for RealTime Mandarin

Our phrase of the week is: “tourist-trap souvenir trio” (冤种三件套 yuān zhǒng sān jiàn tào)

Context

This year’s Mid-Autumn Festival and National Day holidays were only three working days apart. So many people took the opportunity to combine them into one long holiday.

The travel platforms Ctrip (携程) and Tongcheng (同程) reported that cross-city trips leaving the day before Mid-Autumn Festival or on the day itself were up 18% compared to the Dragon Boat Festival break.

But many of those travellers came home with the same complaint: wherever they went, it felt as if they had been there before. A Weibo hashtag asking “How Homogeneous Have Scenic Spots Become?” (现在的景区同质化有多严重) has already racked up tens of millions of reads on the platform over the last couple of weeks.

And one phenomenon being discussed is the souvenirs on sale at these destinations, with a new phrase coined to describe them:

“The most classic of them all is probably the tourist-trap souvenir trio: hand cream, city fridge magnets and themed ice cream.”
其中最经典的，大概逃不过这“冤种三件套”：护手霜、城市冰箱贴以及文创雪糕。

And with that, we have our Sinica Phrase of the Week.

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What it means

“Tourist-trap souvenir trio” (冤种三件套) is our translation of two internet slang terms combined into a new expression.

Broken down, the characters mean “wronged” (冤 yuān), “type” (种 zhǒng), “three” (三 sān), “piece” (件 jiàn), “set” (套 tào). A more literal translation would be “the sucker’s three-piece set.”

The first term in this new combo is the northern dialect slang, translated as “total sucker” or “gullible victim” (冤种). Originally common in places such as Chaoyang (朝阳) in Liaoning province, it described someone who has suffered an injustice and is left brooding over it.

In recent years, the rise online of “gullible victim” began with bloggers from the northeast, who used it in short videos to mock themselves with exaggerated self-pity:

“I’m just a big sucker” (我是个大冤种)

That stripped away its heavier original meaning, and it came to describe anyone who has done something foolish. In December 2022, “sucker”, along with its stronger form “big sucker” (大冤种), was named one of the top ten internet buzzwords of the year by Language and Writing Weekly (语言文字周报). It also made our own list that year.

The other part of this new phrase is the “three-piece set” (三件套). It’s become a popular template online. It is used to mock, or self-mock, the signature combination of three things, always negative, that defines a group of people, a lifestyle or a predicament.

The best known example of this is the “workhorse trio” (牛马三件套) which is a “mortgage” (房贷), a “car loan” (车贷) and “carrying on the family line” (传宗接代). These are the burdens expected of young people in China to shoulder for life. Another common one is the “middle-class poverty trio” (中产返贫三件套) which is having a maxed-out mortgage, a spouse who stays at home full-time, and children who study at international school.

This latest “three-piece set” is made up of three types of so-called “limited edition” (限版) branded souvenirs which seem to be on sale in every tourist destination across China. These are “hand cream” (护手霜), “city fridge magnets” (城市冰箱贴) and “themed ice cream” (文创雪糕) in the shape of local landmarks.

Over-priced and poor quality, the items in this “three-piece set” are probably all produced by the same supplier in Yiwu (义乌). So many tourists have stopped buying this tat and instead they browse, try the samples, take their selfies with the item, and walk away.

"Universally acclaimed" — Phrase of the Week

Andrew Methven — Sun, 04 Oct 2026 14:44:47 GMT

Artwork by Zhang Zhigang for RealTime Mandarin

Our phrase of the week is: “universally acclaimed” (脍炙人口 kuài zhì rén kǒu)

Context

Liu Huan (刘欢) is one of China’s best-loved singers. He died on September 25, at the age of 63.

The news broke the next day when a short obituary was published by the University of International Business and Economics in Beijing, where he had taught for more than thirty years.

Liu is probably most famous outside China for his performance at the opening ceremony of the 2008 Beijing Olympics, when he sang the theme song “You and Me” (我和你), with the British singer, Sarah Brightman.

Inside China he is best known for creating the theme tunes and music scores for some of China's most popular TV series in the 1980s and 1990s.

He sang the theme songs for the police drama Plainclothes Police (便衣警察) and Snow City (雪城) in 1988, wrote and sang the music for A Native of Beijing in New York (北京人在纽约) in 1993, and sang "Song of the Heroes" (好汉歌) for Water Margin (水浒传) in 1998.

Later, he became a familiar face to a new generation as a judge on hit music talent shows such as The Voice of China (中国好声音) in 2012 and Sing My Song (中国好歌曲) in 2014

Social media feeds have been full of tributes to Liu over the last week. A tribute by music critic, Li Wan (李皖) in Lifeweek (三联生活周刊) summed his life up as:

“Most of Liu Huan’s performances came in the opening and closing themes of hit TV dramas.
These were universally acclaimed masterpieces sung in the spotlight on the great stage of their era.”
刘欢表演、表现的场所，大部分都是热播电视剧的片头片尾曲，时代舞台上聚光灯下的脍炙人口之作。

And with that, we have our Sinica Phrase of the Week.

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What it means

“Universally acclaimed” is the English translation of a classical four-character idiom (脍炙人口 kuài zhì rén kǒu). The individual characters mean “finely minced meat” (脍 kuài), “roast” (炙 zhì), “people” (人 rén) and “mouth” (口 kǒu).

It originally described delicious food that everyone loves to eat. Today, it’s used to praise poems, writing and songs that are widely loved and acclaimed.

The roots of the idiom lie in Mencius (孟子), a record of conversations between the philosopher Mencius (孟子) and his disciples. Mencius (c. 372-289 BCE) is regarded as the most important Confucian thinker after Confucius himself.

The story begins with two of Confucius’s own disciples, a father and son. The father, Zeng Xi (曾皙), was especially fond of “sheep dates” (羊枣), a small, round, purple-black fruit. After he died, his son Zengzi (曾子) could not bring himself to eat them. Followers of Confucius held this up as a model of devotion to a parent.

Generations later, Mencius’s student, Gongsun Chou (公孙丑), found this puzzling. So he puts the question to his teacher, which is recorded in the chapter, Exerting the Heart, Part Two (尽心下):

“Zeng Xi loved sheep dates, and his son Zengzi could not bear to eat them after his father’s passing.
Gongsun Chou asked: ‘Which tastes better, roast meat, or sheep dates?’
Mencius said: ‘Roast meat, of course!’
Gongsun Chou said: ‘So why did Zengzi eat roast meat, but not sheep dates?’
Mencius said: ‘Roast meat is a taste everyone shares. Sheep dates were his father’s taste alone. In mourning observance, one avoids a deceased parent’s personal name but does not avoid their surname. The family name is shared by many, whereas the given name is his alone.’”
曾皙嗜羊枣，而曾子不忍食羊枣。
公孙丑问曰：”脍炙与羊枣孰美？”
孟子曰：”脍炙哉！”
公孙丑曰：”然则曾子何为食脍炙而不食羊枣？”
曰：”脍炙所同也，羊枣所独也。讳名不讳姓，姓所同也，名所独也。”

Mencius’s point was that everyone loves roast meat, so eating it did not remind Zengzi of his father. But the sheep dates reminded him of the loss of his father.

From then on, “roast meat” (脍炙) came to stand for things everyone enjoys.

The full four-character idiom first appears in Gleanings from the Tang (唐摭言), a collection of anecdotes about Tang dynasty scholars and the imperial examinations. It was compiled by Wang Dingbao (王定保), a scholar-official writing during the Five Dynasties period (907-960). Quoting lines of poetry, he wrote:

“Lines such as ‘The sound of water is always in my ears, the colour of the mountains never leaves my door’ and ‘Sweeping the floor leaves shadows of the trees, dusting the bed brings forth the music of the zither’…
All of these are universally acclaimed.”
如”水声常在耳，山色不离门”，又”扫地树留影，拂床琴有声”……皆脍炙人口。

This meaning still stands in modern Chinese.

