AS the year draws to an end, we are looking at a new world. Britons have voted to leave the European Union, and Donald Trump, who was considered a dark horse in the US presidential election, is set to take over the White House.

This was a year of surprises every­where, including in China.

It started with China’s securities regulator suspending a new circuit-breaker system that failed just days after it was introduced, and ended with Hollywood actor Matt Damon fighting thousands of green Chi­nese monsters in the movie “Great Wall,” the largest-ever Sino-US co-production.

Perhaps apt to the changing world, the National Language Resources Monitoring and Research Center announced the “characters of the year” are gui (regulations) and bian (changes). For its part, Guangdong-based cultural journal Neweekly said its “character of the year” is shua (binge), reflecting the public’s in­creasing addiction to screens, online dramas, WeChat exchanges, online shopping and celebrity worship.

Shanghai Daily has looked back on 2016 and nominated some of the more noteworthy people, events and buzzwords.

People

Lang Ping and women’s volleyball

The 56-year-old coach of the Chinese women’s vol­leyball team was herself a gold medalist in the 1984 Los Angeles Games. This year the national women’s team, under her coaching, came from behind to win gold by defeating Serbia.

“Volleyball spirit” became a top-click word on vari­ous social media for days after the game, with replays viewed millions of times online. Lang became a national her o all over again, even though she was relatively unknown among the young generation.

Volleyball game became a popular national sport after China won its first Olympics gold medal in the 1970s. That standing was enhanced in 1984 when Lang and her teammates won gold a second time.

The game was not successfully commercialized to the degree that table tennis or soccer captured atten­tion, and it gradually lost popularity among younger Chinese.

The Rio Olympics changed all that. The event also catapulted player Zhu Ting to athletic stardom.

She won the Most Valuable Player award as top scorer with 179 points.

Fu Yuanhui

The 20-year-old swimmer shot to stardom at the 2016 Rio Olympics, not so much for winning a bronze medal as for her unabashed delight in competing. Her candid comments and theatrical facial expressions won her a mass following and revealed a personality rarely seen in Chinese athletes.

Among her comments:

“Only the devil knows what I have gone through.”

“It was my personal best and I am so happy!”

“I have used up all the prehistoric mystic energy.”

“Maybe my arm is too short.”

Videos of Fu’s interviews, with her endearingly goofy expressions, went viral during the Olympics, multiply­ing her Weibo following from half a million to more than six millions in just three days.

We Chinese are used to national athletes who show little personality on TV and invariably make the same poker-faced, humble remarks when talking about their achievements.

Fu was a refreshing change. Ne­tizens embraced her blunt, open excitement. Her comment about “using up all the mystic energy” was quoting from a popular TV fantasy drama popular among young people.

The word “ni shi liu” (mud-rock flow) came to be associated with Fu and become a top-click online. “Mud-rock flow” is a term used to describe people who are authentic and respect­able, but funky and different at the same time.

Papi Jiang

The 30-year-old graduate of Beijing’s Central Academy of Drama was the center of a groundbreaking auction earlier in the year, selling the exclusive rights to embed commercials in her homemade comic videos. An online cosmetics vendor paid 22 million yuan (US$3.19 mil­lion) for those rights.

The deal, as well as 12 million yuan invested in the Papi phenom­enon by venture capitalists, underscored how Internet sensations have become big business.

Papi, a Shanghai native, strikes a chord with millions of Chinese through her short videos. They are one-woman shows parody­ing the unlikeable, stereotyped characters we meet all the time or acting out the various dilemmas of everyday life.

In the video titled “Are you ready? It’s Spring Festival,” she played out a typical dialogue between an unmarried young woman and her numerous older female relatives during a Spring Festival get-together.

Many women have encountered the same questions Papi parodied in the video: “Have you got a boyfriend yet? How long have you dated him? Are you going to get married? Is he rich? What’s his family background like?”

In the video, Papi replies with a question: “When will the US enact gun-control laws?”

One of her aunties snorts: “That’s really none of your busi­ness.” And Papi replies: “And it’s none of your business whether I get married or not.”

Other videos were satires of bosses who give meaningless orders, playboys who utter insincere words and women who rudely intrude in other people’s lives.

Papi was later ordered by the State Administration of Press, Publication, Radio, Film and Television to remove videos that contained “swear words and insulting language.”

Swiss luxury brand Jaeger- LeCoultre recently used Papi in an advertisement, which infuri­ated netizens who thought she should remain above such crass commercialism.

• Controversies •

The Luo Yixiao incident

The 5-year-old girl with leukemia became a national sensation when her father Luo Er published a sad article online trying to raise funds for her treatment. The appeal was later revealed to be something of a stunt.

Before that, the father’s words about his dying daughter went viral, and a Shenzhen fi­nancial company said it would donate 1 yuan each time his article was reposted. Within five days, more than 2 million yuan was donated.

