Ba Jin’s novel Family (家) is set in the large Gao household in Chengdu. Grandfather Gao is the authority of the whole family. His eldest grandson, Juexin, has absorbed new ideas but still obeys tradition.
As a young man, Juexin loves his cousin Mei. He marries Ruijue instead, because his parents have arranged it. He comes to love his wife, but he never forgets Mei.
When word came that Cao Cao was moving east, Sun Quan discussed it with his officers. All of them urged him to welcome Cao Cao. Lu Su alone said nothing. When Sun Quan rose to change his clothes, Lu Su followed him out under the eaves. Sun Quan took his hand and asked: “What do you want to say?”
Lu Su told him that the others’ advice would ruin him. Lu Su himself could submit to Cao Cao and still keep an official post. Sun Quan could not. “Settle the great plan early, and do not use the advice of the many.” (Records of the Three Kingdoms)
Their first conversation had gone the same way. After the other guests left, Sun Quan called Lu Su back alone. They sat on the same couch, drank, and “discussed in secret.”
Under the Kangxi Emperor, a new kind of report came into use, the palace memorial (奏折). An official could send it secretly and directly to the emperor. It went around the cabinet and did not pass through the Office of Transmission.
In the later years of the Kangxi reign, the circle of officials allowed to send them widened step by step. Through these secret reports, Chinese Wikipedia writes, the emperor kept control of the whole picture.
The physician Bian Que told Duke Huan of Cai: “Your Lordship has an illness in the skin. If it is not treated, it may go deeper.” “I have no illness,” said the duke. When Bian Que left, the duke said: “Doctors like to treat people who are not ill, to take the credit.” Twice more Bian Que warned him, and twice the duke did not answer. The fourth time, Bian Que saw him and ran.
The illness had reached the marrow. Five days later, the duke was in pain and sent for Bian Que, who had already fled. The story is in the Han Feizi. It gave the idiom 讳疾忌医, to hide an illness and avoid the doctor, and in a wider sense to cover up faults and fear criticism.
In 1957, a meeting discussed a dam at Sanmenxia on the Yellow River. According to a 2000 account by the writer Zhao Cheng, “only Huang Wanli firmly opposed building a dam at Sanmenxia.” Most of those present said nothing.
The dam was built. According to the same account, in September 1960, the reservoir began to store water. Silt built up behind it and raised the riverbed at Tongguan by 4.5 meters. From 1965, the dam was rebuilt, with openings cut through it to flush out the silt.
Article 10 of the Party Constitution sets the rule for decisions in Party committees. “All important questions are to be discussed and decided collectively by the Party committee, according to the principle of collective leadership, democratic centralism, individual deliberation and decision by meeting.”
In the original, the four steps are 集体领导、民主集中、个别酝酿、会议决定. The third, 个别酝酿, is deliberation with members one by one, before the meeting. The meeting comes last.
不置可否 To set down neither yes nor no. To give no position at all.
打哈哈 To go “haha.” To brush someone off and deal with a matter only on the surface.
打官腔 To speak in the official tone. To use official set phrases to deal with a request or to pass it on.
搪塞 To plug one hole. From an image in the Huainanzi of a dike with ten thousand holes, of which only one is plugged. To deal with something only for form’s sake.
婉拒 To refuse gently. To decline in a roundabout, polite way.
In the Ming story An Old Student Repays a Favor Over Three Generations (老门生三世报恩), the examiner Kuai prefers young candidates. Three times, without meaning to, he passes the same old man, Xianyu Tong. Xianyu passes the provincial examination at fifty-seven and the metropolitan examination at sixty-one.
Xianyu later clears Kuai’s son of a false charge. “This only repays a little of my teacher’s kindness,” he says. “I still owe much feeling.” He then keeps Kuai’s grandson at his official residence to study and gives him three hundred taels. Kuai thinks: “Plant thorns and get thorns. Plant peach and plum trees and get shade.”
In many old families, one character in each person’s name marks the generation. Since the early Ming, the descendants of Confucius have taken these characters from lists issued by the central government. Chinese Wikipedia gives the list for the 56th to the 105th generation, fifty characters in all. It begins 希言公彦承 and ends 永锡世绪昌.
Under the Qianlong Emperor, the court decreed that descendants of Confucius and of three other sage families must take their names from the granted characters, or they would not be entered in the family register.
The Ming founder set twenty characters for each line of his own descendants. According to Chinese Wikipedia, the former premier Zhu Rongji belongs to the generation 镕 in the line of the Prince of Min.
In Liu Xiang’s Garden of Persuasions (说苑), Lord Mengchang has placed a retainer with the King of Qi. After three years the man has still received no post, and he complains. Lord Mengchang answers: “A thread enters by the needle, but the needle does not make it hold. A woman marries through a matchmaker, but the matchmaker does not make the two close. Your talent must be thin.”
The retainer replies that a fox in the altar of the soil is not attacked, and a rat in the altar is not smoked out, “because of what they rest on.” Lord Mengchang then recommended him to Qi again, and the King of Qi made him chief minister. The idiom 穿针引线, to thread the needle, means to act as a go-between.