At the opening of the Eighth Party Congress in September 1956, Mao Zedong said: “An open mind helps people progress. Conceit makes people fall behind. We should always remember this truth.”
The sentence (虚心使人进步，骄傲使人落后) became a poster slogan. A 1996 poster in a series called “Famous People, Famous Words” carried it under Mao’s name.
枪打出头鸟 The gun shoots the bird that sticks its head out.
木秀于林，风必摧之 When a tree stands out above the forest, the wind will break it. (Li Kang, On Fate)
满招损，谦受益 Fullness invites loss, modesty receives benefit. (Book of Documents)
On October 5, 2015, the pharmaceutical chemist Tu Youyou was awarded the Nobel Prize in Physiology or Medicine for her work on artemisinin, a drug against malaria. The next morning, she read a statement to reporters from a sheet of paper. The prize for artemisinin research, she said, “is the result of the research team’s joint effort, and it is the collective honor of Chinese scientists.”
At home, her part had long been disputed. Chinese Wikipedia notes that mainland China did not readily recognize individual contributions at the time. For forty years, her contribution was not generally acknowledged there.
Huang Xuhua was a chief designer of China’s first nuclear submarines. According to People’s Daily, for 30 years his family did not know what he was doing, and his father died without seeing him again.
The story is disputed. The naval writer Li Zhongxiao argues that Huang stayed away from home because of his family background, not because of secrecy. He also rejects the media title “father of China’s nuclear submarine.”
During basic training, the young soldier Lei Feng did many good deeds in his camp and in the city of Yingkou without leaving his name (做好事不留名). He died on duty in 1962, at the age of 21. On March 5, 1963, Mao Zedong wrote the inscription “Learn from Comrade Lei Feng,” and March 5 became Learn from Lei Feng Day.
His diary, found and published after his death, contains the line “I want to be a screw forever” (我愿永远做一个螺丝钉).
Chapter 2 of the Daodejing describes the sage. “He gives life but does not possess. He acts but does not rely on it. He accomplishes his work but does not dwell on it (功成而弗居). Because he does not dwell on it, it does not leave him.”
The commentator Wang Bi added: “If one places the merit in oneself, the merit cannot last.”
哪里哪里 Where, where? Meaning: not at all. Often followed by 我还差得远, I still have far to go.
你过奖了 You praise me too much.
不敢当 I dare not accept it.
In October 2025, a Xinhua commentary said that the new achievements of the 14th Five-Year Plan period were “fundamentally due to the strong leadership of the Party Central Committee with Comrade Xi Jinping at its core.”
A year-end economic review in December 2025 used the same phrase in its first sentence. “Under the strong leadership of the Party Central Committee with Comrade Xi Jinping at its core,” it said, all regions and departments had carried out the new development philosophy, and the economy had moved forward.
The song The Moon on the Fifteenth (十五的月亮) was written in 1984 and first performed on CCTV that Mid-Autumn Festival. At the Spring Festival Gala on February 19, 1985, Dong Wenhua sang it with Liu Peide, and she became famous overnight.
The lyricist wrote it for the wives of soldiers, who run the family at home alone. Its line giving the wife a share in the soldier’s military medal became a catchphrase.
On April 24, 1945, Mao Zedong gave the political report to the Seventh Party Congress, On Coalition Government. In the 1945 text he said: “The people, and the people alone, are the motive force that creates the world.”