保温杯里泡枸杞
What Does 保温杯里泡枸杞 Mean?
The image of a middle-aged man steeping wolfberries (goji berries) in a thermos flask became the definitive symbol of China's 'middle-age crisis' meme wave. Emerging around 2017, it captures the moment you stop partying and start worrying about your kidneys. Young and not-so-young Chinese use it to mock themselves for adopting the health-obsessed, low-key lifestyle of their parents' generation — trading nightclubs for herbal tea and ambition for survival.
Origin Story
In 2017, a photograph circulated online that stopped Chinese netizens in their tracks: Pu Shu, the iconic rock musician whose songs had been the soundtrack of youthful rebellion for a generation, was spotted backstage clutching not a guitar or a cigarette — but a thermos flask. Inside? Wolfberries steeped in hot water, a traditional Chinese remedy for kidney health and aging bodies. The image was jarring precisely because Pu Shu had spent decades embodying everything a thermos was not: wild, untamed, indifferent to convention. A viral essay unpacking the moment — with the sentiment that rock and roll was a youthful illusion and the thermos was everyone's true destiny — crystallized what millions of aging millennials were already feeling. The wolfberry thermos became shorthand for the quiet, almost embarrassed transition from youthful intensity to middle-aged maintenance. On Zhihu, users began cataloguing their own "thermos moments": the first time they chose sleep over partying, the first health supplement they bought unironically, the first morning they could not function without hot water. The wolfberry — a humble red berry long cherished in Traditional Chinese Medicine for nourishing the liver and kidneys — had become an unlikely cultural icon of reluctant, slightly sheepish adulthood.
Cultural Context
Around 2017, a viral essay described rock star Pu Shu carrying a thermos of wolfberry tea backstage, shocking fans who remembered him as the voice of rebellious youth. The image crystallized anxieties around aging, overwork, and the quiet surrender of the '996' generation, for whom traditional Chinese health remedies became ironic badges of exhausted adulthood.
Similar Expressions in English
佛系666洪荒之力
How Is It Used?
Chinese Explanation (中文解释)
保温杯里泡枸杞是中年的自嘲梗，源自黑豹乐队鼓手赵明义的保温杯事件。用保温杯泡枸杞象征人到中年开始养生、青春不再的现实，在中年群体中引起强烈共鸣。