First, Houlang means "younger generation, younger generation or young people who appear in a certain field". The back waves originally came from "the back waves of the Yangtze River push the front waves", which means the rising waves in the river. Later, because Bi Li Bi Li's website published a manifesto speech "Back Wave" aimed at young people, it was endowed with more meanings from different angles.
Second, the back wave first appeared in Qing Suo Gao Yi edited by Liu Fu in the Song Dynasty: "The back wave of the Yangtze River pushes the front wave, floating new people for old people." There is also a record in the Ming Dynasty's "Glory and Tribute": "The waves behind the Yangtze River push the waves before, and the new people on earth chase the old people." The old adage "The waves behind the Yangtze River push the waves before" has been used to describe the continuous development and metabolism of people or things since it appeared. Therefore, "Houlang" has two meanings:
The concepts of 1 and "back wave" imply the competition and substitution relationship between them and "front wave". "Wave" is the general trend, which is an unnatural and uncontrollable natural process in which "back wave" impacts and replaces "front wave". There is natural competition between "back waves" and "front waves". "Front wave" and "back wave" seem to be concepts of time, but they are essentially concepts of flowing space. The original intention of the word "Houlang" emphasizes not the simple time sequence, but the occupation and replacement of the original position, which is a kind of space grab, a covet of limited living resources and a threatening discourse.
2. "Post-wave" is a collective phenomenon, which means surging and swarming, referring to a huge group and a force that cannot be ignored.
Thirdly, in the speech video of After the Waves, the speaker's original intention is to refute the biased view that "each generation is worse than the next" and praise the young people's beautiful pursuit of "fire in their hearts and light in their eyes". However, after the speech video became popular, many young people discussed and deconstructed the word "Houlang". Many people think that the young people described in the video copy refer to young people with relatively superior quality of life and relatively rich family conditions.
Fourth, many people think that video hosts still look at young people from the perspective of their predecessors, or it is an unequal dialogue. Therefore, more and more young people think that the word "Houlang" refers to those young people who are envied by most people, have rich family conditions or have more freedom of choice, and are backward young people, expressing a feeling of cultural loss.