In what is a yearly tradition now, the major search engines have released their top ten lists of searches, with some interesting ones coming from Google China. Now, keep in mind that the list below are from more educated and English-speaking China searchers (not counting the fact that most Chinese people use Baidu), but nonetheless provide some insight into China’s net generation.

From Sina Tech, the top ten fastest growing searches:

  1. 陈冠希
  2. 奥运会开幕式
  3. 四川地震
  4. 不合格奶粉名单
  5. 艳照门
  6. 画皮
  7. 赤裸特工f.b.i.
  8. 国足欢迎你
  9. 刘翔退赛
  10. 神七

The one I personally like the most is the humorous spoof on the “Beijing Welcomes You (北京欢迎你)” Youtube video shown below:

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The Wall Street Journal’s China Journal also has some of the hottest new vocabulary for those who have a real interest in the current/modern net culture of China:

New vocabulary

  1. Shanzhai: Originally referred to the mountain strongholds of bandits. Now, the term refers to all manner of knock-off, substandard or improvised goods, such as these makeshift vehicles.
  2. 囧 : This is an ancient Chinese character, pronounced jiong, used to mean “light shining through a window” several thousand years ago (kind of what the character itself looks like), among other things. Recently it has found a new life among Chinese youth as an emoticon to express a bad mood, since it also looks like a face crying out in a pictographic version of Edvard Munch’s “The Scream.”
  3. Very yellow, very violent: The year’s first Internet catchphrase came from a CCTV interview with a 13-year-old girl, part of a program on the government’s new regulations on Internet censorship. Netizens who believed the girl had been coached by CCTV into making the statement lashed out against her, launching a human flesh search engine and numerous parodies.
  4. Psoas Muscle: Another musical spoof regarding the Chinese soccer, this one aimed at the women’s team. It comes from one theory about the poor showing of the Chinese team: that it was due to the players’ relatively weak lower back muscles.
  5. Three push-ups: Another Internet catchphrase, this one derived from an unconvincing alibi used in the death of a high school student.
  6. 槑: This character, pronounced mei, is actually a variant of the word for plum blossom. But it also happens to look like a double version of the character 呆 (dai), which means silly or stupid. Hence 槑 now means “very silly or very stupid.”
  7. Getting some soy sauce: Another catchphrase that originated with a man on the street’s don’t-bother-me response to an intrusive reporter.
  8. Pick-up artist subculture: Men who see themselves as modern-day Don Juans, seducing women who are often married, sometimes targeting them for their money.
  9. Phoenix man: Refers to a man who grew up poor and in the countryside, but thanks to their efforts and the support of others, is able to move to a big city and become successful. Phoenix men often hope to marry city girls but often encounter problems resulting from their different cultural backgrounds and habits.
  10. Don’t Be Too CNN: This phrase emerged as a viral response to foreign media coverage of the protests in Tibet, interpreted by many Chinese as biased and inaccurate. A variant of the existing phrase “don’t be too CCTV,” which meant something more along the lines of “don’t be so serious.”