Are you ready for the code that cracked 2025?
Forget headlines and think culture.
From China to the English-speaking world.
This year's viral words weren't just slang.
They were secret signals.
They told us what we feared, what we laughed at, and what we couldn't stop scrolling.
Today, we'll decode the language that defined us in the last 12 months.
We're live from Beijing.
This is Roundtable.
I'm Steve.
Thank you very much for being with us today.
And for the show, I'm with Yishun and Feifei.
First up.
Every December brings a fresh batch of new buzzwords, those quick, catchy expressions that somehow pop up everywhere at once.
They are in our memes, our headlines, in office chats, and even in our late-night scrolls.
2025 is, of course, no exception.
And this year China and the English speaking world have given us some really fun ones, both linguistically and in sociological ways.
You hear them, you laugh at them.
And before you realize it, they've quietly slipped into your own vocabulary, too.
So what are they this year?
Why did they catch fire?
And are they just trends or will they stick around forever? for a long time.
We'll have a look at some that were on the list.
They always come out at the end of the year, right?
There are so many different lists, words of the year for 2023 2024, 2025 and next year we'll have them as well.
Yuxuan and Fei-Fei, good afternoon to you both.
So let's start with the Chinese list.
Where did they come from?
So the list we're using today comes directly from Yao Wen Jiao Zi, which is a magazine dedicated to language norms and knowledges in this sphere.
And they list 10 buzzwords in China that has built strong recognition and is widely cited by media in China.
And the first one on the list is resilience, which is became kind of a shorthand for the way for people businesses, cities and governments managed continuous changes.
Whether it can mean a lot.
For example, in policymaking we hear a lot about building up resilience in cities and rural areas, and that is one
And when it comes to, for example, business and economy, there is also about this resilience in economy and business and supply chain resilience that we hear very often as well.
Yeah, so when we hear the word resilience, I guess we automatically think it must be about us, about people dealing with the difficulties in daily life.
But there's more to it than that.
Yeah, when we talk about resilient cities, I guess we're talking about well, with the rapid urbanization happening all around the world and, of course, here in China too, putting a city together, building it is really complex and it involves a lot of different challenges.
So when we're talking about resilient cities, it's not just about different crises that may come in the future, but it's about keeping life running smoothly so that it makes the city more and more livable.
Yeah, because a resilient city is the one that can withstand shocks, adapt to challenges and bounce back quickly when these have emergencies or disaster strike because it is caught.
Resilience right, because it precisely because there is external pressure pushing against you and then only when you push back and rise up does it count as resilience.
Yeah right i, though i mean when we, when i knew that we were going to talk about this today a little bit, i didn't really know what does that, what does that mean?
A resilient city?
I i didn't know understand what that meant, so i just tried to find out an example, And there was a good one from Jacksonville, Florida in the United States, and this kind of explained it to me.
So what they're doing there is they are using AI tools to help with their resilience.
So what they did – remember, I think it was just on the show yesterday, when we were talking about the Loess Plateau and the high-speed rail and how challenging it was for engineers to build that rail system because of –.
The soil quality, it's very, what's the word?
Fragile.
Thank you.
That's exactly the word I was looking for.
That's your word of the year.
Yeah, very fragile to build on.
So what they did was they built a digital twin and they used AI tools to help them so that they knew exactly the depth that they had to dig to and exactly how to put the rail effectively.
They're doing the same thing in Jacksonville, Florida, but for a different reason.
They're building a digital twin.
They're piloting it right now, as a matter of fact, and they're modeling everything from wastewater treatment flows to areas of the city that are prone to flooding.
And it gives officials an idea of what will happen, so that they can prepare for that in advance.
Hence the resilient city.
That's one example of it.
Yeah, and that makes me think of another very similar concept here in China.
They're also trying to build a digital twin of all of the waterway systems in China, across China.
So they are collecting data of every river ponds lakes large small, and monitoring, for example rainfalls, to sort of also give policymakers and also city planners an idea of, For example, when it is necessary to evacuate to a certain, what area is needed to evacuate when a flood is going to hit.
And I think the reason for a lot we are hearing a lot about resilient cities is also because of these changes in our climate.
It's that it's no longer just about extreme weather events or natural disasters, is becoming really part every part of our life, like more rainfalls in the summer.
And it is putting pressures on a lot of cities, even though it's just maybe one or two rainfalls more.
But when it comes to the sewage system, when it comes to roads, when it comes to parks, when it comes to everyday commutes, that's a big, big question for city planners today.
So that's why we are not only talking about resilient cities buildings here in China, but also globally.
People are trying to find ways to navigate through this changing environment and weathers.
Yeah.
