"Out-of-touch middle-aged men" — Phrase of the Year
Our top phrase of 2025!
Our phrase of the week — and the year — is: “out of touch middle-aged men” (老登 lǎo dēng)
Context
In this last Phrase of the Week of 2025, we’re not only explaining our favourite phrase from the last seven days.
We’re announcing our Phrase of the Year!
This is drawn from my top 12 phrases from 2025 published yesterday.
For Phrase of the Year, we’re looking for something special. It must meet these criteria:
Newly invented or popularised in the last 12 months
Has become truly mainstream and used in daily life
Represents a bigger trend or shift in China today
To put it another way: the qualified Phrase of the Year must have come about in the 12 months, and is here to stay. Like our Phrase of the Year from 2024, “workhorse” (牛马).
From our shortlist of favourite phrases from 2025, there were a few strong contenders. But there was also a clear winner, which we first discussed in October this year:
For the ordinary working-class, this billionaire’s attempt to “keep it real” and play the victim felt more like a cringeworthy performance by an out of touch middle-aged man.
Awkward, and inauthentic.
对于工薪普通人来说，富豪这波“接地气”卖惨，更像一场老登的表演秀，没有真诚，只有不适。
Duìyú gōngxīn pǔtōng rén lái shuō, fùháo zhè bō “jiē dìqì” mài cǎn, gèng xiàng yì chǎng lǎodēng de biǎoyǎn xiù, méiyǒu zhēnchéng, zhǐyǒu búshì.
And with that, let’s get stuck into our Sinica Phrase of the Year!
What it means
“Out-of-touch middle-aged man” is how we translate the internet slang “laodeng” (老登).
The direct translation makes no sense: “old/always” (老 lǎo) + “climbing” (登 dēng).
The phrase comes from the Northeastern Chinese dialect, where deng (登) is a derogatory term for a man who behaves inappropriately or sleazily. Together with the character “old” (老), the phrase means “sleazy old man,” normally said with a rolling northern “er” sound: lǎo dē’er (老登儿).
A year ago, few people knew this term, or they might have assumed it meant President Biden (拜登 bài dēng), whose online nickname is “laodeng” (老登).
But in recent months, internet users redefined this niche dialect phrase to mean: “middle-aged or older men who are successful but arrogant and disconnected from reality.”
The phrase has exploded in popularity, with high-profile male celebrities getting slammed as laodeng. Notable examples include Xiaomi (小米) founder Lei Jun (雷军), Xibei (西贝) restaurant boss Jia Guolong (贾国龙), and my personal favourite, and the most out-of-touch of them all, fireworks artist Cai Guoqiang (蔡国强).
Variations of laodeng are already proliferating online: “out-of-touch-middle-aged-man-ism” (老登文学) describing the broader trend, “out-of-touch-macho films” (老登电影) which are male-dominated chauvinistic movies, and “middle-aged man vibes” (登味), which made it into one of China’s top buzzwords of the year lists.
So laodeng ticks all the boxes: it’s newly popular and has gone mainstream this year. And it represents a bigger shift in China today. Younger people have had enough of the traditional male strongman leader, while stereotypes of older women are also changing, but positively, as explained in the phrase, “the era of middle-aged women” (中女时代) — another top buzzword from 2025.
So, “out-of-touch middle-aged men” as a phrase is there to stay.
That’s why laodeng is our Phrase of the Year for 2025!
Why not drop it into your next Chinese conversation and impress with your amazing and on-trend language skills?!
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.
Read more about how Laodengs are being discussed in the Chinese media right now:
And more on RealTime Mandarin’s top phrases of the year: