"Raising the lobster" — Phrase of the Week
A new buzzword describes China’s latest AI craze
Our phrase of the week is: “Raising the lobster” (养龙虾 yǎng lóng xiā)
Context
OpenClaw is one of the most discussed topics on Chinese social media at the moment.
It’s an open source AI agent which helps users build teams of AI assistants. These assistants can manage real-world tasks like sending emails, managing calendars, and running social media accounts.
Developed by Austrian programmer, Peter Steinberger, OpenClaw launched in late 2025. By January 2026, it had caught on in China. Tencent Cloud and Alibaba Cloud launched setup services to help non-tech-savvy users install the AI. ByteDance and Alibaba’s Qwen followed. And on March 6th, nearly 1,000 developers and AI enthusiasts gathered outside Tencent’s headquarters in Shenzhen for a free installation event.
Short videos of people running their AI agents have flooded flooded social media feeds as the craze jumped from the tech world into the mainstream.
And with it came a new phrase:
“From coders to regular users, the whole country is obsessed with ‘raising the lobster’.
The OpenClaw craze is absolutely everywhere on Douyin right now.”
抖音上，”全民养龙虾”的短视频刷屏，从程序员到普通用户，几乎全社会都参与其中。
And with that, we have our Phrase of the Week.
What it means
“Raising the lobster” is a newly coined expression which means training your OpenClaw AI assistant. Breaking it down: “to raise or keep” (养 yǎng), as in raising children, keeping pets, or nurturing habits; and “lobster” (龙虾 lóngxiā).
The lobster connection starts with the name and the logo. The project was originally called Clawd — deliberately similar to Anthropic’s AI, Claude. When Anthropic pushed back over the trademark, developer Peter Steinberger kept the lobster theme through a brief rename to Moltbot, before deciding on the name, OpenClaw. The red cartoon lobster stayed as the logo throughout.
In China the lobster theme stuck, so the Chinese name became “crayfish”, or literally “small lobster” (小龙虾 xiǎo lóngxiā). Running your own OpenClaw became “raising a lobster” (养龙虾 yǎng lóngxiā).
The idea of “raising” implies how users need to feed their AI agents with tokens, train it with new skills, and monitor and improve performance. The AI requires ongoing attention like a pet which needs “feeding” (喂饲料) and “training” (调教), which are both essential phrases in the process of “raising the lobster”.
And this is exactly what so many people are doing in China right now — “raising their lobsters” (养龙虾). As well as this three-character phrase, there are also other common versions, like the shorter “lobster raising” (养虾), and also “lobster farmer” (养虾人).
So, now you know the best conversation-starter when you’re catching up with family, friends, or colleagues in China:
“Are you raising the lobster?” (你养虾了吗？)
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.
