The sitcom revolves around the daily life of an ordinary Beijing family in the early 1990s. The language of the characters well reflects their social class and level of education.
- The father, Fu Ming 傅明 or Fu Lao 傅老, a recently retired party bureaucrat, speaks a language full of revolutionary jargon.
- The two intellectuals in the family—his elder son, Jia Zhiguo 贾志国, a government civil servant, and his daughter, Jia Xiaofan 贾小凡, a college student—speak a Beijing-accented Putonghua.
- By contrast, the younger son, Jia Zhixin 贾志新, a high school graduate, is an idle, unemployed youth who occasionally makes small deals on the side. Unlike most of the heroes in Wang Shuo’s novels, who speak a Beijing dialect used in the military district (budui dayuan 部队大院) of the city, Zhixin speaks a Beijing dialect of the hutong 胡同 (alley), blending popular urban expressions with old Beijing phrases. Taking episode 17 (I) as an example, the old Beijing words he uses include dǎowo 倒卧 (frozen stiff), chuō 戳 (stand), shùn 顺 (walk off with), qíle 齐了 (all set), zìdāng 只当 (as long as), and xúnmo 寻摸 (look for).
- He Ping 和平, Zhiguo’s wife, is less educated than the other family members. Both she and her mother perform the local art of singing and storytelling, jingyundagu 京韵大鼓. Their speech is peppered with old Beijing expressions and pronunciations that indicate their low cultural and social status.
- In episode 5 (I), He Ping’s mother uses words like m3men 姆们 (we), qìnniáng 亲娘 (the form of address used by a husband’s siblings when speaking to his mother-in-law), zhēluó 折箩 (a chop suey of leftovers), bāngchèn 帮衬 (help), qíhuór 齐活儿 (all set), and qínghǎor 掅好儿 (to see an expected good result).
- In episode 35, He Ping follows the then-current zouxue 走穴 trend of pop stars going on tour, making substantial sums, and evading state taxation. She proudly unleashes a torrent of professional jargon to describe her success, which to Fu Lao just sounds like a stream of nonsensical “Japanese sentences.”
- 这穴头可不是空码，我攒儿亮着呢，知道他真把上我啦！…昨儿有穴头到我们团来团这事儿，想让我们给出个底包儿，看了我这大鼓说我这活儿还能单档杵，每场置点儿黑杵总比干拿份子强啊。虽然没腕儿那么嗨吧，可也念不到哪儿去。The head of the zouxue troupe is not an amateur. I’m quite aware that he’s trying to win me over. . . . Yesterday he came over to our troupe to negotiate this thing. He wanted us to give a bottom-line price for performing. After watching my dagu performance, he said I could even get a separate bonus. The under-the-table tips [from fans] are always better than the profit sharing from each performance. Although I don’t earn as much as those big shots—it’s almost the same.