Modern Chinese Dating Slang Decoded: 11 Terms for Every Stage of Being Played (钓鱼, 海王, 渣男 & More)

Chinese has a precise, often savage word for every stage of being messed around with romantically. Where English reaches for vague phrases like "he's a player" or "we're talking," Mandarin internet slang has a whole taxonomy — an entire ecosystem built, hilariously, around fishing. Below are 11 of the most-used modern dating terms, grouped by how they fit together, each with characters, pinyin, meaning, origin, and example sentences.

A quick note before the fun: a couple of these terms (绿茶, 渣女) are gendered and have been fairly criticized as sexist. We flag that where it matters — knowing a word isn't the same as endorsing how it's used.

The fishing metaphor family

The single richest vein of Chinese dating slang imagines romance as an angling operation: you cast a line, you keep a pond, and the most prolific player is basically Aquaman.

钓鱼 (diào yú) — "fishing"

Literal: to fish. Meaning: baiting someone into showing romantic interest — a flattering selfie, an ambiguous late-night text, a hint dropped to see who bites. The people who bite become the "fish."

钓鱼 started as general internet slang for "trolling / baiting" (posting provocative content to get a reaction), well established on forums since the early 2010s. The romantic sense rode in later on the back of the 养鱼/海王 cluster below.

• 他半夜发那种朋友圈，就是在钓鱼。 — "Posting stuff like that on WeChat Moments at midnight — he's just fishing [for attention]."

养鱼 (yǎng yú) — "raising fish"

Literal: to farm fish. Meaning: keeping several romantic prospects on the hook at once — never committing, never rejecting, stringing multiple admirers along in parallel. The pool of admirers is a 鱼塘 (yú táng, "fish pond").

The imagery is commonly traced to the 2014 hit drama Boss & Me (杉杉来了), whose domineering-CEO lead tells an admirer she's "a fish in my pond" — a line that became a viral meme. The dating sense peaked around 2018–2019.

• 他同时跟三个女生暧昧，纯纯在养鱼。 — "He's flirting with three girls at once — straight-up raising fish."

海王 / 海后 (hǎi wáng / hǎi hòu) — "sea king / sea queen"

Literal: Sea King / Sea Queen. Meaning: the master angler — a player (海王 = male, 海后 = female) with "someone in every sea," juggling many ambiguous relationships at once. The owner of the 鱼塘.

Here's the joke: 海王 is the standard Chinese name for the DC superhero Aquaman, who commands all the creatures of the sea. A player has as many romantic prospects as Aquaman has fish. The meme is usually credited to a viral 2018–2019 clip — "I thought I'd swum into his fish pond… turns out he's a Sea King" — landing right after the 2018 Aquaman film. 海后 is the later female version.

• 别理他，那种海王同时撩十几个。 — "Ignore him — that kind of Sea King is flirting with a dozen people at once."

The "bad partner" archetypes

If the fishing family describes behavior, this set names the person — the umbrella insult and its specialized subtypes.

渣男 / 渣女 (zhā nán / zhā nǚ) — "scummy man / woman"

Literal: dregs/scum man / woman (渣 = residue). Meaning: a terrible partner — cheating, lying, playing with feelings and discarding people. The umbrella term that 海王 and 中央空调 are specific types of.

渣男 has meant "morally worthless man" since at least the early 2010s. The 渣女 counterpart and the whole cluster exploded in early 2019 via a viral rhyming Douyin line tying hairstyles to bad-partner archetypes. (The 渣女 label draws the same sexism criticism as 绿茶 — worth noting.)

• 他劈腿好几次了，就是个渣男。 — "He's cheated several times — he's just a scumbag."

中央空调 (zhōng yāng kōng tiáo) — "central air conditioning"

Literal: central AC. Meaning: someone (stereotypically male) who is warm, attentive, and flirty toward everyone, so nobody can tell if they're special. Like central air, they heat the whole building, not just one room.