“Universally acclaimed” can describes a poem, a story, or a song that is widely appreciated by many. As in “a song that is on everyone’s lips” (脍炙人口的歌曲).

And that is how Liu Huan’s songs are remembered by many people in China today.

"Paying to suffer" — Phrase of the Week

Andrew Methven — Sun, 27 Sep 2026 10:31:28 GMT

Artwork by Zhang Zhigang for RealTime Mandarin

Our phrase of the week is: “paying to suffer” (花钱找罪受 huā qián zhǎo zuì shòu)

Context

On September 12, at the Beijing leg of the 2026 to 2027 HYROX season, the Australian athlete and world record holder Joanna Wietrzyk lost control of her bowels and experienced explosive diarrhoea partway through the women’s elite race. She kept going anyway, and won, finishing in one hour, one minute and twenty-three seconds.

Despite the clear hygiene risk, and the breach of HYROX’s own rules, the race was not stopped by the organisers. Their response to criticism was seen as evasive and arrogant, and their eventual apology came for too late.

Critics accused HYROX of double standards. Wietrzyk is a leading elite athlete and a global brand ambassador for PUMA, HYROX's main sponsor, which had recently renewed a large sponsorship deal with the event. So she was too important a commercial asset to have been stopped.

HYROX entered mainland China in 2024 and has grown fast. Over 10,000 entrants took part in this Beijing leg alone, and around 55,000 participants nationwide took part across the 2025 to 2026 season.

Part of its appeal is how it has become “social currency” (社交货币), or a status symbol, among China’s fitness-minded middle class, who are drawn by the “emotional value” (情绪价值) of feeling like an elite athlete.

That is what makes the Beijing incident, and the company’s dismissive response to it, land so badly. As it’s exposed how little ordinary paying competitors actually matter to the business, which has left many asking why it became so popular in the first place:

“How on earth has Hyrox, which is widely viewed as ‘paying to suffer’, managed to dominate the fitness world?”
在普通人眼中近乎”花钱找罪受”的HYROX，究竟凭什么跻身健身界顶流IP？

And with that, we have our Sinica Phrase of the Week.

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What it means

“Paying to suffer” (花钱找罪受 huā qián zhǎo zuì shòu), sometimes said as “paying money to buy suffering” (花钱买罪受), is a modern colloquial phrase with no single classical literary source.

It describes spending money and getting nothing but trouble, pain or torment instead of the enjoyment or service you expected.

The word for “to suffer” (受罪) became common speech after Buddhist concepts of sin and karma entered everyday usage, describing suffering or punishment as a kind of debt.

Vernacular novels of the Ming and Qing dynasties, such as Dream of the Red Chamber and Stories to Awaken the World, have similar constructions for bringing trouble on oneself, such as “seeking out worry and inviting resentment” (自去寻愁觅恨) or “making trouble where there was none” (没事找事).

The phrase, “paying to suffer”, is a common expression in modern Chinese. It’s always delivered with a self-mocking edge, and describes a purchase that fails to deliver on its promise.

In the context of HYROX the phrase has two levels of meaning. The first is that competitors spend large amounts of money to endure the punishing physical challenge of the competition. The second is specific to those who came after Joanna Wietrzyk, who literally had to suffer the stench of what she left behind for them on the track.

And a bonus episode…

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#278: A new sports craze takes off in China

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"Overnight success as a Moutai-tier stock" — Phrase of the Week

Andrew Methven — Sun, 20 Sep 2026 10:31:14 GMT

Artwork by Zhang Zhigang for RealTime Mandarin

Our phrase of the week is: “overnight success as a Moutai-tier stock” (立地成茅 lì dì chéng máo)

Context

Unitree Robotics (宇树科技), China’s leading maker of humanoid and quadruped robots, listed on Shanghai’s STAR Market (科创板) on August 19. It was one of the most anticipated IPOs of the year in China.

Trading of its shares opened at 1,100 yuan a share (about $155), a 629% increase on the initial 150.8-yuan issue. The market cap hit 444.9 billion yuan (about $62.7 billion) within minutes.

But it didn’t last. By the close of the first day of trading, the market cap had already dropped by 100 billion yuan. By the end of the fifth day of trading, the share price had fallen from 1,100 yuan to 606 yuan, and the market cap had dropped to 245.2 billion yuan, wiping out more than 200 billion yuan from its peak value.

So despite all the original hype, the market quickly delivered its verdict: Unitree’s spike in valuation was far beyond what the business could support. Low R&D spend, excessive spending on marketing, and limited industrial use of its robots were cited as reasons for the huge sell-off.

As one commentator put it:

“Unitree’s overnight success as a Moutai-tier stock was nothing more than a flash in the pan.
It peaked the very moment it made its debut.”
然而，宇树”立地成茅”只是出道即巅峰的昙花一现。

And with that, we have our Sinica Phrase of the Week.

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What it means

“Overnight success as a Moutai-tier stock” (”立地成茅” lì dì chéng máo) is a twist on the older four-character phrase “to become a Buddha on the spot” (立地成佛 lì dì chéng fó). It comes from the fuller line which translates directly as: “Put down the butcher’s knife, and become a Buddha on the spot” (放下屠刀，立地成佛).

This expression was first recorded in the Song-dynasty Buddhist text Wudeng Huiyuan (五灯会元), compiled by the monk Shiji Pu (释普济):

“Guang’e was a man who kills without blinking. But when he stopped his wrongdoing, even he could become a man of virtue.”
广额正是个杀人不眨眼底汉。放下屠刀，立地成佛。

The idiom belongs to Chan (Zen) Buddhism’s teaching of “sudden enlightenment” (顿悟). The idea is that anyone has the capacity for enlightenment, and can achieve it the instant they let go of their worst impulses.

The phrase has long since moved beyond this religious context, and is applied more widely to anyone who turns their situation around in an instant.

This week’s pun is itself a modern set phrase. It swaps out the character “Buddha” (佛) for the first character of the Chinese liquor brand, “Moutai” (茅 máo).

This character is an informal suffix investors attach to whichever company leads its sector. It’s a shorthand borrowed from Kweichow Moutai, long the country’s most valuable and expensive listed stock. For example, solar equipment maker Longi Green Energy (隆基绿能) is nicknamed “solar Moutai” (光伏茅).

So the pun in this modern phrase is translated as “to become a Moutai-tier stock on the spot,” and refers to a company that becomes its sector’s undisputed leader the instant it lists.

Applied to Unitree, it’s a joke that pokes fun at the company. Its shares were priced at Moutai-grade the moment trading opened, but that didn’t last. To become and remain as the “Moutai of robotics” (机器人茅) will take much longer.

"Drop the chain" — Phrase of the Week

Andrew Methven — Sun, 13 Sep 2026 10:30:57 GMT

Artwork by Zhang Zhigang for RealTime Mandarin

Our phrase of the week is: “drop the chain” (掉链子 diào liàn zi)

Context

On September 5, on the seventh lap of the Shanghai round of the China GT championship, cars 37 and 33 tangled and ran off the circuit. One of them struck car 91, which went up in flames. Trapped inside was British driver Ollie Millroy.

Ollie’s rival, Loek Hartog, a 23-year-old Dutchman driving car 79, was close behind. He stopped and tried to tear the door off. When that failed he took a fire extinguisher from a marshal who had just arrived. He managed to calm the flames just enough to climb into the burning car, and dragged Millroy out.

The British driver came out with five broken ribs, a broken collarbone, a broken hand and finger, and a bruised lung.

That evening Millroy’s team, FIST Team AAI, condemned the organisers for gross negligence, said they were pulling out of future races, and demanded a full investigation.

Other drivers said the marshals panicked, put down their extinguishers and fled. The ambulance took fifteen minutes to arrive, because its driver was asleep and could not be woken.

Footage from the scene showed another marshal unable to get his extinguisher open. That level of incompetence is captured in one colloquial phrase:

“The drivers were out there racing. So why did the organiser drop the chain when it came to the rescue?”
车手在比赛中，救援为什么掉了链子？

And with that, we have our Sinica Phrase of the Week.

