搭子dā zi

Activity buddy

zhǎo gè fàn dā zi!找个饭搭子！Looking for a meal buddy!

搭子 is a buddy for one thing: someone you eat lunch with, go to the gym with or travel with, and not much more. You put the activity in front: 饭搭子, 健身搭子, 旅游搭子.

Took off: 2023
Started in: Xiaohongshu and Weibo posts
Today: Now everyday Chinese

What it means

A 搭子 is not quite a friend. You share an activity, split costs and keep each other company, and you do not have to share your life. Many people like it for that reason: it takes little time and comes with few obligations.

The word takes any activity. 学习搭子 is a study buddy, 摸鱼搭子 a colleague you slack off with at work, and 奶茶搭子 someone to split a buy-one-get-one milk tea deal with.

How people use it

It is an everyday word now, in speech too. People post requests for one on Xiaohongshu with the activity, the time and the city. For a deeper tie, the plain words are still 朋友, “friend”, and 伙伴, “partner”.

亮亮

下个月我想去成都玩
xià gè yuè wǒ xiǎng qù chéng dū wán
I want to go to Chengdu next month.
我也想去！
wǒ yě xiǎng qù!
Me too!
那我们当旅游搭子吧，酒店一起订
nà wǒ men dāng lǚ yóu dā zi ba, jiǔ diàn yì qǐ dìng
Let’s be travel buddies, then. We can book the hotel together.
好，我负责找好吃的
hǎo, wǒ fù zé zhǎo hǎo chī de
Deal. I’ll find the good food.

More examples

公司附近有没有饭搭子？
gōng sī fù jìn yǒu méi yǒu fàn dā zi?
Anyone near the office want to be my lunch buddy?
我找到了一个健身搭子，每周一起去三次。
wǒ zhǎo dào le yí gè jiàn shēn dā zi, měi zhōu yì qǐ qù sān cì.
I found a gym buddy. We go together three times a week.

For the word itself and how to reply to it, see 搭子 in the slang dictionary.

Where it came from

搭子 may come from Wu dialect. The 2007 上海话大词典, a large dictionary of the Shanghai dialect, defines it as a person you play cards with, and by extension a partner, according to a 2023 article by DT Finance.

In spring 2023, posts about finding a 搭子 spread on Xiaohongshu and Weibo. By April, the Xiaohongshu topic 新型社交关系搭子, “a new kind of social relationship: 搭子”, had almost 20 million reads. In a survey in the same article, more than half of the 1,431 people who answered had at least one 搭子, most often a meal buddy.

In December 2023, the magazine 咬文嚼字 put 搭子 on its list of the ten most popular phrases of the year.

The original. Posts on Xiaohongshu under the topic 新型社交关系搭子, in which people describe their meal, gym and study buddies or look for new ones. DT Finance’s article, reprinted by Jiemian, cites the topic. Jiemian (in Chinese)