谷子gǔ zi

Merch (from English “goods”)

yòu chī gǔ le!又吃谷了！Bought more merch!

谷子 is fan slang for merchandise from anime, comics and games: badges, cards, acrylic stands, keychains. It sounds like English “goods”, and its everyday meaning is “millet”.

Took off: 2024
Started in: Anime and game fans
Today: Current

What it means

The word is a sound loan: 谷子 (gǔ zi) is close to “goods”. Its normal meaning is “millet” or “grain”, so fans built a set of food jokes around it.

To buy merch is 吃谷, “to eat grain”. A shop that sells it is a 谷子店. A badge is a 吧唧, also from English, “badge”. The fan scene as a whole is the 谷圈, the “goods circle”.

How people use it

It is current, and no longer only fan slang: 吃谷 and 谷子店 appear in malls, news reports and ordinary chats.

Many items come out in small runs, so fans trade and resell them. The Paper cites media reports of a single anime badge that sold for 72,000 yuan in an auction on a resale app.

灯灯

你包上这些吧唧是谁啊？
nǐ bāo shang zhè xiē bā jī shì shéi a?
Who’s on all these badges on your bag?
我最喜欢的角色
wǒ zuì xǐ huan de jué sè
My favorite character.
你买了多少谷子了？
nǐ mǎi le duō shǎo gǔ zi le?
How much merch have you bought by now?
不敢算……这个月又吃谷了
bù gǎn suàn…… zhè gè yuè yòu chī gǔ le
I don’t dare count. I bought more again this month.

More examples

这个月工资都拿去吃谷了。
zhè gè yuè gōng zī dōu ná qù chī gǔ le.
This month’s pay all went on merch.
商场里新开了一家谷子店，周末去看看？
shāng chǎng lǐ xīn kāi le yì jiā gǔ zi diàn, zhōu mò qù kàn kan?
A merch shop just opened in the mall. Want to look this weekend?

Where it came from

The word started among anime and game fans. In 2024 it reached everyone else: 谷子店 opened in the shopping streets of big cities, and The Paper counted 3.38 billion views for the 谷子 topic on Xiaohongshu by November 2024.

The business press then named the whole trade 谷子经济, the “goods economy”. The Paper and the Shanghai Youth Research Center put 谷子 on their list of youth words of 2024, and 咬文嚼字 put it on its list of the ten most popular phrases of 2025.

The original. There is no single image. The typical post is a photo of a fan’s new badges and cards. The Paper explained the word and the trade in November 2024. The Paper (in Chinese)