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What it means

“Drop the chain” is a colloquial expression which translates directly as “to drop” (掉 diào), “chain” (链子 liàn zi).

It began as northeastern dialect, associated particularly with Shenyang (沈阳). Originally it refers to the chain falling off a bicycle while pedalling. A scenario in which nothing is broken, but the bike doesn’t work.

From there it became a metaphor for failing at the moment it really counts. It’s not incompetence in general, but the thing that gives way at a critical point, and takes everything else with it.

Which is why the phrase is usually paired with the word “critical”, as in the standard form “dropping the chain at the critical moment” (关键时刻掉链子). For example:

“Don’t leave it to him. He drops the chain every time it matters.”
这活不能交给他，他关键时候总掉链子。

Describing a person, someone who “drops the chain” is unreliable, or is fine until the pressure is on.

The phrase spread from the northeast through news media and the internet, and it is now ordinary household Mandarin rather than a regional expression. It’s common in sports commentary, workplace complaints and, as this week shows, criticism of institutions.

A close relation is “buckling at the hips” (拉胯), another northeastern term which became internet slang and means underperforming, falling short, or failing to deliver. Cantonese has its own version of the same idea in “to lose a wheel” (甩辘).

The standard English rendering, and the one China Daily’s English service uses, is “drop the ball”. That is right for the sense of it. But we prefer to keep the bicycle metaphor of “drop the chain”.

Because that is exactly what the argument in China is about this week. Nothing about China GT’s setup was missing. The marshals, the extinguishers and the ambulance were all in place. But when a driver was stuck in a burning car, the man who got him out was another driver, not a marshal. The organisers dropped the chain.

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"Western medicine works faster" — Phrase of the Week

Andrew Methven — Sun, 06 Sep 2026 10:01:50 GMT

Artwork by Zhang Zhigang for RealTime Mandarin

Our phrase of the week is: “Western medicine works faster” (西药见效快 xīyào jiànxiào kuài)

Context

In early August, 440 fresh graduates at a Chinese manufacturer were called into meeting rooms in small groups and given an hour to decide their future. They had started work a month earlier, hired into engineering and management roles.

The choice was to sign a voluntary resignation, take half a month’s pay, and go. Or be transferred to the production line to “tighten screws” (打螺丝). 107 of them took the offer.

The company was Xingyu (星宇股份), China’s largest car-lamp manufacturer and a major supplier to international automotive brands.

The graduates tried to complain to the company union, which did not respond. And the authorities did not step in either. So some of the graduates looked further afield. They submitted complaints to the Hong Kong Stock Exchange, where Xingyu had a listing application under review, and with the supplier whistleblowing channels at Mercedes-Benz, BMW and Volkswagen, all customers of Xingyu.

Mercedes-Benz responded to the complaint almost immediately. Then Xingyu’s local Human Resources Bureau did respond, and that forced an apology from Xingyu. The company admitted its management had made errors of judgement, and the HR director was suspended.

Observers in China watching all this unfold explained the chain of events with a newly coined phrase:

The comments on the coverage of this matter are almost universally along the lines of “western medicine does work faster.”
关于这件事的报道，基本上评论区都是清一色的”还是西药见效快”。

And with that, we have our Sinica Phrase of the Week.

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What it means

“Western medicine works faster” is a five-character phrase which translates directly as “Western medicine” (西药 xī yào), “to take effect” (见效 jiàn xiào) - which is literally “to see” (见) plus “effect” (效) - and “fast” (快 kuài).

This expression is based on the observation that “Western medicine” (西药) acts quickly on the symptom, whereas “Chinese medicine” (中药) works slowly to deal with the underlying cause.

This received wisdom is captured in another set phrase: “treating the symptoms and not the root cause” (治标不治本). Which is the criticism usually levelled at the Western approach.

In this context, however, the “Western medicine” is seen as a positive. It’s a metaphor for the German carmakers acting under EU supply chain regulations. And once they moved, so did everyone else. The labour bureau’s investigation and the company’s apology both came after the complaints reached Europe and had an immediate effect.

So in the end, Xingyu’s response came not because of its Chinese employees, its union, or the regulator.

But because of its customers in Germany.

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"One long dream" — Phrase of the Week

Andrew Methven — Sun, 30 Aug 2026 10:30:51 GMT

Artwork by Zhang Zhigang for RealTime Mandarin

Xu Jiayin (许家印) was once China's richest man. He is the founder of Evergrande (恒大集团) which at its peak one of the world's largest property companies. In 2021 Evergrande became the world's most indebted property developer, and two years later Xu was taken into custody on suspicion of criminal offences. He's not been seen in public since.

On 20 August images appeared of him inside a Shenzhen courtroom. Now with a full head of white hair, Xu stood between two law enforcement officers as he was convicted on eight charges, given a life sentence, and ordered to forfeit everything he owns.

Two of his companies were fined as well. Evergrande Group, the parent, was fined 8.82 billion yuan, around 1.2 billion US dollars. Evergrande Real Estate (恒大地产), its main onshore property arm, was fined a further 7 billion. Fifty-six executives and employees were sentenced alongside Xu, his two sons among them.

The court found that between 2016 and 2021 he had carried out large-scale accounting fraud, taken deposits from the public illegally, run fundraising scams, and bribed his way to control of financial institutions.

Evergrande had grown explosively with China’s property boom since 1996. By 2017 Xu was named China’s richest man with a personal wealth of 280 billion yuan (around $42 billion dollars).

Then when Beijing imposed the “three red lines” (三道红线) on developer borrowing in 2020, Evergrande began to fall apart. By the end of 2022 it owed 2.4 trillion yuan (340 billion US dollars) to banks, suppliers, and the 1.6 million buyers who had paid for homes that were never built. Xu, meanwhile, continued to live in luxury and was moving money and assets out of the business and out of China.

But now, less than a decade since topping the rich list, Xu Jiayin has nothing and will spend the rest of his life in prison.

One article summed up his life with a classical expression:

“He enjoyed thirty years of wealth and glory.
But in the end, it was all just one long dream.”
三十年荣华富贵，到头来，大梦一场。

And with that, we have our Sinica Phrase of the Week.

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What it means

“One long dream” (大梦一场) is our translation of a phrase which has its roots in classical Chinese. The four-characters are “great” (大 dà), “dream” (梦 mèng), and “one time” (一场 yì chǎng), a measure word used for events and performances.

The idea of a “long dream” first appeared in the Zhuangzi (庄子), the foundational Daoist text compiled during the Warring States period (475 to 221 BC), attributed to the philosopher Zhuang Zhou (庄周), also know as Zhuangzi (庄子).

His writings treated reality and illusion as difficult to tell apart. In the second chapter, On the Equality of Things (齐物论), he writes:

“While dreaming, one does not know it is a dream. In the dream, one may even try to interpret a dream within it, and only upon waking does one realize it was all a dream.
Only after the Great Awakening will we realize that this life itself is the Grand Illusion, while fools remain convinced they are wide awake.”
方其梦也，不知其梦也。梦之中又占其梦焉，觉而后知其梦也。且有大觉而后知此其大梦也，而愚者自以为觉。

According to Zhuangzi, the “grand illusion” (大梦) is only visible after the “great awakening” (大觉). And it’s only clear it was an illusion, or a dream, when it abruptly comes to an end.

In the same chapter, Zhangzi also writes about the “butterfly dream” (庄周梦蝶):

“Once Zhuang Zhou dreamt he was a butterfly, fluttering about, happy with himself and doing as he pleased. He did not know he was Zhuang Zhou. Suddenly he woke, and there he was, back to being Zhuang Zhou again.
But now he did not know whether he was Zhuang Zhou who had dreamt he was a butterfly, or a butterfly now dreaming he was Zhuang Zhou.”
昔者庄周梦为胡蝶，栩栩然胡蝶也。自喻适志与，不知周也。俄然觉，则蘧蘧然周也。不知周之梦为胡蝶与，胡蝶之梦为周与？

Life being one long dream is a theme which runs through Chinese poetry in the Tang and Song dynasties.