And when we can know what or try to know what's going to happen, then coming up with a plan for that is a really great idea.
Those digital twins are a fantastic concept.
Not just that, in business, you'll hear terms like resilient supply chain.
And what that means is a system designed to stay stable under pressure, adapt fast and keep goods flowing even when the world gets a little bit difficult for it to accomplish that goal.
Same kind of concept, right?
Yeah, exactly.
Yeah, just being able to stand up to difficulties.
But yes, resilience does apply to us as well.
And it pops up in pop culture commentary.
Yeah.
Influencers used the word very, very casually to describe their ability to stay flexible and also strong under hardships and challenges.
One example is that searching resilience or 任性 on social media platforms like Douyin and Retino, you will find out many examples.
Spots like one important quality that can determine how far you can go is resilience.
Do you agree with that, Fei Fei?
I do.
I do.
When we're thinking about resilience, no matter it's for cities or businesses, or economy or individuals, I think one of the important thing is to adapt to changes is knowing that changing is part of life, is part of what we are dealing with and you're willing to accept.
Well, it's going to change and there will be hurdles along the way.
Yeah, and not just expect, but know that they're coming.
You don't know when they're coming and you don't know what they're going to look like, those changes, but you can be guaranteed that life is going to change, which can be a source of stress.
I don't know, Yushin, what do you think?
Is that a source of stress?
Or is that a source excitement, knowing that things will change, no matter how hard you may try to not change.
Or at least you, you can have that kind of mindset of doing this step by step, little by little, even though you know that yeah, the things is gonna change.
But we are keeping doing that.
And I think that is also one of the essence of being resilient, because we all know that, whether it's about the policy or or the business or the city, it comes through responding to pressure adjustment persistence, and it does not be done overnight.
When I hear the word resilience, I always think of a trampoline.
Why?
Because when you jump on it, it will always push back.
Those are one of the most resilient things on the planet, unless you've had maybe one or too many desserts in the size of the trampoline.
So there you go.
That's one.
Now let's move on to another.
And some of the words in the top 10 list that we're covering are often associated with economic transformation.
The merchandise economy has been an excellent driver of business growth.
People who are passionate about it are willing to pay for the cultural significance it carries.
Young people in China are obsessed.
Significant booming stores selling anime and game merchandise.
They're buying into a whole culture, bringing joy to millions of people.
That was a little compilation of just little headlines that have popped up throughout 2025, all related to and this is our word the goods economy.
Exactly.
So goods means, well, in literally Chinese, goods means grains or millet.
It's a type of crops or a staple food.
But apparently, when combined with economy, it's stands for products in the world of anime, games and comics in terms of the official IP merchandise.
So a lot of young people, especially Gen Zers.
They're quite crazy about the goods, the products related to the ACG world.
Gen Z and Gen Alpha too, even younger than Gen Z.
So we're talking about things like figurines and posters and plush toys and other collectibles.
Would Le Boo Boo fall into the category of the goods market?
Which, by the way, is fun, because goods is yeah, it's millet or something boring in English, but also it plays on the English word goods.
Yeah.
Yeah.
So it's a play on the words there, the goods economy.
Yeah.
Does Lububu fall into that or does it not?
I don't think so, because they have a kind of a very distinct category of choosing these things as goods.
For example, as you said, these figurines acrylic figurines stands or like plush toys, these kind of things.
They are kind of soft merchandise of of these themed goods, acg products.
So the bigger ips it's the products that come from those, and when you are and when we're talking about labubu, it is just um, an ip that created by this like toy shop.
It's a standalone thing.
It's not related to any game, it's not related to any comic or anything like.
Exactly got to be something that is from these kind of acg category and it's got to be something that all of these fans can relate to when they really like that kind of character or something.
So if I buy a figurine, for example from Black Myth Wukong, that can be accounted for one of the goods items.
But I think there is surveys doing that for a lot of these young people Gen Zers and Gen Alpha that the top item that they are purchasing is actually badges.
That in the goods market, the 股资 economy market Badges account for the largest share, at roughly 40 according to some of the surveys.
So badges are things that you buy at the goods shops and then you can just stick them on to.
I mean, they're the size of what like.
A little apple.
Okay.
Or even smaller.
They got smaller ones or even very, very big ones.
And then Velcro on the backside so you can stick it to a bag or a jacket or anywhere.
And that's what people call like kind of a Ita culture that can just decorate all of these things on your bag and your whole bag is becoming bad themed product.
Okay, so i bought my winter coat this year right, a very reasonably priced down jacket and in the beginning i thought it was faulty somehow, because the badge like the company name on the jacket the badge is attached by velcro and you can take it off.
