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If you’re scrolling Chinese social media right now, you’ll come across this phrase:
“Raise the lobster” (养龙虾)
But it has nothing to do with actual lobsters.
“Raise the lobster” is a newly coined expression which means training your OpenClaw AI assistant.
OpenClaw is an open source AI agent which helps users build teams of AI assistants to handle real-world tasks like sending emails, managing calendars, and running social media accounts.
It’s described as “The AI that actually does things”.
The phrase “raising the lobster” is a nod to the cartoon red lobster in the OpenClaw logo. The idea of “raising” implies how users need to feed their AI agents with tokens, train it with new skills, and monitor and improve performance. The AI requires ongoing attention like a pet which needs “feeding” (喂饲料) and “training” (调教), which are both essential phrases in the process of “raising the lobster”.
Developed by Austrian programmer, Peter Steinberger, OpenClaw launched in late 2025. On its first day alone it gained 9,000 stars on the coding platform GitHub, which is a measure of popularity on the platform where developers bookmark projects they rate.
Within a week it had surpassed 100,000 stars, setting a new record. It has since passed 248,000 becoming the most-starred open-source project on the platform.
By January 2026, it had caught on in China.
Tencent Cloud and Alibaba Cloud launched “one-click setup” (一键部署) services, to help non-tech-savvy users install the AI. And ByteDance and Alibaba’s Qwen followed.
Tencent even offered the service for free.
On March 6th, nearly 1,000 developers and AI enthusiasts gathered outside Tencent’s headquarters in Shenzhen for a free installation event. The crowd was a mixed bunch: from retirees and parents with toddlers to elementary school students.
Some had flown in the night before. While others were squeezing it into a lunch break, racing to get their “lobster” installed.
One Tencent employee described the scene:
“Hundreds of developers queued up early with their laptops in a long, three-column line that wound its way through the plaza occupying almost the entire corner.”
数百名开发者早早就带着笔记本电脑在广场上排起了长龙，队伍蜿蜒排成了三列，几乎占据了整个广场的一角。
Related
Short videos of people “raising the lobster” have since flooded Douyin and other social media feeds as the craze jumped from the tech world into the mainstream:
“From coders to regular users, the whole country is obsessed with ‘raising the lobster’.
The OpenClaw craze is absolutely everywhere on Douyin right now.”
抖音上，”全民养龙虾”的短视频刷屏，从程序员到普通用户，几乎全社会都参与其中。
Among the trending topics, there are people making quick money using OpenClaw sharing their experiences under the tag “Smart people are already cashing in on OpenClaw” (聪明的人已经用OpenClaw开始赚钱了). They are using their lobster to design products, to write marketing emails, and even to trade stocks and shares.
Other early adopters are making money by helping others to raise their lobster.
OpenClaw installation services are now available on e-commerce and social media platforms for between 200 and 800 yuan. “Comprehensive, step-by-step guides” (保姆级教程) are going viral on Bilibili with hundreds of thousands of views. Meanwhile, RedNote is flooded with “OpenClaw local setup tutorials for dummies in ten minutes” (零基础十分钟搞定OpenClaw本地部署). And on Goofish (咸鱼), China’s eBay equivalent, coaches are offering home installation services for 499 yuan a time.
But as the craze has gained momentum, there are also major concerns that come with it.
China's cybersecurity authorities have already issued multiple warnings about OpenClaw, with government agencies and state-owned enterprises banned from running it on corporate devices. And there are stories swirling in the media about how lobsters are completing tasks without permission — like a Meta employee who reported that OpenClaw deleted hundreds of her personal emails despite being instructed to wait for approval.
With these concerns have come yet more money making opportunities: now as well as installation services, there are also “OpenClaw uninstallation services” (龙虾卸载服务) available for up to 299 yuan.