The Tang’s most celebrated poet, Li Bai (李白, 701 to 762), opens one of his best known poems with it:

“Life in this world is like a long dream, so why wear yourself out with toil?”
处世若大梦，胡为劳其生。

The four-character phrase, “one long dream” (大梦一场), first appears in a later work by Su Shi (苏轼, 1037 to 1101), the Northern Song poet, essayist and official. His poem Moon over the West River (西江月), which he wrote on a Mid-Autumn nigh while in exile, begins:

“The worldly affairs are one long dream,
How many cold autumns can a single life endure?”
世事一场大梦，人生几度秋凉？

The poem is about a man looking north from the far edge of the empire at everything he has lost, as if what he previously had was just a dream.

In modern Chinese, “one long dream” marks the moment when an experience or reality turns out to have been an illusion, and abruptly comes to an end. It can be applied to a person’s career, fortune, marriage, or even an empire.

Which is why it fits so perfectly the story of Xu Jiayin, who spent thirty years building the largest property empire in the world. And now, it seems, it was all just one long, elaborate dream.

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"Handcrafted from scratch" — Phrase of the Week

Andrew Methven — Sun, 23 Aug 2026 10:00:54 GMT

Artwork by Zhang Zhigang for RealTime Mandarin

Our phrase of the week is: “handcrafted from scratch” (手搓 shǒu cuō)

Context

Here Comes the Cow (牛来), or Niu Lai as it’s also known in English, is an animated film which opened in Chinese cinemas on August 5.

In its first nine days, the film took just 7,169 yuan nationwide, roughly a thousand US dollars, from only 236 viewers. The few people who did see it were blunt about how terrible the animation was, comparing it to the crude paper effigies burned as offerings to the dead.

But then the film began to draw attention from finance bloggers.

They noticed the title could be interpreted as “the bull market is coming”. So they joked that with a name as auspicious as that, investors had a duty to watch it.

As the joke spread, people started digging into the film further. It was made by just two people: a 34-year-old man named Xin Yumeng (信雨萌), who directed it, and his mother, Sun Lifang (孙丽芳), who wrote the script and even sang the outro music. The pair had been working on it for five years with no team, no outside investment, and no experience or expertise in film making.

As that background surfaced, thousands more started buying tickets to go and see the movie, precisely because it was so bad. Tickets began selling out in cinemas. Daily screenings jumped from 21 on August 14 to 359 the next day. Wry five-star reviews flooded Douban (豆瓣). And ticketing platform Maoyan is now projecting a final take of just under 90 million yuan, which would make it one of the three highest-grossing domestic animated films in China this year.

Running through the mockery there was an appreciation for something which has been lacking in recent news feeds. AI software, such as Seedance 2.0, can generate smoother, sharper animation in minutes. But Xin and his mum decided to spend five years doing it themselves:

“In an era dominated by AI, it takes real guts for someone of their calibre to stick to handcrafting everything from scratch.”
AI盛行的时代，还有这种水平的人坚持手搓，勇气可嘉。

And with that, we have our Sinica Phrase of the Week.

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What it means

“Handcrafted from scratch” is an internet slang term. It translates directly as “hand” (手 shǒu), and “to rub or knead” (搓 cuō), the motion of rolling something between your palms.

The phrase began in gaming circles around 2010, where it described playing without shortcut keys, macros or cheat tools. It meant to pull off a difficult move by pure manual input on a keyboard or a controller, and nothing else. The earliest use of the term is traced to Dungeon & Fighter (地下城与勇士), a long-running online brawler game, where certain weapons only delivered their full damage if the player triggered them by hand.

From there it moved into tech. Among programmers, “handcrafted from scratch” means writing code line by line rather than leaning on ready-made frameworks or commercial software. Among hardware enthusiasts, it means soldering your own boards and building the device yourself.

It then spread into daily life. Like cooking a meal instead of ordering in, making something by hand instead of buying one, or building something out of parts. The unofficial motto is “all you need is your hands” (有手就行), and the standard reply to any impressive hand-crafted attempt is:

“Hats off to this DIY master”
手搓大佬，受我一拜。

Over the past year the phrase has become a genre of its own. The hashtag “Making everything and anything from scratch” (手搓万物) has passed five billion views on short video platforms. There is now a "making-from-scratch economy" (手搓经济), and, alongside it, the "one-person company" (一人公司), known in Chinese by the English abbreviation “OPC”, and the "super individual" (超级个体). In contrast to "handcrafted from scratch" though, these phrases describe someone who is armed with AI tools and is able to do the work of many people.

Part of the appeal of “handcrafted from scratch” is in the character, to “rub” or “knead” (搓), which is a slow, physical, unglamorous motion. It conveys the labour and the time in a way that “make” (做) does not. The phrase always implies someone has chosen a hard way to do something, with both admiration and some disbelief that anyone would bother.

And that’s exactly why it’s used to describe the makers of Niu Lai. It took Xin Yumeng and Sun Lifang five years to build it themselves at a time when AI can generate something smoother in a single afternoon.

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"The breeze cannot read, so why, then, does it riffle through my book" — Phrase of the Week

Andrew Methven — Sun, 16 Aug 2026 09:52:47 GMT

Artwork by Zhang Zhigang for RealTime Mandarin

Our phrase of the week is: “the breeze cannot read, so why, then, does it riffle through my book?” (清风不识字，何故乱翻书 qīngfēng bù shízì, hégù luàn fānshū)

Context

Huawei (华为), one of China’s biggest and most powerful companies, has been humbled by a cheap children’s toy.

That toy is called a “bamboo cicada” (竹知了). It’s made of a short section of bamboo and a piece of string, and sounds like a cicada when spun.

In recent weeks, netizens somehow connected the bamboo cicada’s buzz to the unveiling of Huawei’s AITO M9 (问界M9) SUV back in December 2023. The event was hosted by Richard Yu (余承东), the head and public face of Huawei’s smart car business. Yu is well-known for his over-the-top language at these events, dropping claims like Huawei is “way ahead” (遥遥领先) of the competition.

The sound of the audience’s reaction to one of his claims at that 2023 launch, and Yu’s own distinctive rapid-fire way of speaking, were likened to the buzz of the bamboo cicada toy.

From mid-July, content creators began mixing the toy’s high-pitched sound into footage of the launch. At first it was no more than a niche joke and a minor trending topic. But around July 23, some bloggers received notices that their videos had been flagged for infringement. As takedown requests from Huawei’s legal team mounted, the story was catapulted to the top of hot search lists in early August. Soon, there were reports that even videos of people simply shaking the toy were being removed.

A backlash against Huawei followed. In response, the company issued a statement denying any blanket campaign against the toy or people posting about it. But this only invited further ridicule. One widely shared essay called it the worst PR disaster in Huawei’s history.

Another writer went on to use a cryptic reference to imperial censorship from nearly 300 years ago to characterise Huawei’s heavy-handed tactics to silence the public:

“The public may be uneducated, but that doesn’t mean you can abuse your power.”
老百姓可以不识字，但你不能乱翻书。

And with that, we have our Sinica Phrase of the Week.

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What it means

“The public may be uneducated, but that doesn’t mean you can abuse your power” is a modern reworking of a famous line of verse from the time of the Qing dynasty (1644–1912).

The original is:

“The breeze cannot read, so why, then, does it riffle through my book?”
清风不识字，何故乱翻书。

It’s attributed to Xu Jun (徐骏), a young scholar in the Hanlin Academy (翰林院), the elite secretariat of the imperial court. Xu was also the son of Xu Qianxue (徐乾学), one of the most senior officials under the Kangxi (康熙) emperor, who reigned from 1661 to 1722.

