老鼠仓 rat trading
The term has recently come into the spotlight as some mainland brokers were believed to have made illegal profits by conducting so-called “rat trading” or a kind of scalping scheme in the stock market by cheating their clients.
动车组 bullet train
Bullet trains, with bullet-shaped locomotives, are designed based on aerodynamic theories, allowing the train to run at a high speed. China launched its first batch of homemade bullet trains on April 18, which can run at 200 kilometers per hour.
玉米虫 domain investor
This term, literally“corn worm”, refers to people who earn money by registering valuable Internet domains. A netizen reportedly sold www.google.cn to the search engine giant for more than US$1 million. The pronunciation of “corn” is similar to “domain” in Chinese.
砸星运动 star-bashing campaign
After the father of an Andy Lau fan committed suicide in Hong Kong early this year, some young people on the Chinese mainland smashed CDs and tore down posters of pop stars in an attempt to reason with infatuated fans.
双核家庭 dual-core family
This refers to a family where both husband and wife are only children or the single “core” of their respective families before they got married. The new family, of course, has two “cores” as neither of the couple knows how to behave not as a“cores”in a family.
大小人 kidult
The Chinese term which translates literally “adult-aged child” derives from the English word “kidult”, a portmanteau of “kid” and “adult”. The term refers to middleaged people who refuse to be denied the freedom and pleasure of youth by doing or buying things designed for children.
空中飞人 frequent flyer
This Chinese term, “man flying in the sky”, is sometimes used to refer to trapeze artists. But here it refers to frequent plane travelers.
鸡仔文学 Chick lit
This Chinese phrase is a translation of the English term “Chick lit”, which refers to the kind of fiction created for young women, particularly single, working women in their twenties and thirties.
夜店 night entertainment venue
It refers to the discotheques, karaoke bars, cafes and video arcades that operate from evening to early the next morning. In some special contexts, it can also refer to illegal sex service shops.