It's a pun-extension of 暖男 (nuǎn nán, "warm guy," the ideal caring boyfriend): if a 暖男 warms one person, a 中央空调 warms everyone. Commonly dated to around 2015. It overlaps with PUA-style engineered ambiguity — the difference from a 海王 is that a 中央空调 isn't necessarily collecting partners, just indiscriminately warm.

• 我以为他喜欢我，结果他是中央空调。 — "I thought he liked me — turns out he's just central AC."

绿茶 (lǜ chá) — "green tea"

Literal: green tea (full form 绿茶婊, "green-tea b*tch"). Meaning: someone who performs sweet, innocent, helpless purity on the surface while calculating underneath. About the performance of innocence to get what she wants.

Traced to a March 2013 Weibo post and supercharged by a 2013 celebrity scandal, after which 绿茶婊 went viral; the softer short form 绿茶 came later. Heads up: this is a widely criticized, gendered slur — include it for comprehension, but it's the kind of label people increasingly push back on.

• 她在男生面前装可怜，太绿茶了。 — "She plays the poor helpless card in front of guys — so green-tea."

The "victim" roles

Every player needs someone to play. Two terms name the person on the losing end.

备胎 (bèi tāi) — "spare tire"

Literal: a car's spare tire. Meaning: a backup, second-choice partner kept in reserve "just in case." Their attention is enjoyed, but they're not the real goal.

A direct, stable metaphor — you carry a spare in case the main tire fails — in wide use since the early 2010s. Usually sympathetic toward the 备胎 and critical of whoever's keeping them.

• 我不想再当他的备胎了。 — "I don't want to be his spare tire anymore."

舔狗 (tiǎn gǒu) — "licking dog" / simp

Literal: licking dog. Meaning: someone who debases themselves chasing a person who plainly isn't interested — endless gifts, attention, and money, with no self-respect and no reciprocation. The English "simp."

Commonly attributed to Baidu Tieba around 2016, spreading widely by 2018–2019 with the copypasta "舔狗舔到最后一无所有" — "simp to the very end and you're left with nothing." People often call themselves 舔狗, ruefully.

• 你天天给她买东西，别当舔狗了。 — "You buy her stuff every day — stop being a simp."

The arena, and the emotional state

Two last terms: the zone all of the above happens in, and what happens to your brain when you fall.

暧昧 (ài mèi) — "ambiguity" / the talking stage

Literal: ambiguous, hazy. Meaning: the undefined "more than friends, not yet together" phase — mutual interest and tension with no label. The Chinese equivalent of "the talking stage."

Unlike the rest of this list, 暧昧 isn't slang at all — it's a standard dictionary word, and the romantic sense is neutral and mainstream. It's the shared arena the 养鱼, 中央空调, and 海王 all operate in.

• 我们暧昧了三个月，还没在一起。 — "We've been in that ambiguous stage for three months and still aren't together."

恋爱脑 (liàn'ài nǎo) — "love brain"

Literal: love brain. Meaning: someone whose judgment switches off in relationships — pouring all their energy, priorities, and common sense into a partner, sacrificing career and friends for love.

A homegrown internet coinage with no single origin, rising sharply since around 2020–2021 in relationship discourse and drama commentary. It's the opposite pole from the detached 佛系 ("Buddhist-style") attitude — one is all-consuming, the other refuses to care.

• 她为了男朋友辞职搬家，太恋爱脑了。 — "She quit her job and moved for her boyfriend — total love-brain."

The whole map, in one breath

Put together, the vocabulary tells a small story: in the 暧昧 zone, a 海王 goes 钓鱼, 养鱼 in their 鱼塘, and treats admirers as 备胎. The indiscriminately warm ones are 中央空调; the calculatedly innocent ones are 绿茶; the genuinely awful ones are just 渣男 / 渣女. The people who lose are the 舔狗 — especially if they're 恋爱脑 enough to keep going. It's a precise, funny, slightly ruthless little dictionary of modern love — and now you can read the comments section like a native.

Want more living Chinese? Browse our full Chinese internet slang dictionary for the terms Gen Z actually uses online.