That line was nothing more than an observation from Xu at his desk, describing how he noticed a breeze blowing through the room flipping the pages of a book as if it were a person. And yet, the breeze was unable to read the words.

In 1730, under Kangxi’s son and successor, the Yongzheng (雍正) emperor, Xu Jun made a fatal slip in a memorial.

He miswrote “Your Majesty” (陛下 bì xià), accidentally writing the first character as one which evokes the meaning of “prison beast” (狴犴 bì àn), a mythical tiger-like creature, whose image was carved on prison gates. The two characters (陛 vs 狴) are pronounced exactly the same (bì), and are almost identical in form, just differing by one component.

The Yongzheng emperor took offence at this slip. Xu was stripped of his title, removed from office, and had his writings searched.

In their investigation, the Qing officials found the line beginning “the clear breeze…” (清风). They concluded this was a seditious attack on the Qing empire’s Manchu rulers, because “clear breeze” (清风) shares a character with the name of the dynasty, Qing (清).

The innocuous line was interpreted as something much more serious:

“The Qing rulers are uneducated, so they have no business meddling in Chinese culture.”

So Xu was convicted and executed.

In the years that followed, “the breeze that cannot read” (清风不识字) became synonymous with the Manchu rulers’ paranoia and abuse of power. The story is retold in the Classified Anthology of Qing Anecdotes (清稗类钞), a compendium of Qing stories assembled by the writer Xu Ke (徐珂) in 1916, four years after the empire’s fall.

The case became one of the most notorious of the Qing “literary inquisitions” (文字狱), or “prisons of the written word”. These were waves of prosecutions where officials combed books, poems and even examination papers for hidden sedition. Their defining feature was that guilt lay in what a suspicious reader could find hidden in the words on the page, such as imagined puns, homophones, and allusions.

Today, “the breeze cannot read” (清风不识字) is shorthand for the misreading of innocent words by the powerful and the thin-skinned. Netizens use it whenever a harmless post is deleted by over-anxious, risk-averse censors. In this modern form, “riffling through the books” (乱翻书) refers the to censors, not the breeze.

So the warning to Huawei is not to echo the heavy-handed instincts of the Qing rulers by silencing the innocent. Which is why we translate this week's phrase as: "The public may be uneducated (in the law), but that doesn't mean you can abuse your power."

“Calm meltdown” — Phrase of the Week

Andrew Methven — Sun, 09 Aug 2026 11:03:59 GMT

Artwork by Zhang Zhigang for RealTime Mandarin

Our phrase of the week is: “calm meltdown” (平静发疯 píng jìng fā fēng)

Context

Over the past few weeks a song called “I’m so mad” (生气了) has gone viral on the Chinese internet. It’s by Papi Jiang (papi酱) who is one of China’s best-known comedians.

Within two days of its release, I’m so mad had surpassed ten million plays and had close to two million likes across social media platforms.

Jiang wrote the lyrics but everything else was generated by AI. The melody is slow and intentionally cheesy.

The video of I’m so mad is an entertaining journey through conversations Jiang has with people who annoy her. The lyrics are what’s going on inside her head as she gets increasingly frustrated with her annoying friends.

But on the outside at least she remains calm, which is what makes the song so relatable , according to one review of the song:

“There is no wailing, no dramatic breakdown.
Just a ‘I’m-completely-done-this-is-ridiculous’ kind of calm meltdown.”
没有大哭大闹的崩溃，透露出一种”算了，不想吵，但真的很无语”的平静发疯。

And with that, we have our Sinica Phrase of the Week.

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What it means

“Calm meltdown” is a our translation of a relatively new internet slang expression. It translates literally as “calm” (平静 píngjìng) and “to go mad” (发疯 fāfēng).

It means outwardly composed but inwardly falling apart.

The phrase grew out of an earlier online craze known as “going-mad literature” (发疯文学), where “literature” (文学) is online slang for “-ism”.

That earlier trend took hold on the social platform Douban (豆瓣) in 2021. It began as a style of forum post of “If I don’t go mad, what am I supposed to say?” (我不发疯我说什么). That soon moved into the real world when unhappy shoppers put it to good use, bombarding online customer service desks with melodramatic, going-mad rants to pressure sellers into shipping their orders or giving refunds.

This earlier phrase, “going-mad literature” is loud, theatrical, and cathartic. It’s when you vent about something and you get your way.

But by 2023, a new version emerged called “going mad while staying calm” (在平静中发疯), which some commentators described as the year’s dominant online mood.

And that eventually condensed into the four-character phrase, “calm meltdown” (平静发疯).

Back to Papi酱’s recent viral hit. I’m so angry has brought the phrase further into the mainstream. With her angry lyrics, comic delivery, and deadpan expression, it’s the perfect demonstration of staying calm on the outside while completely flipping out on the inside.

And it could be an early contender for a our 2026 Phrase of the Year!

“Pilfered in passing” — Phrase of the Week

Andrew Methven — Sun, 26 Jul 2026 10:01:31 GMT

Artwork by Zhang Zhigang for RealTime Mandarin

Our phrase of the week is: “pilfered in passing” (顺手牵羊 shùn shǒu qiān yáng)

Context

One of the biggest stories being discussed in the Chinese media this week is a high profile plagiarism case involving the academic and writer, Jiang Fangzhou (蒋方舟).

Jiang is known as the “genius girl” (天才少女). She published her first book at the age of nine, and by the age of 12 was writing columns for Southern Metropolis Daily (南方都市报).

She was admitted to Tsinghua University in 2008 for her under graduate degree with a 60-point concession on her gaokao score. After a stint as deputy editor of Neweekly (新周刊), a respected current affairs magazine, Jiang went on to take a master’s degree in creative writing at Renmin University which she completed in 2019.

Since then she’s become one of the more recognisable literary personalities in China, especially among people born in the 1990s and 2000s.

But this has all come crashing down this month following accusations of plagiarism which resulted in her master’s being revoked by Renmin University.

The accusations were first raised by a retired Tsinghua University professor in August last year, who made a formal complaint to Remin University in April this year which triggered an investigation.

More recently, two “online sleuths” identified passages in her master’s thesis, and one of her books, which they alleged had been lifted directly from publications outside of China, asking the question:

“This makes me wonder:
how much of it did she write herself, and did she casually lift it from somewhere else?”
这让我不禁怀疑，多少东西是她自己写的，多少东西是顺手牵羊的。

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What it means

“Casually lift from somewhere else” is our translation of the classical Chinese idiom which literally means to “leading the goat away in passing” (顺手牵羊 shùn shǒu qiān yáng). Although in the end we landed on a different translation which I’ll come to at the end.

But first, the long and winding history of this old idiom.

The earliest reference of the image of “leading a goat” is believed to be in The Book of Rites (礼记), the Confucian classic on ritual and etiquette compiled during the Han Dynasty (206 BCE-220 CE). The text instructs that when presenting a horse or a goat as a gift, it should be led in a certain way:

“When presenting a horse or a goat, lead it with the right hand.”
效马效羊者右牵之。

The first recorded use of the idiom in its modern form comes over a millennia later, in Single Whip Seizes the Lance (单鞭夺槊), a play by Shang Zhongxian (尚仲贤) who was a playwright of the Yuan Dynasty (1271-1368).

In one scene, a warrior boasts of capturing an enemy rider:

“I gripped his horse with my right hand, seized his eyelashes with my left, and led him back as easily as leading away a goat.”
是我把右手带住马，左手揪着他眼扎毛，顺手牵羊一般牵他回来了。

A century later, “as easily as leading away a goat” was immortalised in the Thirty-Six Stratagems (三十六计), a famous collection of military tactics, likely compiled in the late Ming Dynasty (1368-1644), althgough the writer is unknown.

“As easily as leading a goat” (顺手牵羊) is the twelfth stratagem. It teaches that when a large army is on the move it will inevitably expose weaknesses. A clever opponent takes advantage of every one of them, no matter how small, accumulating minor gains into major ones.

