Meanwhile, at the other end of the economic scale are the Yizu, or “ant
tribes”.
The word was first coined in 2009 by Lian Si, then a researcher at Peking
University, to describe the hopeless toil of college graduates in China’s
large cities.
“They share every similarity with ants. They live in colonies in cramped
areas. They are intelligent and hardworking, yet anonymous and underpaid,”
he wrote.
Then there are the Fenqing, or “angry youth”, the nationalists who
have become increasingly strident as China has emerged onto the world stage,
often using the internet to loudly proclaim the country’s might.
In a nod to the environment, Ditan or “low carbon” and Jianpai, or “reduce
emissions” both make the cut.
However, one word to fall out of the dictionary, as China jettisons its
colonial past, was Baixiangren, literally “white-faced person”, an
old Shanghainese term for a rich layabout, or playboy.
“The words have to be current, widely used by the masses, and likely to
be around for a long time, but there are no specific rules for inclusion,”
said an editor at the Chinese Academy of Social Sciences, the compilers of
the volume, who declined to be named.
“We take words from newspapers, television and the internet, but words
that are only popular on the internet are not included,” he added. “I
like the words for cloud computing and ‘house slaves’ – people burdened by
their mortgages – the most.”
Additional reporting by Valentina Luo