Last week, Chinese search engine giant Baidu released their end of year lists, revealing what netizens in the country were (harmoniously) looking for in 2015. In a sign of just how prized the information is by data miners, Baidu broke the results down into numerous categories (including searches by the post-00 generation for example), but we've summarised some of the more interesting results below:
News stories
The top three news items searched for in 2015 according to Baidu were ‘2015 parade’ (referring to the V Day march of 12,000 troops and various weaponry down the Avenue of Eternal Peace in Beijing), ‘Tianjin explosions’ and ‘Second child policy’. It wasn’t all serious stuff though, sitting pretty at number four is the Sanlitun Uniqlo sex tape incident.
Language
'Duang' the term that originated from a Jackie Chan-starring shampoo advertisement, was apparently the hottest slang term among netizens over the past year, closely followed by 车震 chēzhèn (literally ‘car quake’ and used to describe people having sex in their vehicles) and 萌萌哒 méngméngdā (meaning ‘cutesy’).
Also of note is ‘Green Tea Bitch’ (绿茶婊 lǜchá biǎo) at number eight, a term that initially emerged two years ago to describe girls who seem sweet and innocent but are actually calculating and manipulative, and still appears to be going strong.
People
Bi Fujian, the CCTV presenter who was the subject of a leaked viral video that showed him adapting the words of a revolutionary song to criticise Chairman Mao, was the most searched for person on Baidu last year. In at number two is Shanghai-based choreographer Jin Xing, also the host of her own TV show and country’s first public transsexual.
And in third was Wang Sicong, the son of China’s richest man and an individual who has made headlines this year for buying two Apple Watches for his dog, blowing 200,000RMB on drinks in one night and just generally being an all-round good guy.
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