In Lu Xun’s story Kong Yiji, published in April 1919, the title character drinks at the Xianheng tavern. The customers shout that he must have stolen again. One says he saw him beaten for stealing books from the He family. Kong Yiji turns red and argues: “Stealing books cannot be counted as theft. Stealing books! The affairs of a scholar, can they be counted as theft?” (窃书不能算偷……窃书！……读书人的事，能算偷么？)
The whole tavern bursts out laughing.
Lu Xun’s novella The True Story of Ah Q appeared in installments in a Beijing newspaper supplement from December 1921 to February 1922. The village idlers grab Ah Q by his queue and knock his head against a wall four or five times. They walk off satisfied. Ah Q thinks: “I have been beaten by my son, after all. The world today really is not as it should be.”
Then he too walks off satisfied and victorious. Lu Xun writes that Ah Q has “this kind of spiritual method of victory” (精神上的胜利法).
In the Mencius, the philosopher asks King Xuan of Qi: “If one of the king’s ministers leaves his wife and children with a friend and goes on a journey, and on his return finds them cold and hungry, what should be done?” The king answers: “Break with the friend.” “If the chief judge cannot govern his officers, what should be done?” “Dismiss him.”
“If the land within the four borders is not well governed, what should be done?” “The king looked to his left and right and spoke of other things.” (王顾左右而言他)
The Records of the Grand Historian describe a meeting at Mianchi between the kings of Qin and Zhao. Over wine, the King of Qin said: “I have heard that the King of Zhao loves music. Please play the zither.” The King of Zhao played. The Qin historian stepped forward and wrote: “On such a day, the King of Qin met the King of Zhao to drink and ordered the King of Zhao to play the zither.”
The Zhao minister Lin Xiangru knelt before the King of Qin with a clay pot and asked him to strike it. When the king refused, Lin said: “Within five paces, I can spatter Your Majesty with the blood of my neck.” The king struck the pot once. Lin had the Zhao historian write: “On such a day, the King of Qin struck the pot for the King of Zhao.”
In 1944, the Chinese anthropologist Hu Hsien Chin published “The Chinese Concepts of ‘Face'” in the journal American Anthropologist. Hu described two Chinese words for face, lian (脸) and mianzi (面子), as “two sets of criteria by which prestige is gained and status secured or improved.”
Lian, Hu wrote, is “a social sanction for enforcing moral standards and an internalized sanction.” It “is conceived of as being maintained or lost as a whole.”
In June 2024, a Xinhua commentary criticized 面子工程, “face projects that care only about the face and not about the lining” (只重面子、不顾里子).
In November 2025, another Xinhua commentary on formalism wrote: “The essence of ‘face projects’ is a distorted view of political achievement and a lack of responsibility.”
赏脸 To grant face. A polite formula used when asking someone to accept a request or a gift. It appears in Dream of the Red Chamber.
撕破脸 To tear the face. To break with someone openly, with no regard for feelings.
死要面子活受罪 To insist on face to the death and suffer while alive. To go through great hardship for the sake of appearances.
丢面子 or 丢脸 To lose face, to be disgraced in front of others.
给面子 To give face, to show someone respect in public.
情面 Affection and face.
家丑不可外扬 Family shame must not be spread outside.
In October 1934, Lu Xun published a short essay called On “Face” (说”面子”). It begins: “‘Face’ is something we often hear about in conversation.”
Lu Xun writes that it is good that Chinese people want face. The pity is that this face is “round and flexible” (圆机活法) and good at changing.
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.