Slang 吐槽 Playful Criticism

Welcome to Speak Chinese Now. 我是李老师。 Today's lesson is a slang which is very popular. When I heard it, it was during COVID. So I'm going to share it with you. And 吐, 吐 is to spit out. It sounds terrible. 草, it's referring to a box looking, let's say, trough or groove. It looks like this. It can be for an animal feed or it can be for, you know, washing your hands, but it needs to be that kind of a shape. 吐槽, what does it mean? Does it mean you spit out? Yeah, you spit out the things it's not pleasing to you or is this factory to you? 吐槽, they used to be referring to just, you know, came from a Japanese type of show, right? I guess it's a lot of humor, light criticism. Now it's used for the Chinese slang, 吐槽. 吐槽, it's kind of, like I said, in English, it's hard to find a word for it. It's making fun of something or someone humorously, not in a mean way, not in a negative way. It can be, you know, you're positive, but you're talking about the things this factory disaffects you, not happy, you're not happy about. So I don't know if this, it's in your country, is there a certain slang about it? But here you just say 吐槽. There's another way, another one I thought about it, maybe English, this is bitching, but bitching is not good. It is more negative, meaning you're just complaining about something negatively, but 吐槽, it's humorous. So that's the difference. If you're not happy about something or politically, or let's say in the media, you can vent your dissatisfactory, or you can just express your feelings about it, but not in a kind of mean way, in a kind of a casual and humorous way. So you can say 吐槽. When I, during COVID actually, this gentleman's show, his name is Jiang Guangyu. He has a show, talk show. He talks so well. And he hits on all the important news, and in a kind of humorous way, he break it down. He also, you know, he used to be, when he was back in China, I think he was a, it was an actor. I've never seen his movie before, but went online and checked him out. He's really a good, let's say, talk show host, but it's kind of a, in a way, 吐槽, bringing the highlight of the news to you in a kind of, in a way, analytic and also humorous way, right? I don't know if his channel is in English, but nowadays, you can just, you know, find him. I think his English name is Ryan, R-Y-A-N. Then you find his site, and it's about news. Or you can type his English name, find him, and watch some of his episodes. It's kind of funny. Then, I don't know, nowadays, they can have auto-translation. If he says in Chinese, I don't know if it will translate into English. Maybe it's a good way to practice listening skills. Give him a try, right? So, we're going to move to the right-hand side, the actual meaning nowadays, what people use it for. I think earlier, I said most of them basically to dispel your dissatisfactory in a humorous way, in a light way, and also sarcastically, meaning you're saying something, but you are actually bringing the criticism, right, in a kind of humorous way. You're maybe smiling, but you're talking about certain things, right? All right, 吐槽, let's say it together, 吐槽. Have you ever 吐槽ed before? I'm sure you have. We'll try not to. Well, we'll try to, but not in a mean way. I guess it's a good thing to do, right? Let's say one more time, 吐槽. You can say, Jiang Guangyu, Jiang Guangyu, the show, 常常吐槽, 吐槽, or he brings the highlight of the news in a kind of an analytic and funny way. His show really carried me through COVID. You know, during COVID, you really have nowhere to go. I think during that time, there were many Chinese-American bloggers or Chinese-Canadian bloggers who got online. They start doing quite a bit of like a talk show or let's say a blog show, blogger, became blogger. But anyway, it was good. Go online. Sometimes I run into, you know, my Chinese friends who live in America, they introduce certain sites to me. And I'm like, yeah, I watched it. It's really good, right? There's another one, Zhang Tianliang. He talks about, you know, he's an academic, he's an academic. But anyway, he's a professor from Feitian University or college. He talks about a whole lot of, you know, news-related topics as well. But he does not 吐槽 much. He does not give, he just says the way it is, which I really like his show as well. Okay. I think that's all I have a practice. You know, if someone is saying something jokingly, but in a way it's criticism, you can say, 你在吐槽嗎? Are you 吐槽? Use 吐槽 as kind of in a way to describe people's certain behavior. Right. Well, that's all I have today. 謝謝。下次見。 I have many other videos. Please keep watching, keep learning Chinese. Bye for now.