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.
Fan Zhongyan was demoted several times for speaking out. His friend Mei Yaochen wrote a rhapsody on a crow to urge him to say less. Fan answered, probably in 1036, with a rhapsody of his own (灵乌赋). His crow knows the risk: “If it warns, disaster turns back on itself. If it does not warn, disaster ripens for others.”
The crow decides: “Better to cry out and die than to live in silence.” (宁鸣而死，不默而生)
留中 To keep inside. The Handian dictionary defines it as an emperor keeping a minister’s memorial in the palace, “neither sending it for discussion nor answering it.” Its example comes from the History of Ming: memorials “kept inside for several months.”
The practice is closely linked with the Wanli Emperor. A study by Li Jia finds that cases began early in his reign and became serious from its middle years on.
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 2008, infant formula from the Sanlu Group was found to contain melamine. China’s Ministry of Health reported nearly 296,000 children with urinary problems, six of whom died.
According to the account in Chinese Wikipedia, Sanlu’s own tests had found melamine in 15 of 16 batches that summer. On August 1, chairwoman Tian Wenhua ordered the matter covered up. City officials blocked a public recall until after the Beijing Olympics. In January 2009, Tian was sentenced to life imprisonment.
On Chinese messaging apps, the yellow smiling face (微笑) can be read as contempt, not as friendliness. A 2023 commentary in The Paper wrote that among young people the smile has taken on the meaning of 呵呵, a dry “heh heh.” It stands for “disdain, mockery and speechlessness.”
The same commentary reported that a court had ruled that the smile “cannot simply be understood as mockery.” Its meaning, the court found, is ambiguous.
In chapter 8 of Dream of the Red Chamber, Baoyu wants to drink his wine cold. Baochai tells him that cold wine harms the body and that he must stop drinking it cold. He obeys at once. Just then Lin Daiyu’s maid Xueyan brings her a small handwarmer. Daiyu asks who sent it. Xueyan says that Zijuan was afraid her mistress was cold.
Daiyu takes it and says with a smile: “How good of you to listen to her. What I tell you, you treat as wind past your ears. When she tells you something, you obey faster than an imperial edict.” The novel adds: “Baoyu heard this and knew that Daiyu was using it to mock him.” He had no answer and only laughed.
The Chinese dictionary Handian gives two meanings for 送客, to see a guest out. The first is to see a visitor off. The second is that “the host signals that the guest should leave.”
Its example comes from chapter 49 of the novel A Brief History of Enlightenment (文明小史): “When he had finished speaking, he raised his teacup, and someone beside him called out: ‘See the guest out!'”
Mencius asked King Xuan of Qi about a man who left his wife and children in a friend’s care and traveled to Chu. On his return he found them cold and hungry. What should he do? “Break with the friend,” said the king. What if the chief judge could not keep his officers in order? “Dismiss him,” said the king.
Then Mencius asked: “If the land within the four borders is not well governed, what then?” The text continues: 王顾左右而言他, “The king looked to his left and right and spoke of other things.”
In the Analects, Confucius describes a man of real standing. Such a man “examines words and observes the face, and thinks of putting himself below others” (察言而观色，虑以下人).
The phrase lives on as the idiom 察言观色. The Handian dictionary defines it as “observing a person’s words and expression in order to work out what the person has in mind.”