The phrase sweeping the Chinese-speaking world, originated from Taiwanese DPP legislator Wang Shijian's quote: “从从容容、游刃有余，匆匆忙忙、连滚带爬” (calm and collected, effortless and skillful; hurried and flustered, scrambling and tumbling), has been selected as one of the 2025 Top 10 Buzzwords by ‘Yao Wen Jiao Zi’ magazine.
According to The Paper, on the 2nd, Shanghai Culture Publishing House released the 2025 edition of ‘Yao Wen Jiao Zi’ Top 10 Buzzwords. Among the selected phrases were such terms as “Su Chao”, “Gu Zi”, and “Living Person Feel”, as well as “calm and collected, effortless and skillful; hurried and flustered, scrambling and tumbling.”
Chief Editor of ‘Yao Wen Jiao Zi’ Huang Anjing stated that the editorial team consistently maintains a “dual-standard” approach, upholding both sociological and linguistic selection criteria.
The editorial team believes that language is the window of the soul and reflects social sentiments. Phrases on this year's list, such as “on a xx basis, not on a xx basis”, or “calm and collected, effortless and skillful; hurried and flustered, scrambling and tumbling”, reflect, from various perspectives, the everyday lives, values, emotional needs, and aesthetic preferences of ordinary people. The myriad human conditions of ordinary people are captured in these linguistic elements.
In the past, when Wang Shijian served as a Taipei City Councillor, he delivered the now-famous line during an interpellation with former Taipei Mayor Ko Wen-je: “It should have been calm and collected and skillful, but now it’s hurried and flustered and tumbling.” After being adapted into a song by a Mainland Chinese music blogger, the phrase quickly went viral across the internet on both sides of the Taiwan Strait.