电子榨菜diàn zǐ zhà cài

Electronic pickles (shows to eat with)

wǒ de diàn zǐ zhà cài ne?我的电子榨菜呢？Where’s my electronic pickle?

电子榨菜, “electronic pickles”, means the videos or shows you put on while you eat. 榨菜 is the salty pickle that people eat with plain rice, and the show plays the same part in the meal.

Took off: 2022
Started in: Weibo and Douban
Today: Now everyday Chinese

What it means

榨菜 is a cheap, salty pickle that makes plain rice or porridge easier to eat. 电子 means “electronic”. The joke is that a video now does the job of the side dish: it is what makes the meal 下饭, “good with rice”.

A good 电子榨菜 is easy to follow, and often you have seen it before, so you can look down at your bowl and not miss anything. Old sitcoms and dramas are the usual choices.

How people use it

It is now everyday Chinese. You ask friends for theirs when you are tired of your own, and you can call any show 电子榨菜 to say you only watch it to eat.

Writers also use it as a complaint. Jiemian used it in 2022 for short videos that sum up a whole film in a few minutes and lose everything except the plot.

灯灯

吃饭的时候看什么好？推荐一下
chī fàn de shí hou kàn shén me hǎo? tuī jiàn yí xià
What should I watch while I eat? Any ideas?
我的电子榨菜是猫的视频
wǒ de diàn zǐ zhà cài shì māo de shì pín
My electronic pickles are cat videos.
不行，我看猫会忘了吃饭
bù xíng, wǒ kàn māo huì wàng le chī fàn
No good. With cats, I forget to eat.
那就看你看过十遍的剧
nà jiù kàn nǐ kàn guò shí biàn de jù
Then watch a show you’ve seen ten times.

More examples

吃饭的时候没有电子榨菜，我吃不下。
chī fàn de shí hou méi yǒu diàn zǐ zhà cài, wǒ chī bu xià.
I can’t eat without my electronic pickles.
我十年的电子榨菜都是同一部剧。
wǒ shí nián de diàn zǐ zhà cài dōu shì tóng yí bù jù.
My electronic pickle has been the same show for ten years.

For the word itself and how to reply to it, see 电子榨菜 in the slang dictionary.

Where it came from

Watching something at meals is old; the name is from 2022. In August 2022 the hashtag #甄嬛传和武林外传是电子榨菜#, “Empresses in the Palace and My Own Swordsman are electronic pickles”, reached Weibo’s trending list, Huxiu reported. That November a Douban group for swapping recommendations passed ten thousand members in less than a month.

A ranking in the same Huxiu article, built from Xiaohongshu comments, found that over half of the favorites were TV dramas, over a third were sitcoms such as My Own Swordsman and Friends, and about a tenth were cartoons such as Crayon Shin-chan.

China’s National Language Resources Monitoring and Research Center and other groups put 电子榨菜 on their list of the popular phrases of 2022.

The original. There is no single image. The typical scene is a bowl of rice or noodles in front of a phone or laptop playing an old sitcom. Huxiu’s 2022 article lists the favorite shows. Huxiu (in Chinese)