谷子

What does 谷子 mean?

A haul spread out on a table: tin badges, acrylic stands, character cards, a poster tube. In Chinese fan talk all of that is 谷子, which reads as grain but is really a sound-alike of the English goods, meaning official merchandise from anime, manga, games and idol groups. Buying it is 吃谷, eating grain, and collectors joke that their wallets have been eaten; the ones who do it constantly call themselves 谷子人. The spending itself now has a name, 谷子经济, the goods economy. English-speaking fans already have a word for all of it: merch.

Where does 谷子 come from?

The word travelled out of Japanese otaku culture, where グッズ (guzzu) means goods, and Chinese fans wrote it with the similar-sounding 谷子. For years it stayed inside ACG circles. Then, across 2024 and 2025, malls and shops devoted to this merchandise opened in cities such as Shanghai and Shenzhen, and 《咬文嚼字》 found room for 谷子 in its top ten buzzwords of 2025.

How to use 谷子

• 这个月工资又全拿去吃谷了。
  Zhège yuè gōngzī yòu quán ná qù chī gǔ le.
  I've blown my whole salary on anime merch again this month.
• 新出的谷子一上架就卖空了。
  Xīn chū de gǔzi yí shàngjià jiù mài kōng le.
  The new merch sold out the moment it went on sale.