As a result, online users have coined another phrase:
“One lobster, three ways” (龙虾三吃)
It’s a pun on a popular dish name, and in this context describes how people are making money in three ways with OpenClaw: to install the AI, to train people how to use it, and then to uninstall it when things go wrong.
These fast-moving money makers are also described as “shovel sellers” (卖铲人) in Chinese, a phrase drawn from the English idiom “selling shovels in a gold rush” — the idea that the real money is made supplying the tools, not panning for gold.
So will this craze take off, and could “raising the lobster” become one of our favourite phrases of 2026?
Or, will be yet another fleeting viral moment on the Chinese internet?
That’s what we’re exploring this week!
Favourite Five
1. 极客 jí kè
geek, tech enthusiast
大模型还是少数科技极客和科研机构的专属领地 - LLMs are still something that only a small number of geeks and researchers are interested in. [1]
2. 养龙虾 yǎng lóng xiā
to raise the lobster, set up, run and train OpenClaw
抖音上，”全民养龙虾”的短视频刷屏，从程序员到普通用户，几乎全社会都参与其中 - From coders to regular users, the whole country is obsessed with “raising the lobster”. The OpenClaw craze is absolutely everywhere on Douyin right now.
Related:
饲料 sì liào – feed; metaphor for tokens in this context
养虾人 yǎng xiā rén – lobster farmer
龙虾热 lóng xiā rè – lobster craze
3. 智能体 zhì néng tǐ
intelligent agent, AI agent
OpenClaw是一款开源AI智能体 - OpenClaw is an open-source AI agent. [1]
4. 盲目跟风 máng mù gēn fēng
to blindly follow trends, follow the crowd blindly
一些不懂技术的人盲目跟风，很多落地应用场景还是很稚嫩 - A lot of non-techies are just blindly jumping on the bandwagon, and many of the actual use cases are still pretty half-baked. [1]
5. 深不可测 shēn bù kě cè
unfathomable, impossible to gauge
盲目卷入技术的狂奔，背后的风险可能深不可测 - Getting caught up in this tech craze carries profound risks that we are only beginning to understand. [3]
Consuming the Conversation
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Consuming the Conversation
Useful words
6. 热潮 rè cháo
surge, craze
狂欢热潮还在继续 - The wave of frenzy has no signs of subsiding. [1]
Related:
洪流 hóng liú – torrent, overwhelming surge
7. 迭代 dié dài
iteration, iterative update
在技术迭代的同时，我们也质疑这到底是不是一场带有巨大泡沫的实验 - While technology continues to iterate, we are also questioning whether this is an overhyped experiment. [1]
8. 部署 bù shǔ
to deploy, set up or install (in this context)
腾讯云团队也搭建了将近10张长桌作为临时部署区 - The Tencent Cloud team also set up about ten long tables as the makeshift installment zone. [1]
Related:
一键部署 yí jiàn bù shǔ – one-click setup
9. 场景 chǎng jǐng
scenario, use case
有人希望在现场专家的帮助下，立刻将OpenClaw接入飞书、企业微信等办公场景 - Some are looking for on-site expert guidance to immediately connect OpenClaw to their professional workflows, such as Lark and WeChat for Business. [1]
10. 黑客 hēi kè
hacker
一旦被黑客入侵，瞬间就会被洗劫一空 - Once it’s hacked, everything will be gone in an instant. [2]
11. 吩咐 fēn fù
to instruct, to tell someone what to do
即使你什么都没吩咐，OpenClaw也不会真的闲着 - Even if you don’t give any instructions, OpenClaw will not really stay idle. [3]
Related:
指令 zhǐ lìng – instruction, command
命令 mìng lìng – command, order
提示 tí shì – prompt, hint
命令行 mìng lìng háng – command line
12. 小白 xiǎo bái
beginner, novice
在敲代码方面还是零基础的“小白”，却养出了这么一只聪明“虾” - Though she is a complete beginner in coding, she still managed to turn her OpenClaw into such an intelligent agent. [4]