So that's, that's the company name there, but you can take that off.
And i thought why would i take that off?
What would I put there in case?
Or instead?
And now I know exactly what you'd put there.
Your favorite badge from your favorite character from a comic book or video game, or something like that.
But this isn't this isn't new, though, is it?
I mean, I'm kind of surprised by this, because there have always been Chinese IPs that have been popular.
No.
Well, I think the goods concept has been around, especially for the anime games, ACG and comics sphere.
But what's really new this year is basically about?
Not only is it growing very fast according to some surveys, up 40 compared to 2023
And also one of the reasons is because a lot of the IPs that these young people are purchasing from is domestically produced.
Like the games, the cartoons, the comics that they are feeling attracted to are Chinese IPs.
But there have been Chinese-themed IPs in the past.
So what's different now?
Just there are more available or the quality is better?
They're resonating more or better with a younger audience?
Back then.
There are mostly just imported IPs or just these brands or cartoons that are really really popular among these fans.
And they produce some quite high-quality but maybe expensive products that led these people to buy.
And now we have more of these Chinese games, Chinese anime are also getting popular.
Genshin Impact is one example.
The award-winning game that is really, really popular in the field of goods and also badges.
And Identity V, that is another mobile game produced by a Chinese company.
Also, the mainly female-oriented game that's called Love in Deep Space.
It is also another... My friends love that game.
They buy a lot of figurines from these games.
What's that about?
It's a relationship.
It's kind of like... Yeah, you can have a relationship with the characters in the game.
Oh.
Your friends are loving that.
Yeah, so people are buying a lot of these badges and like plastic mahjong with fluid inside to make it just shiny and everything.
Oh, that's cute.
So this is part... I mean, I guess this is related.
This was big in 2025 too.
It could have been maybe one of the keywords today is the emotional...
Consumption.
Yeah, emotional consumption.
People are buying young people and anybody for that matter buying things that mean something to them.
I think this falls into that.
Yeah, I think so too.
No matter it's goods economy or even buying the toys like Labooboos sort of be part of the pleasing myself consumption pattern.
And actually, when I think about a lot of these goods, My daughter, they are purchasing a lot of the Nezha cards in the beginning of 2025, when Nezha 2 was really, really hit.
The collectibles?
Yes, and it's sort of an item for them to communicate and socialize with each other that...
They're gathered together and compare cars and exchange cars and to see which cars they have, like different ratings of these cars, which ones are the collectibles.
Other ones can be, you know, less valuable than those one S rating cars.
So they have this little circle and they sort of building communities and friendships building around this.
Yeah, it's the glue that might hold the friendships together for a certain period of time.
That's when we call it just goods economy.
It's not only because it is very popular and a lot of people are buying it.
It's because it is forming up a community where people can just talk and communicate together.
And I remember another huge trend is that a lot of these good shops is going into some actually declining shopping malls and making them like alive again, because people are just going to these shopping malls buy things and maybe even buy other food or something and make them, these supermarkets really, really popular.
In the theme of ACG.
That's the snowball effect, isn't it?
Because you take the goods economy and then you open a shop in a mall or a district or an area or whatever.
That had been on the downslope perhaps for a while and it helps to bring people back to that mall or back to that area.
That's really cool.
Yeah, big, big this year.
The quality of the IP is getting better and better in the country, and that is evidenced by the support of these shops and these things that you can buy in those shops.
All right, so for our next keyword, we're going to turn to the world of sports.
So that was... a football announcer from the Jiangsu Provincial City Football League.
And the Jiangsu Provincial City Football League was on the list of the hot 10 keywords for 2025.
Which is Suzhou.
I think, for those of us who keep an eye, for those of people who keep an eye on Chinese news, Suchao is definitely on their list, simply because just how popular it is, no matter offline or it's not only just among sports fans anymore
It's about everybody taking part in this City Provincial League, actually.
Suchao is basically this football league where cities within the province of Jiangsu competing with each other and somehow start to take off nationwide and even internationally on some level.
Yeah, it is a game that is from a regional football competition to a nationwide cultural and tourism phenomenon.
It was so cool.
We covered the story on Roundtable. when this league started.
And I remember saying on the show that day, oh, this is gonna explode with popularity.
And the reason I said that is because this is a provincial league where you have cities within that province playing against each other.
So the really cool thing that made it successful, in my opinion, is that number one.
You create that local competition right.
Yes.
Which probably already exists.
Especially in Jiangsu.
Oh, especially in Jiangsu?
You know, our city is better than your city and blah, blah, blah.
But then you take the pro athlete out of the equation for most of it, because most of these athletes in that league were people like students and business people and teachers and amateur players.
