打call
What Does 打call Mean?
From Japanese concert culture where fans shout specific calls and responses during performances. Emerging around 2018, in China it escaped fan culture to mean actively cheering for, supporting, or endorsing anything. You can 打call for a friend's project, a restaurant you like, a policy you support, or a sports team. The concert origin gives it a communal, enthusiastic quality — 打call implies visible, vocal support, not just passive agreement.
Origin Story
'打call' traveled from Japanese concert halls to Chinese everyday speech around 2018, passing through idol fan culture before achieving general usage. The origin in Japanese wotagei — the synchronized cheers and chants fans perform at idol concerts — gave the term a specific energy: 打call was not passive appreciation but active, embodied, communal support. The code-switching construction (Chinese verb 打 plus English 'call') signaled cosmopolitan awareness while remaining grammatically accessible. The term's escape from fan culture into general usage was rapid: by 2018, people were 打call for friends' projects, favorite restaurants, preferred policies, and sports teams, the original concert context largely forgotten. This trajectory — from specific subculture to general vocabulary — repeated a pattern observable across Chinese internet language, where fandom communities function as linguistic innovation laboratories whose creations eventually achieve mainstream adoption. The term's success reflected a broader cultural embrace of visible, vocal support as a social good — 打call implied you weren't just privately fond of something but willing to make noise about it publicly.
Cultural Context
The journey from Japanese concert halls to Chinese everyday speech passed through idol fan culture and then exploded onto general social media. 打call became particularly common during the reality TV idol competition era (2018-2021) when voting and supporting idols was called 打call. It then broadened to any enthusiastic public support. The term originated and spread primarily on Weibo.
Similar Expressions in English
Like 'to root for,' 'to stan,' 'to give props to,' or 'to hype up.' More active and vocal than simply liking something — 打call implies you're actively making noise in someone's support.
How Is It Used?
Chinese Explanation (中文解释)
来自日本演唱会文化，粉丝在演唱会上大声呼喊配合节拍，后泛指为某人或某事积极支持、加油打气。