The idiom’s meaning has evolved over the centuries. Now in modern Chinese it describes casually or opportunistically pocketing something that doesn’t belong to you. It always carries a negative tone, which is exactly how it was used to describe Jiang Fangzhou’s writing.

According to the allegations against her, the work of other writers was conveniently within her reach, and helpfully written outside China making it harder to track.

So, according to her accusers, she casually lifted, translated, adjusted and dropped them into her own work. Which is why we landed on “pilfered in passing” for the translation of this ancient and storied idiom.

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“The Odyssey Years” — Phrase of the Week

Andrew Methven — Sun, 19 Jul 2026 12:43:20 GMT

Artwork by Zhang Zhigang for RealTime Mandarin

Our phrase of the week is: “Odyssey Years” (奥德赛时期 ào dé sài shí qī)

Context

According to a recent survey, around half of recent graduates in China say they lack a clear sense of purpose or direction after university. With millions of people competing for a shrinking pool of opportunities, the pressure on them is relentless.

So, many graduates in China are opting to drift instead of following the usual script of entering the world of work and getting married.

In this column we’ve explored phrases which define this experience. From “involuted competition” (内卷) to taking on an underpaid “work horse” (牛马) job, and eventually giving up and “lying flat” (躺平).

This experience of rejecting the usual path and choosing to drift now has a name. It’s a phrase which has been circulating on the Chinese internet since February this year, and is explored in a recent article by current affairs magazine Sanlian Lifeweek (三联生活周刊).

The article opens with a familiar genre of street interview shared on social media, in which passers-by are asked why they’re out on the streets during working hours.

The answer to that question often contains our Phrase of the Week:

‘I’m going through my Odyssey Years.’”
“我在经历我的奥德赛时期。”

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What it means

“Odyssey Years” (奥德赛时期 àodésài shíqī) is a phrase borrowed from English. Breaking it down: “Odyssey” (奥德赛), a phonetic transliteration of Homer’s Greek epic, The Odyssey, and the word for “period of time” or “years” (时期).

The phrase was first coined back in 2007 by New York Times columnist David Brooks.

Brooks argued that life once had four stages: childhood, adolescence, adulthood, and old age. He suggested there are now at least six stages. Including a new phase between adolescence and adulthood which he called “the Odyssey Years”.

This is a reference to how, after the Trojan War, Odysseus spent ten years enduring endless hardships before finally returning home to his wife and son.

Nearly two decades after Brooks coined it, the phrase has found a second life in China. It first began resonating in February this year through posts shared on lifestyle platform Red Note (小红书), and then started to go viral across the Chinese internet in April.

“The Odyssey Years” is how young people in China describe the drifting years in their twenties: switching constantly between jobs, cities, and studies, delaying marriage and children, and often still relying on parents for financial support.

It sits alongside related buzzwords describing the same generation, like “slow employment” (慢就业) and “gap year” (间隔年).

Part of why the phrase caught on is that it gives a name to this lack of direction. It reflects a growing rejection of the “social clock” (社会时钟), the expectation that life should happen on schedule, and echoes another popular saying among young Chinese:

“Life is a wilderness of possibilities, not a path set in stone.”
人生是旷野而非轨道。

Another phrase which has appeared alongside the Odyssey Years in these conversations in China is “emerging adulthood” (成人初显期), which is another imported term coined by American psychologist Jeffrey Arnett in 2000 to describe the same in-between stage of life.

But it’s the Homer reference, though, that has captured imaginations in China.

Invoking Odysseus makes the drifting feel less depressing, and offers hope that eventually a destination will be reached. But unlike Odysseus, China’s young people today might have no Ithaca waiting for them. So this new label is a way of romanticising that decade of confusion, tinged with resignation and a little bitterness.

The phrase’s popularity in China came well before and is unrelated to Christopher Nolan’s interpretation of the epic, starring Matt Damon as Odysseus, which opens in mainland China on August 14.

But with the hype around the movie already building, the phrase is likely to get a boost in the coming weeks, and could be an early contender for our Phrase of the Year in 2026.

What do you think: Will the “Odyssey Years” take hold and be in our top ten phrases of 2026?

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"Mass appeal" — Phrase of the Week

Andrew Methven — Sun, 12 Jul 2026 13:27:38 GMT

Artwork by Zhang Zhigang for RealTime Mandarin

Our phrase of the week is: “mass appeal” (路人缘 lù rén yuán)

Context

On July 2, a court in Suzhou ruled that Molly Tea (茉莉奶白), one of China’s rising bubble tea brands, had infringed seven registered trademarks belonging to Louis Vuitton. The Shenzhen-based tea company’s logo, a black-and-white four-petal flower, closely resembles LV’s iconic monogram flower.

The court ordered Molly Tea to pay 10 million yuan ($1.4 million) in damages plus 300,000 yuan in legal costs, apologise publicly to LV, and remove all infringing designs.

Shortly after the court decision was announced, the story began trending on social media. People expressed sympathy for the tea brand, shared images of their Molly Tea receipts in support, and noted the unfairness of a fight between a 20,000-yuan handbag and an 18-yuan cup of tea.

Some even suggested that LV’s celebrated monogram is itself borrowed from Chinese culture, pointing to the “treasure flower” pattern (宝相花), a stylised floral motif found in Buddhist art from the Tang Dynasty (618-907).

So although LV won in the courtroom, its victory in the court of public opinion is less clear:

“It wasn’t a total win for LV.
They got the money, but some say it cost them their mass appeal.”
LV这边似乎并没有全然胜利——拿到了钱，却被一些声音形容为”丢了路人缘”。

And with that, we have our Sinica Phrase of the Week.

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What it means

“Mass appeal” (路人缘 lù rén yuán) is an internet slang term which comes from fan culture. The characters translate as: “passer-by” (路人 lùrén), “affinity” (缘 yuán).

In Chinese, a “passer-by” (路人) is a stranger, or a neutral onlooker. In fan circles, it specifically means people outside the fans of a particular celebrity: they are not fans, not haters, just the general public.

The second part, “affinity” (缘), is the same character used in “fateful connection” (缘分), the bond that draws people together. So “passer-by affinity” is the appeal a celebrity enjoys among people who aren’t their core fans.

The phrase emerged in the early days of the Chinese internet as “fan-circle slang” (饭圈流行语). It describes stars who are liked even by people with no interest in celebrity culture.

Over time, the phrase became a measure of a star’s mainstream popularity. And it’s now evolved beyond celebrities and can apply to brands and companies too.

Which brings us back to LV. In its legal battle with Molly Tea, the luxury brand won in legal terms. But whether it can win back its “mass appeal” is another matter.

"Gaming the system" — Phrase of the Week

Andrew Methven — Sun, 05 Jul 2026 09:55:06 GMT

Artwork by Zhang Zhigang for RealTime Mandarin

Our phrase of the week is: “gaming the system ” (卡bug kǎ bug)

Context

As June temperatures have soared past 40°C in Germany, France, the UK and beyond, Europeans are rushing to buy air conditioners.

Only around 20% of European households are air conditioned. Older properties were built for cooler weather, and strict heritage rules limit changes to their exteriors, such as fitting external air conditioning units. So installing one is often either prohibited altogether, or prohibitively expensive.

Yet orders have surged at big Asian manufacturers including Midea (美的), a Chinese white-goods maker headquartered in Foshan in Guangdong.

Midea has designed a product specifically for the European market. It’s called the PortaSplit, which is a portable “split-unit” air conditioner with one part which clips onto the outside windowsill, and a cooling unit which sits on the floor inside.

The PortaSplit’s popularity is because it fits just within strict and varied building rules across different European countries. Its outdoor unit clips onto a windowsill with a simple bracket which means no tools or drilling are required and it counts as an internal appliance on a shelf. Its refrigerant capacity is 1.99kg, just under the French 2kg threshold. In silent mode it runs at 35 decibels, right on the German limit. And its efficiency rating of 6.1 lands just inside the bottom end of Switzerland’s A++ band.

