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Burned-out youth (tangping & neijuan)
46
phrases
Wage-slave life (996)
11
This slang is the language of China's exhausted young workers—the self-mocking 'niúmǎ' (beasts of burden) grinding through 996 and 007 schedules for pay that never catches up. Behind the jokes is an 'employment ice age': graduates fire off thousands of applications for a handful of interviews, and rent outruns wages. Their parents fought to climb up; this generation just fights not to fall down. So they laugh instead—'我不是在上班，我是头牛马在还债'（I'm not working, I'm a beast of burden paying off debt）, '下班了还是一身班味，洗都洗不掉'（off the clock but still reeking of the office）, '我已经精神离职了，就差人事没通知'（mentally I quit ages ago, HR just hasn't been told）. Dark, funny, painfully honest—how young people survive one bubble tea and one bout of slacking at a time.
Lying flat (45-degree)
12
This set captures the exhaustion of China's young generation. After years of brutal over-competition (内卷) for shrinking rewards, many are stepping off the treadmill: "lying flat" (躺平) and "letting it rot" (摆烂) mean refusing to keep grinding — 不卷了，我选择躺平，爱谁谁. The backdrop matters: the old promise that hard work and rising home prices would pay off has faded, and upward paths narrowed. So you get the stuck middle — 卷又卷不动，躺又躺不平，标准的45度青年 — too tired to compete, too broke to rest, dreaming of 上岸 or 润. Resigned, darkly funny, instantly familiar.
Mortgage & marriage pressure
11
This set is the money-property-marriage exhaustion of China's young people. After the property boom faded, many households were left carrying mortgages on flats that no longer rise in value — and marriage got tangled into it, because 'no apartment, no marriage' and sky-high 彩礼 still set the price of a life together. So they joke '首付掏空六个钱包，我这辈子算是卖给银行了' (the down payment drained all six family wallets, I've sold my life to the bank), '房奴不敢辞职，断供比失业还可怕' (mortgage slaves daren't quit — missing a payment scares us more than losing the job), and '没房就别谈结婚，丈母娘的刚需我真给不起' (no flat, no marriage talk — the mother-in-law's must-have is one I honestly can't afford). It's wry and half-resigned: 不是不想结，是真的结不起 — not that they don't want love, they just can't afford it.
Mental burnout (emo)
12
This slang set captures 精神内耗 — the endless inner friction that wears young people in China out from the inside, not from any one fight. Overworked interns and 'fragile' fresh grads post these lines at 2 a.m.: 卷又卷不动，躺又躺不平 ('can't grind harder, can't lie flat either'), or 我emo了，别理我，让我自己待会儿. With upward mobility frozen and their parents' anxiety passed straight down, it's less about weakness than quietly carrying a whole society's stress.
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中文