爷青回

What does 爷青回 mean?

On Bilibili, 爷青回 is the battle cry of nostalgia. It appears when an old anime gets a remake, a retired player returns to the stage, or a decade-old theme song suddenly plays, and it translates roughly as 我的青春回来了. The 爷 at the front is not literal: it is a swaggering way of saying yours truly, common in northern speech, and using it makes the declaration feel louder and funnier. Its mirror image, 爷青结, marks the moment a long-running story ends or a favorite creator retires. It spread in the same year as 网抑云, though where that nickname mocked staged sadness, this one celebrates the real thing.

Where does 爷青回 come from?

Bilibili announced 爷青回 as its danmaku of the year for 2020 on 1 December 2020, reporting that users had sent it more than five million times over the year. The platform's yearly review noted that it clustered under videos of old shows, reunions and comebacks, which made it a natural summary of the year's nostalgia wave. The mirror phrase 爷青结 spread alongside it, and both are now standard vocabulary in Chinese fan communities.

How to use 爷青回

• 老番重制版预告一出，弹幕瞬间刷满了“爷青回”。
  Lǎo fān chóngzhì bǎn yùgào yī chū, dàn mù shùnjiān shuā mǎn le yé qīng huí.
  The second the trailer for a remake of a classic anime appeared, the screen was buried in comments shouting that their youth had come back.
• 同学聚会听到当年的班歌，他忍不住感叹：爷青回啊。
  Tóngxué jùhuì tīng dào dāngnián de bān gē, tā rěn bù zhù gǎntàn: yé qīng huí a.
  At the class reunion, when the old class anthem started playing, he couldn't help saying that it felt like his youth had returned.