Green bananas
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Today during our graduation party, I was chatting with our M.A. students from China. The question of anxiety came up — anxiety about getting a job and / or keeping one.
I said, yes, I noticed that some of your classmates are worrywarts, and told them that we have many other colloquial words for such folk (fussbudgets, fussbuttons, nervous nellies, and so on) in English. They were fascinated by these quixotic terms, so I asked them if they had any similar words in Chinese. Since they couldn't readily offer any, I invented one on the spot: zhāojíguǐ 著急鬼 (lit., "anxious ghost"). Of course, we all knew that wasn't an authentic sinicism, and I myself wasn't satisfied with it, so I pushed them a little harder: "Are you sure you don't have such term in your online messaging and the like?" Finally, one of them volunteered that she uses "green banana" in the same sense as "worrywart", and several others chimed in that they did too.
In China, "green bananas" have recently become a viral anti-anxiety symbol for young, burned-out office workers. The trend is based on a clever linguistic pun: the Chinese word for "anxiety" (焦虑, jiāolǜ) sounds almost identical to the word for "green banana" (绿蕉, lǜjiāo), with only the tones reversed.
The Anti-Stress Trend
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- The "Stop Anxiety" Symbol: Office workers place stems of unripe, green bananas on their desks, often attaching a "No Anxiety" (禁止焦虑, jìnzhǐ jiāolǜ) label.
- The Healing Process: Watching the raw green bananas naturally ripen and turn yellow on their desks is viewed as a peaceful, healing, and heartwarming contrast to the stress of the corporate hustle.
- Viral Success: This grassroots wellness trend evolved into a massive e-commerce business, with some vendors selling green bananas in vases of water specifically for stress-relief purposes.
I asked the students how they type "green banana" in their messages, and they told me they usually call it up as a picture (an emoji or a meme).
How cool Chinese writing has become!
Selected readings
- "Xi lies flat" (5/15/26)
- "'Lying flat' and 'Involution': passive-aggressive resistance" (6/4/21)
- "'Lying flat' and 'Buddha whatever' (part 2)" (6/24/21)
[Thanks to Wanhe Li, Xinyi Ye, Diana Shuheng Zhang]
Chas Belov said,
May 18, 2026 @ 8:05 pm
As someone who wants a thoroughly mottled banana and who doesn't want a trace of green on it even to buy it let alone eat it, I stan this usage.
Michael Vnuk said,
May 19, 2026 @ 2:33 am
Tones reversed? Based on the pinyin provided, it looks like it is the order of the sounds that is reversed.
I'm now trying to think of a similar example in English.
Seonachan said,
May 19, 2026 @ 8:43 am
My grandfather loved to tell the joke about the 90 year-old man who went to the doctor for a check-up and afterwards was told to make an appointment for next year. "Next year? I'm 90 years old. I don't even buy green bananas."
Tom said,
May 19, 2026 @ 9:40 am
All the paleo-DNA resurrection news is on direwolves and woolly mammoths. I want them to bring back ancestors or relatives of the banana. The one we have is boring yet suggestive. I'm sure there were others with slightly different flavors and textures that I'd love to try.
Victor Mair said,
May 19, 2026 @ 10:03 am
Good comment, Tom.
Many of those ancient varieties of bananas are still with us. When I go to the best produce stores around here, I'm often startled by all the weird bananas they stock:
————————–
There are over 1,000 varieties of bananas worldwide. While the familiar curved yellow fruit is most common, many other distinct types offer unique flavors, sizes, and textures:
Cavendish: The standard grocery store banana. They are mildly sweet, soft, and excellent for smoothies or eating raw.
Plantains: Cooking bananas that are starchy and low in sugar. They are not eaten raw and are instead boiled, baked, or fried as a savory staple in Caribbean and West African cuisines.
Lady Finger (Baby Bananas): Shorter (about 3 inches) and sweeter than the Cavendish, featuring a creamy texture and honey-like flavor.
Blue Java (Ice Cream Bananas): Known for their blue-tinted peel and creamy, vanilla custard-like flavor.
Red Bananas: Feature a striking reddish-purple skin and sweet, creamy, pink-tinged flesh with subtle notes of raspberry.
Manzano (Apple Bananas): Shorter and plumper with a flavor profile that hints at apple and strawberry.
Burro Bananas: Short, square, and angular with a distinctly tangy, citrusy flavor.
Gros Michel: The original commercial banana before a blight wiped out most crops in the 1950s. It boasts an intensely sweet, rich flavor and is occasionally still found in Hawaii.
(AIO)
David Marjanović said,
May 19, 2026 @ 4:19 pm
Wild bananas still exist; they're hard and full of seeds.
Chris Button said,
May 19, 2026 @ 4:35 pm
The Burmese ဖီးကြမ်း "hpi:gyan:" variety is my favorite–especially when fried!
We also eat a lot of Cameroonian food in my house, and that often involves plantains.
Peter Grubtal said,
May 20, 2026 @ 3:52 am
In Ecuador recently I was puzzled to be offered a "bolón" for breakfast: it (full name :Bolón de verde) turned out to be a plantain dumpling with a variety of ingredients and a deep-fried crispy crust. Delicious, and much healthier than the hash-browns that have become ubiquitous nowadays, even far from the US.
Victor Mair said,
May 20, 2026 @ 7:30 am
@Peter Grubtal:
Bolón de verde as rendered by online translators
———————
Google || Green Plantain Ball
Bing || Green plantain dumpling
Baidu || Green bolon
DeepL || Green ball
———————-
Whatever they are called, I can imagine that they must be very tasty.
Athel Cornish-Bowden said,
May 20, 2026 @ 8:05 am
I went to a research meeting in 1999 where one of the participants was in poor health. Someone asked him how he was and he said "Well, I don't buy green bananas any more". He died about three weeks later.
Chris Button said,
May 20, 2026 @ 2:02 pm
I think "burro" and "hpi:gyan:" (ဖီးကြမ်း ) might be the same type.
Michael Watts said,
May 20, 2026 @ 7:49 pm
There isn't an emoji for this, so that's unlikely. I would guess that they're referring to what is called a "sticker" in English or "表情包" in Chinese. Chat platforms including Wechat will let you send a message that consists solely of an arbitrary image. To the best of my knowledge, you can't include more than one sticker (or anything besides the one sticker) in such a message, and stickers don't fit into running text the way emoji do. (They're much taller.)
My favorite Wechat sticker depicts the common phrase 人呢 ["are you there?"] in a calligraphic style; I like it because it happens to look like the English word "nope".
Chas Belov said,
May 20, 2026 @ 11:06 pm
Michael Watts:
At first I thought "¿huh?" but now I can picture it.
I'm quite a bit shy of 90 and I don't buy green bananas because I can no longer trust they will ripen regardless of how long I live.
Victor Mair said,
May 21, 2026 @ 10:35 am
Call them what you will, my students were able to readily and swiftly call up green bananas on their iPhone screens. They referred to them as "pictures", etc.
번하드 said,
May 22, 2026 @ 1:26 pm
Seems to be in Unicode so an emoji no sticker:
https://www.compart.com/en/unicode/U+1F34C
번하드 said,
May 22, 2026 @ 1:30 pm
The demise of Gros Michel is also said to be the reason why artificially banana flavoured stuff feels so wrong nowadays.