This ingenious design has caught attention in China, and is described with this confusing internet slang phrase:

This is product design at its finest, which has been jokingly called “gaming the system”.
Midea’s global, legal and design teams all deserve a hefty year-end bonus.
这种极致的产品定义被戏称为”卡bug”，美的的外贸、法务和设计团队都该集体加年终奖。

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What it means

“Gaming the system” is our translation of this slang phrase which starts with the Chinese verb “to jam” or “get stuck” (卡 kǎ) followed by the English word “bug”.

“Bug” is used here in the context of computing. The source of that word dates back to the late 1940s, when Grace Hopper, a computer scientist working on the Mark II machine at Harvard, traced a fault to a moth trapped inside one of its relays. She taped the moth into her logbook and recorded it as the first real “bug” found in a computer. The word stuck, and “bug” became the standard term for a fault or flaw in a computer, program, or application.

The Chinese phrase “jamming the bug” (卡bug) comes from the early days of first-person shooter (FPS) games, which spread through Chinese internet cafés from the early 2000s. These games inevitably had flaws in their map design, and players learned to exploit those faults to their advantage like breaking through a wall, or reaching a spot where no opponent could hit them.

This could be done through certain moves like repeatedly nudging a particular prop in the game, switching weapons, or hitting keys in a certain rhythm to freeze the character in mid-air. This kind of manoeuvre became known as “jamming a bug” (卡bug).

Within gaming, the phrase broadened to cover any trick that exploits a loophole in a game’s settings such as grabbing high-value equipment, skipping past a task, or winning an unfair advantage over other players.

At some point in the last 10 years or so the phrase moved beyond gaming into mainstream use. It’s now used for anything that “games the system” or rules without technically breaking them by finding gaps in a system and slipping through.

Which is why this phrase is the ideal descriptor for Midea’s PortaSplit. The air conditioner doesn’t break any European regulations. Instead it sits deliberately right on the edge of all of them, creating a hugely popular product which has come at the right time for many people overheating in their homes.

"The Card Master" — Phrase of the Week

Andrew Methven — Sun, 28 Jun 2026 10:31:08 GMT

Artwork by Zhang Zhigang for RealTime Mandarin

Our phrase of the week is: “The Card Master” (卡牌大师 kǎ pái dà shī)

Context

At the 2026 World Cup, which kicked off on June 11, China's national team is absent again. In fact, Team China hasn't qualified for the tournament since 2002.

There is, however, one Chinese representative on the pitch: head referee Ma Ning (马宁). His first match was Ecuador versus Curaçao on June 20, which drew over 10 million Chinese viewers on social media platform RED.

Born in 1979, Ma Ning started his career as a university PE teacher in Wuxi. He began refereeing as a hobby in his spare time. At age 26, he came top of the Chinese Football Association’s national referee programme, then worked his way up from the lower leagues to the Chinese Super League, making international referee in 2011.

He made the officials’ list for Qatar 2022 but only as fourth official and VAR assistant, never taking charge of a match. That looked like his last chance, yet he trained four more years and, against the odds, made the refereeing squad for this World Cup at 47.

Ma Ning is a hit with fans in China. But not just because he is China’s “only starter” (唯一首发) on the pitch at the World Cup. It’s his unforgiving, principled style which has won fans over and given rise to his nickname:

Within the profession, he’s known as “The Card Master.”
It’s not a jab, but a respectful acknowledgement.
His approach on the pitch is simple to the point of stubbornness: he follows the rules, not a player’s reputation.
业内人送他外号“卡牌大师”。这不是调侃，是带着敬畏的认可。他的赛场逻辑简单到近乎固执：只认规则，不认脸。

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What it means

"Card Master" (卡牌大师 kǎ pái dà shī) is an internet slang phrase which came from online gaming and is now the nickname given to Ma Ning.

It’s origin is League of Legends (英雄联盟), the hugely popular online battle game, and the source of many other well-known internet slang phrases. The “Card Master” (卡牌大师) is a characters in the game. He’s a champion who fights by hurling playing cards, and is known in English as Twisted Fate.

The Card Master is a notorious yet charming gambler and con man. He is world-famous for his skill with a deck of cards and always keeps an ace up his sleeve. Everything he does revolves around cards: he flings them at enemies, draws blue, red or gold cards for different effects, and has a signature move that reveals every opponent on the map.

The nickname crossed over into football, and onto Ma Ning himself, after a notorious Shanghai derby in May 2015, between Shanghai SIPG (上海上港) and Shanghai Shenhua (上海申花). During that match he handed out 12 cards in total: nine yellow and three red. His liberal use of cards drew the comparison to the Card Master in League of Legends, and the name stuck.

Ma Ning has since become a superstar in China, and his nickname “Card Master” has followed him as an admiring nod to his adherence to the rules, and his willingness to punish any player who breaks them, no matter how big the name.

With China’s national team watching from home, Chinese football fans have turned to the Card Master for someone to support at the World Cup, calling him the most neutral official at the tournament.

"The Great Duck-Leg Scam War" — Phrase of the Week

Andrew Methven — Sun, 21 Jun 2026 10:30:41 GMT

Artwork by Zhang Zhigang for RealTime Mandarin

Our phrase of the week is: “The Great Duck-Leg Scam War” (鸭骗战争 yā piàn zhàn zhēng)

Context

For more than a decade, a roadside vendor known to students across Beijing as “Goose-Leg Auntie” (鹅腿阿姨) sold roast goose legs from a tricycle cart outside the city’s most prestigious universities: Tsinghua, Peking, and Renmin Universities.

She had no shopfront and no delivery service, just a charcoal grill, and a three-wheeler.

Her real name is Chen Xiufeng (陈秀凤). She came to Beijing from Jiangsu in 2,000, first selling fruit at the southwest gate of Peking University. Around 2011 she switched to grilling goose legs. By late 2023 “Goose-Leg Auntie” was a campus legend. Students in the three universities competed to lure her to their campuses.

But earlier this month that all came crashing down.

It was triggered when Chen shared in a customer group chat an announcement admitting she had been using duck legs, not goose legs, for fifteen years. She added that she had been reported to the authorities by a customer and was now cooperating with an investigation.

Her post was shared on social media and went viral.

Beyond the shock and anger of many customers at being deceived for years, there was also humorous mockery of elite students who were made fools of and unable to discern the difference between duck and goose legs.

One viral post framed the saga in the language of a great historical conflict:

“The hashtag #GooseLegAuntieScandal# briefly shot to the top of the trending searches.
Turning the saga into what can only be described as “The Great Duck-Scam War” fought on the campuses of Peking and Tsinghua Universities.”
#鹅腿阿姨塌房#一度干到热搜第一，这就是一场属于清北的“鸭骗战争”。

And with that, we have our Sinica Phrase of the Week.

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What it means

“The Great Duck-Leg Scam War” (鸭骗战争 yā piàn zhànzhēng) is a newly invented internet slang phrase, coined in the days after Goose-Leg Auntie’s downfall. The characters are “duck” (鸭), “to deceive or scam” (骗) and “war” (战争).

The pronunciation and tones of the characters in “duck-scam war” (鸭骗战争) are exactly the same as the “Opium War” (鸦片战争 yāpiàn zhànzhēng), the mid-nineteenth-century conflicts between Qing China and Britain that opened the country to the foreign opium trade and are remembered in China as the start of its “century of humiliation”.

There were two Opium Wars, so students dubbed the Goose-Leg Auntie affair as the “Third Duck-Leg Scam War” (第三次鸭骗战争), casting themselves as the latest generation to be humbled and humiliated by a superior invading force.

The phrase joins a long list of animal-based Chinese expressions for deception. Such as our 2023 Phrase of the Year, “calling a rat a duck” (指鼠为鸭), which is a riff on the ancient idiom “calling a deer a horse” (指鹿为马) meaning to deliberately misrepresent something as its opposite.