And it was so popular.
This is from the Global Times earlier this year.
I'm going to read to you just for a second.
When over 60000 sports fans filled the Nanjing Olympic Sports Center Stadium on Saturday night to watch a football match, it wasn't for the domestic top-tier Chinese Super League or a major international competition, but a match between Nanjing and Suzhou from the Jiangsu City Football League, a provincial amateur competition.
The record-setting attendance of 60396 spectators didn't just break the previous benchmark of the amateur league, often referred to as suchao by fans in the media.
It also set a new record for amateur football in the country over 60 000 people showed up to watch students and teachers and business people play soccer against each other.
How amazing is that?
Yeah, it feels like the community football, not something exactly for these hardcore and pro fans.
Yeah right, and that brings back to the, because i heard that a lot of people saying that it brings back the essence of football.
It's just a community that you can just share and enjoy the, the the thing that football can bring you.
It is the pure happiness of enjoy the sports.
It's basically the essence of any sports is that you can come together and either celebrate or, you know, getting really frustrated over a goal, and that's the spirit of you know sports.
I think too, the again to that point where it's not a pro league and therefore it makes it more relatable somehow to people.
I know that watching certain sports like if you watch pro golfers or pro hockey players or pro baseball players, pro anything they don't make mistakes that often.
Right.
Yeah.
Because they're the best in the world at what they do.
But when you watch amateurs do it, there's a little bit of joy in watching them play, where not every pass is perfect, not every shot is perfect.
And it kind of adds to the drama and the mystique and the allure of the event itself.
And also I think that's also one of the reasons why a lot of my friends who never watch any sports, they start to follow the Suzhou League as well, online.
In particular, I think over the course of the competing season, the live attendance surpassed over 2 million.
And so that means that is becoming a sort of a magnet of attracting visitors to different cities, because I believe the whole cities will be different for different matches.
And that allures people, not only from Jiangsu, maybe from overall neighboring provinces and regions, to go there.
It's that snowball effect, right, where the league can create something even bigger.
And for a lot of people you know your buddy might be playing or your cousin right or your high school friend or something, just because it's so local.
I love that.
That was another one on the list.
And now we turn to this one.
This one's really kind of cool.
This is where language captures our everyday emotions.
And we're not really talking about AI and economics here.
We're talking about basic versus not basic.
This is one of the hot words from the year.
And this is going to require a little bit of explanation.
I think exactly it actually comes from a fashion influencer that in her video for giving out styling advice she said for an outfit to look elevated and expensive, basic pieces should not be paired only with other basics.
And that quickly, you know, snowballing again into other jokes like my flight was cheap by my hotel.
My, my flight was basic or cheap, But my hotel was not so much, not very basic.
Or my apartment is very basic, but my decor not basic.
So they create this contrast.
If you're going to have one basic, don't make the other one basic.
If you got discount flight tickets, stay in a nicer hotel.
Yeah.
If you live in a smaller apartment, basic. make sure the interior is decorated well, not basic.
That's fun.
A lot of these things have the uh, the core idea of being relatable because uh, a lot of these phrases, for example, your my hotel is based or my my flight is basic and hotel is not basic.
It's.
It brings a little bit of like self-mocking humor, making fun of ourselves, but it is also showing a little bit tips to others.
So a lot of people are just creating other memes around this and to make it another popular phrase.
Yeah.
And another example that's quite, very interesting to me is that I think some people online, some netizens, post their ramen noodles and And their post says my ingredients are basic, you know, just some sausages and ramen.
But the plating is not.
It's sort of also pleasing yourself.
It comes down to the emotional consumption that we talked about before.
Yeah.
Or if you make ramen with I don't know lobster or some nice crab, then your noodles are basic but your ingredients are not.
Can we make our own sentences for this?
No.
Do you have anything here, Yuxuan, basic, not basic, for your own life?
I saw one that is really popular online, and I totally agree.
I am basic.
My girlfriend is not basic.
Yeah.
Okay, that can have twofold meanings.
One is that my girlfriend is really good.
The other one is she's very high maintenance.
Which one do you think?
I'll rescue you here.
You should.
Let's move on to.
Did you have one there, Feifei?
No, no.
All right.
Fair enough.
Let's move on.
So just quickly before we get.
I've only chosen one English word off of all of the possible choices, which we'll get to in just a sec.
But there's one last one from the Chinese list that I thought was kind of interesting.
It's pre-made or pre-fabricated.
What's that all about?
Well, it comes from the world of pre-made food, which means you know, yu zhi cai referred to pre-cooked, pre-packaged meals that only need heating.
