咸鱼

A 'salted fish' is someone who has completely given up on ambition and is just drifting through life — think of a limp, preserved fish going nowhere. Used as cheerful self-deprecation, people call themselves 咸鱼 to signal they've opted out of hustle culture. The phrase plays on the idiom 咸鱼翻身 (a salted fish flips over — meaning a hopeless case makes a comeback), but here the fish never flips. It's apathy worn as a badge of honor.

Against the backdrop of China's grueling '996' work culture (9am–9pm, 6 days a week) and skyrocketing housing prices, many young people felt the rewards of hard work were out of reach. Embracing the 咸鱼 identity was a way to cope — and to mock the pressure to endlessly strive. It preceded and overlapped with the 躺平 (lying flat) movement of 2021.

咸鱼指毫无上进心、得过且过、躺平摆烂的人，自嘲词，源于"咸鱼翻身"。