But resourceful netizens who dug up more information about the family found that Luo owned three apartments and was by no means poor. The hospital where his daughter was being treated disclosed that medical expense were mostly covered by insurance.

Overnight, sentiment about the family changed. Luo Er later announced that he would return the donation of anyone who felt deceived and that he would use part of any funds remaining to set up a foundation for leukemia patients.

The little girl died this week.

Alipay ‘hookers’ app

When Alipay, the payment arm of Alibaba Group, added the new social networking function Quanzi (circle) to its mobile app, it came under criticism for encouraging users to post scandalous photos for payment. The function was quickly removed.

The circle function was intended for intimate discussion groups linking strangers with similar interests. Users were encouraged to publish post­ings through the app, and those with a high credit rating on Alipay were allowed to give “tips” or payments to the postings they liked.

Among the discussion groups, two were controversial: “logs of schoolgirls” and “logs of white-collars.” Both groups allowed only female users to publish postings, while male users could make payments to postings they liked.

To get the money, many users posted obscene selfies with suggestive captions, leading to accusations that the platform was just a form of online prostitution.

Live broadcast and e-celebrities

Millions of Chinese have been paying real money to buy virtual cruises, flowers, Fer­raris and watches as gifts to their favorite live video-streaming bloggers. This system has been around for four years, but it really exploded in 2016, creating thousands of e-celebrities who screen themselves live as they sing, dance, cook, eat, apply makeup, get ready for bed, go shopping and throw parties.

The top live video streamers on the biggest sites, often in their early 20s, are said to be making about a million yuan a month.

China now has more than 300 companies that provide live streaming platforms for people who seem to have no threshold of embarrassment. Credit Suisse Group estimates the industry will top US$5 billion by the end of 2017.

Brakes on car-hailing

New regulations for the car-hailing busi­ness have come into effect in Shanghai, requiring drivers to have local residency permits and vehicles with local plates, among other rules.

Car-pooling services were expanding so rapidly and unsupervised in China that the central government earlier this year ordered regional and local authorities to impose regulations on the industry. The once “gray zone” took on black-and-white perimeters that varied according to jurisdiction.

Shanghai and Beijing were among the first cities to unveil regulations, both requiring local residency and plates, to limit the number of cars to be hailed by mobile apps.

According to Didi Chuxing, the largest car-pooling platform in China, fewer than 10,000 of its 410,000 drivers in Shang­hai have local residency permits, and even fewer qualify under the new rules. Consumers are already finding it more difficult to get a car through various hail­ing apps, and many freelance drivers have given up the business.

• Buzzwords •

Can you guess the meaning of the following paragraph?

“As the year of 2016 ends, I failed my xiao mubiao of making 100 million yuan, so I went to a good friend to borrow some money. He was in the middle of liao with a girl. I told him I needed the money quickly, otherwise I might have to resort to luo tiao. He was only interested in showing himself as lao siji and applying his taolu. I felt zui le and our youyi de xiaochuan ended. I went home and sat on the floor in the style of Ge You tang, thinking I am nobody but a chi gua qunzhong.”

Liao — ‘flirt’

Originally from Jiangxi Province dialect, the expressions liao mei (pick up a hot chick) and liao han (pick up a hot guy) became popular through a series of teeny-bopper romance dramas in which the male leads were adept at flirting with girls.

Xiao mubiao — ‘small target’

Wanda Group President Wang Jianlin said in an early interview that young entrepreneurs should think less and instead set themselves a small target of making 100 million yuan.

His advice became an ironic buzz­word online because most people wouldn’t consider 100 million yuan a small sum of money.

Luo tiao — ‘nude IOU’

Earlier in the month, about 10 giga­bytes of nude IOU pictures and videos were uploaded online, revealing private information and naked photos of more than 160 young women aged between 17 to 23, mostly female university students.

The students had borrowed between 1,000 yuan and 23,000 yuan at a weekly interest rate of between 15-100 percent. Instead of a regular IOU, these women were required to take naked selfies holding their ID cards as col­lateral on the loans.

Ge You tang — ‘Ge You collapses’

Ge You is one of the biggest come­dians in China, and a photo from his early career shows him sprawled casually in a chair. It went viral and came to symbolize hard-working people who wanted nothing more than to collapse and lie down after a hard day.

Chi gua qunzhong — ‘melon-eating commoners’

Netizens use this phrase to say that they are following what is happening without concern or comment. It has nothing to do with them; they are just eating melon as they observe.

Zui le — ‘drunk’

This term is used when there is no good word available to describe one’s feelings when faced with a misun­derstanding, a bizarre situation or a strange communication.

Lao siji — ‘experienced driver’

The phrase was originally used to describe veteran users of online forums but expanded to describe people who are experienced in a specific area. It is also often used to describe men who know a lot of taolu, or “common tricks.”

Youyi de xiaochuan — ‘little boat of friendship’

Coming from an online comic, this term is often used in the sentence: “The little boat of friendship has capsized.” It refers to the breakup between friends.