In a year of extraordinary upheaval, from the war in Ukraine to catastrophic natural disasters, we look back at some of the words and phrases that have defined 2022.
ARMAGEDDON
With the war in Ukraine and increasingly strident threats from Russian President Vladimir Putin, the specter of nuclear warfare is stalking the globe for the first time in decades.
Photo: EPA-EFE
“We have not faced the prospect of Armageddon since Kennedy and the Cuban missile crisis” in 1962, US President Joe Biden said in October.
Experts warned of the most dangerous situation they can remember, with fears not limited to Russia: North Korean nuclear saber-rattling has reached new heights, with the world bracing for a first nuclear test since 2017.
LONDON BRIDGE
Photo: REUTERS
At 6:30pm on Sept. 8, Buckingham Palace announced that Queen Elizabeth II had died, bringing to an end the longest reign in British history and sending shockwaves around the world. For 10 days, Britons paid respects to the only monarch most had known, following a carefully choreographed series of ceremonies. The program of events, famously codenamed “London Bridge,” set out in minute detail every aspect of the protocol — down to BBC presenters wearing black ties. In the event, she died in Scotland, meaning special provisions came into force — Operation Unicorn.
LOSS AND DAMAGE
World leaders and negotiators descended on the Egyptian Red Sea port of Sharm el-Sheikh for the latest UN summit (COP27) on tackling climate change. After a fractious summit, widely seen as poorly organized, a deal was clinched on a fund for “loss and damage” to help vulnerable countries cope with the devastating impacts of climate change.
Behind the institutional-sounding name lies destruction for millions in the developing world. The summit was hailed as historic but many voiced anger over a lack of ambition on cutting greenhouse gas emissions.
WOMEN. LIFE. FREEDOM
The chant screamed by protesters in Iran following the death of Mahsa Amini, a young woman arrested by the Tehran morality police. Protesters have burned posters of supreme leader Ayatollah Ali Khamenei, and women have appeared in public without headscarves, in scenes scarcely imaginable before the uprising. The demonstrations have lasted more than three months and appear to pose an existential challenge to the 43-year rule of the clerical regime.
BLUE TICK
The tiny blue tick (it’s actually white on a blue background), which certifies users on Twitter, became a symbol of the chaos engulfing the social media platform in the wake of its US$44 billion takeover by Elon Musk. The mercurial Tesla boss announced that anyone wanting the coveted blue tick would have to stump up eight dollars, only to scrap the plan hours later — and then reintroduce a more complicated system several weeks afterwards.
Nearly two months on from the takeover, Twitter’s future remains up in the air, with thousands of staff laid off, advertisers leaving, and Musk himself vowing to step down as CEO as soon as he finds someone “foolish” enough to take over, after an online poll found a majority wanted him gone.
ROE V WADE
In an historic ruling, the conservative-dominated US Supreme Court overturned the landmark 1973 “Roe v Wade” decision that enshrined a woman’s right to an abortion. The Supreme Court ruled that individual states could restrict or ban the procedure — a decision seized upon by several right-leaning states. Protests erupted instantly in Washington and elsewhere, showing how divisive the topic remains in the US. The overturning of “Roe v. Wade” became a critical battle in the US mid-terms, in which candidates in favor of abortion rights won several victories.
QUIET QUITTING
One of the “words of the year” in Britain and Australia, the phrase refers to doing the bare minimum at work, either as a protest against your employer or to improve your work-life balance. The trend, which has sparked debate about overwork, especially in the US, appears to have surfaced first in a TikTok post in July.
“You’re not outright quitting your job but you’re quitting the idea of going above and beyond,” said the post which went viral, drawing nearly a half-million likes.
WET LETTUCE
As Liz Truss approached the end of her chaotic and short-lived tenure as British prime minister, the Economist weekly mused that her effective period in office had been “roughly the shelf-life of a lettuce.”
The tabloid Daily Star leaped on the idea, launching a live web cam featuring the said vegetable — complete with googly eyes — next to a picture of the hapless Truss. Her premiership lasted just 44 days and featured a mini-budget that collapsed the markets and generated extraordinary political upheaval. In the end, the lettuce won.
TOMATO SOUP
Environmental protesters seeking to draw attention to the role of fossil fuel consumption in the climate crisis hurled tomato soup at Vincent Van Gogh’s Sunflowers painting at London’s National Gallery in October, touching off a series of similar stunts. Since then, activists have smothered mashed potato on Claude Monet and glued themselves to works by Andy Warhol, Francisco Goya and Johannes Vermeer. For some, the campaigners are heroes bravely drawing attention to the climate emergency. For others, the attacks are counterproductive and lose force by becoming commonplace.
A4
Protests erupted in China, initially over COVID restrictions but later widening to broader political grievances, posing the greatest threat to the Beijing authorities since 1989. The demonstrations became known in some quarters as the “A4” protests as protesters held up blank A4-sized sheets of white paper in a sign of solidarity and a nod to the lack of free speech in China.
The unexpected collapse of the recall campaigns is being viewed through many lenses, most of them skewed and self-absorbed. The international media unsurprisingly focuses on what they perceive as the message that Taiwanese voters were sending in the failure of the mass recall, especially to China, the US and to friendly Western nations. This made some sense prior to early last month. One of the main arguments used by recall campaigners for recalling Chinese Nationalist Party (KMT) lawmakers was that they were too pro-China, and by extension not to be trusted with defending the nation. Also by extension, that argument could be
Aug. 4 to Aug. 10 When Coca-Cola finally pushed its way into Taiwan’s market in 1968, it allegedly vowed to wipe out its major domestic rival Hey Song within five years. But Hey Song, which began as a manual operation in a family cow shed in 1925, had proven its resilience, surviving numerous setbacks — including the loss of autonomy and nearly all its assets due to the Japanese colonial government’s wartime economic policy. By the 1960s, Hey Song had risen to the top of Taiwan’s beverage industry. This success was driven not only by president Chang Wen-chi’s
Last week, on the heels of the recall election that turned out so badly for Taiwan, came the news that US President Donald Trump had blocked the transit of President William Lai (賴清德) through the US on his way to Latin America. A few days later the international media reported that in June a scheduled visit by Minister of National Defense Wellington Koo (顧立雄) for high level meetings was canceled by the US after China’s President Xi Jinping (習近平) asked Trump to curb US engagement with Taiwan during a June phone call. The cancellation of Lai’s transit was a gaudy
The centuries-old fiery Chinese spirit baijiu (白酒), long associated with business dinners, is being reshaped to appeal to younger generations as its makers adapt to changing times. Mostly distilled from sorghum, the clear but pungent liquor contains as much as 60 percent alcohol. It’s the usual choice for toasts of gan bei (乾杯), the Chinese expression for bottoms up, and raucous drinking games. “If you like to drink spirits and you’ve never had baijiu, it’s kind of like eating noodles but you’ve never had spaghetti,” said Jim Boyce, a Canadian writer and wine expert who founded World Baijiu Day a decade
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