There was a lot of debates about, you know, nutrition, transparency, food safety.
But also there is the pro side, would argue, is very efficient and also standardized, which also put the food safety on top of the list.
Okay.
But when I think we're snowballing into this yu zhi concept, pre-made concept, it becomes a metaphor for anything that feels mass produced, less authentic.
And it can be, for example, a post, a content, some content you saw online that feels like is sort of something out of an assembly line, instead of what the influencer or what the content creator really feels about.
So it can be a post that you share about your vacation.
It just feels very fabricated.
How can it be about your vacation?
Um, what would that look like?
Mostly still about like social media posts, for example, you can tag your location when you're posting something right, and then um you, some people just set their location tag in advance and then publish it later when they got back, or just um.
One very specific example is that like posting from Beijing but saying that you're actually in Yunnan and you actually have that location tag in Yunnan, but you've already just got back for probably a couple of months.
People do that all the time now.
That kind of annoys me.
I see my friends do that.
They'll say like, oh, here's, you know, me in Hong Kong or something.
And then I see that post and I text him.
I'm like, hey, dude, are you in Hong Kong?
Yeah, two weeks ago.
Yeah.
It's like, well, why didn't you just put it there two weeks ago?
Yeah.
And then I know and then maybe we can meet or something.
You know, I don't I don't get the point of this.
Yeah.
It's more like sometimes they just have no time to actually edit that social media post, but they want to share people.
Share with people that I am in this location or
Yeah, this kind of a pre made thing you can like.
Yes, they do.
It's just they're giving themselves time to perfect it, maybe.
Maybe that's part of it, which I understand that, too.
All right.
So here's the one word from the English world that I chose for us to chat quickly about today.
This was a shortlist candidate from Collins Dictionary, and the word is glazing.
Have you heard this word before?
Not really.
All right, so this comes from donuts, kind of.
You know, if you look at a donut on the top of the donut, like the pink or whatever sugary kind of cream thing, little heart, that's called the glaze.
So there's two different ways that you can use this.
One is human to human.
And if you are glazing somebody...
It's where you're giving them so many compliments, so much praise, because you want to perhaps gain some favor with that other person or some status or some sort of alignment.
It happens online a lot of the time, but it doesn't have to.
Here's an example.
If Yushun makes a mistake on the show and Feifei says like, oh, Yushun, that was a mistake.
And I say, hey.
I think Yushin did that on purpose because this guy, he's a radio master.
He's a podcast genius.
And if he's making a mistake, he's doing it on purpose.
Feifei, to teach you and me how to do it better.
And he can say, stop glazing me, bro.
The sugary topping.
Overflattering.
Overflattering because maybe I want Yuxin to like me.
Maybe I want him to be, I want to be in his good graces or something like that.
There's another kind of Chinese phrase that has this kind of same connotation.
Is that called Pengsha?
Ah, it's like praise you to the to a very high level, and then you may fall even harder.
Oh yeah, does it happen with artists?
It happens in the english world with artists.
So, for example, if you leave a comment online to your favorite singer and you say you are the greatest artist of all time and every piece of music you make is a flawless masterpiece, That's glazing.
They are not the greatest artist of all time, probably.
You see what I mean, right?
So that's one type.
The other type, and this is even more interesting, this is AI to human glazing.
Have you ever put a question into AI and asked, do you think this is a good idea?
Yeah, it will answer with, it's a very good idea.
It's well balanced.
It's very logic.
I've seen more.
I've seen, Steve, this might be the greatest podcast idea of all time.
And that is AI glazing.
And the problem with this and this is where it gets really interesting is that we are training these AI models like ChatGPT and like DeepSeek, right.
We're doing this through reinforcement learning from human feedback.
They call that RLJHF or something like that.
In simple terms, we reward the AI for responses that we like, and then we get mad if it gives us responses that we don't like.
So it learns, oh, I better give a positive response.
So we're creating this feedback loop, this positive feedback loop, and we're not doing ourselves any favors.
We are therefore responsible, creating our own laser, so to speak.
And then we get annoyed because we feel like you're just saying yes, you're just saying this is great, i want to hear the real opinion.
We get frustrated by that.
Yes exactly, it's like um, when we especially when we were trying to communicate with ai for an idea.
I think what we really want is the real feedback to really believe This idea.
Or based on your data driven I don't know algorithm or module gave me some of the very objective.
Give me the whole picture of whether this idea that I'm presupposing is good enough.
Tell me the truth.
Yeah, but AI is still learning.
You're amazing.
That's what it always tells us, right?
Really fun.
So those are some of the hot keywords from this year.
If you haven't used them in your own vocabulary, you've probably at least seen them online.