The humour of this new phrase pokes fun at the victims of the scam. They are the country’s brightest students, elites who are selected through a punishing exam system. They supported and happily bought from Goose Leg Auntie for years and never once noticed they were eating duck, not goose.

So a case of mislabelled meat has become a grand reckoning, with the students on the losing side. Which is why we translate this phrase as The Great Duck-Leg Scam War.

"Shooting yourself in the foot" — Phrase of the Week

Andrew Methven — Sun, 14 Jun 2026 12:28:31 GMT

Artwork by Zhang Zhigang for RealTime Mandarin

Our phrase of the week is: “shooting yourself in the foot” (搬起石头砸自己的脚 bān qǐ shí tou zá zì jǐ de jiǎo)

Context

Zhang Xiaolong (张小龙) is the CEO of the listed company Fenbi Technology (粉笔科技). Fenbi is one of China’s biggest online education platforms, specialising in civil service exam (考公) preparation. Millions of students in China pay for Fenbi’s services to get them through that gruelling exam.

Recently, Zhang Xiaolong was invited to give a lecture at the School of Philosophy at Renmin University (人大), the top university in China for training hopeful civil servants. The hundred or so students were in the room were exactly the kind of people who go on to sit that civil service exam, and potentially become Fenbi customers.

Zhang’s talk was meant to cover exam prep and job-hunting. But at the last minute, Zhang changed his topic to “Career Planning in the AI Era” (AI时代的职业规划).

And in under an hour, he managed to insult the students, tell them they had no hope of passing the civil service exam, brag about how rich he was, and how much money he’d recently made trading US tech stocks using AI.

Throughout his speech the room stayed quiet, and some students left early.

Rather than take this in his stride, Zhang began to rant angrily and uncontrollably at the audience. He refused to take questions, told them they were hopeless, and walked out.

The news of Zhang’s outburst spread fast on social media. Many of Fenbi’s own students started demanding refunds, and the company’s share price tumbled. Zhang issued one apology, and another.

But the damage was done:

“He built his name on civil service exam prep and makes his money from civil service exam candidates, yet he disparages those very candidates so openly.
Zhang Xiaolong shooting himself in the foot like this is both deeply baffling and purely farcical.”
靠考公起家，赚考公人的钱，却如此露骨地贬低考公人——张小龙这种搬起石头砸自己的脚的行为，十分令人费解，也十分黑色幽默。

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What it means

“To shoot yourself in the foot”, or, literally “to lift a rock only to drop it on your own foot” (搬起石头砸自己的脚 bān qǐ shí tou zá zì jǐ de jiǎo), is a colloquial Chinese saying.

It does not have a single ancient origin, unlike so many other Phrases of the Week. Dictionaries record it in two forms: the longer colloquial version above, and a tighter four-character idiom, “lift rock, smash foot” (搬石砸脚).

The four-character form is usually traced to a 1973 martial-arts novel by the Taiwanese writer Wolong Sheng (卧龙生). The longer version is most often sourced to Below the Wuling Mountains (武陵山下), a novel about the Communist campaign to wipe out bandits after 1949, by the military writer Zhang Xing (张行).

Its most famous use, though, is by Mao Zedong (毛泽东). He used the phrase to describe what he saw as then British Prime Minister Neville Chamberlain’s policy of appeasing the fascist powers. The remark, from a 1939 interview with the Xinhua Daily (新华日报), was later collected in his Selected Works:

“To lift a rock only to drop it on one’s own foot — that is the inevitable result of Chamberlain’s policy.”
搬起石头打自己的脚，这就是张伯伦政策的必然结果。

Mao was borrowing an existing folk saying, not coining it. And he used “to hit” (打) where the common phrase today uses “to smash” (砸).

Today the phrase is common in political and economic commentary, and in business too. The nearest English equivalent is “to shoot yourself in the foot”, which is how we translate it here.

China’s Ministry of Commerce used it in May 2025, after Washington warned that using Huawei’s Ascend (昇腾) AI chips anywhere in the world would breach US export rules. The ministry said the restrictions would ultimately backfire:

“The result can only be to shoot oneself in the foot.”
其结果只能是搬起石头砸自己的脚。

And that is precisely what Zhang Xiaolong did in his speech last week.

He has built his fortune on the fees of civil service exam candidates, then stood in front of a room of those students, and told them they were worthless. So now his customers are demanding refunds, his share price is tanking, and his reputation is in pieces.

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"A crushing blow" — Phrase of the Week

Andrew Methven — Sun, 07 Jun 2026 14:34:47 GMT

Artwork by Zhang Zhigang for RealTime Mandarin

Our phrase of the week is: “a crushing blow” (当头一棒 dāng tóu yí bàng)

Context

On May 22, the China Securities Regulatory Commission launched investigations into three of the country’s largest internet brokerages — Futu (富途), Tiger Trade (老虎) and Longbridge (长桥).

All three were also hit with fines totalling 2.3 billion yuan (around $320 million dollars).

These online brokerages allow mainland Chinese retail investors to trade overseas stocks, including Hong Kong and US-listed shares, directly and easily via an app. This is something that is otherwise tightly restricted inside China, with the likes of Futu operating in what is often described as a “grey area” (灰色地带).

On the same day as the CSRC announcement, Hong Kong introduced the toughest cross-border account-opening rules in its history, making it much harder for mainlanders to open bank accounts in the jurisdiction.

This pressure on brokerages is also concerning the millions of Chinese who have invested their hard-earned cash into them, as one commentator put it:

This regulatory storm also dealt a crushing blow to the mainland retail investors.
这次监管风暴，对内地散户也是当头一棒。

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What it means

“A crushing blow” (当头一棒 dāng tóu yí bàng) is a classical Chinese idiom. The individual characters mean: “right at” (当), “head” (头), “one” (一), “club” (棒) — literally, a club brought down straight on the head.

The phrase comes from the Compendium of the Five Lamps (五灯会元), a major collection of Chan — or Zen (禅宗) — Buddhist lineage records compiled around 1252 by the Song-dynasty monk Puji, (释普济).

The work gathers the biographies and sayings of generations of Chan masters, and is one of the defining records of the tradition.

The idiom appears in the section on Linji Yixuan (临济义玄), the Tang-dynasty master who died in 866. He gave his name to the Linji school of Chan Buddhism, which is the lineage that became Rinzai Zen in Japan.

Linji was known for a deliberately jarring teaching style, designed to jolt students out of intellectual hair-splitting and into a sudden awakening.

In the passage, a monk puts a lofty question to him:

A monk asked, “What is the great meaning of the Buddha’s teaching?”
The master raised his fly-whisk; the monk gave a shout; the master shouted back.
As the monk hesitated, the master struck him.
上堂，僧问：”如何是佛法大意？”
师亦竖拂子，僧便喝，师亦喝。僧拟议，师便打。

In Chan practice, a sudden shout or a blow from the master’s whisk, which is known together as “stick and shout” (棒喝 bàng hè), was meant to short-circuit rational thought and shock a student into thinking differently.

This story eventually became the four-character idiom, “a crushing blow” (当头一棒), which everyone in China with a high school education will know about.

Over the centuries the phrase moved out of the monastery and into everyday language. It appears, for instance, in the Qing-dynasty (1644–1912) novel Flowers in the Mirror (镜花缘) by Li Ruzhen (李汝珍):

Although the joke is only told in jest, to those who are ignorant and self-opinionated, it serves as a crushing blow that might just jolt them awake.
这个笑话虽是斗趣，若教愚而好自用的听了，却是当头一棒，真可猛然唤醒。

It recurs through later writers too, including Lu Xun (鲁迅), modern China’s most influential author.

In contemporary Chinese, “a crushing blow” carries two linked senses. It can mean a sudden, unexpected blow that comes out of nowhere. And, keeping to its Buddhist roots, it can also mean a sharp warning that forces someone to wake up to reality.

For the 5 million mainland investors who poured their money into offshore brokerages, China’s crackdown on those companies is both at once: a sudden financial shock, and a hard lesson in how fast the rules can change.

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