In a 1988 survey in Tianjin, the sociologist Bian Yanjie found that jobs were obtained through strong ties more often than through weak ties. Job seekers often reached their helpers through an intermediary to whom both sides had strong ties, and those who used such indirect ties got better jobs. He published the study in 1997 in the American Sociological Review as “Bringing Strong Ties Back In.”
Trust Without Contracts
In Rural China (乡土中国), the sociologist Fei Xiaotong describes rural society as a society of people who know one another. There, he writes, “trust does not rest on respect for contracts.” It comes from “the reliability of knowing the rules of conduct so well that one acts without thinking.”
Acquaintances, he notes, say: “We are all acquaintances. A greeting is enough, why say more?” In modern society people fear that “the spoken word is no proof,” so “they make a mark and sign their names. Only then does law begin.”
A Thousand Yeses
The reformer Shang Yang asked the scholar Zhao Liang whether his rule of Qin was better than that of a famous earlier minister. Zhao answered: “The skins of a thousand sheep are not worth the fur under one fox’s leg. The yes, yes of a thousand men is not worth the frank objection of one gentleman.” (Sima Qian, Records of the Grand Historian)
The idiom 唯唯诺诺, to say yes to everything, goes back to the Han Feizi. It describes the people around a ruler who say “yes” before he has given an order and “certainly” before he has asked.
Mr. Good-Good
The Eastern Han scholar Sima Hui never spoke of other people’s faults. Whatever he heard, he answered “Good.” Asked how he was, he said “Good.” When a man told him that his son had died, he said “Very good.” His wife scolded him. Sima Hui replied: “What you say is also very good.”
The Ming writer Feng Menglong, who tells the story, says that the expression 好好先生, Mr. Good-Good, comes from it. Dictionaries define it as a person who does not ask what is right or wrong and only wants peace.
Collective Merit
The People’s Liberation Army awards merit to units as well as to individuals. A rocket artillery company of the Army’s 71st Group Army, for example, has been awarded “collective second-class merit once and collective third-class merit twice.”
In January 2024, the Central Military Commission issued a notice commending nine units and twenty individuals for excellence in military training.
Sayings on Standing Out
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)
Tu Youyou’s Prize
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.
Accomplish and Do Not Dwell
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.”
Ripples on the Water
In 1947, the sociologist Fei Xiaotong published a series of essays on rural society, collected in 1948 as Rural China (乡土中国). In them he named the pattern of Chinese social relations chaxu geju (差序格局), the differential mode of association.
“Our pattern,” he wrote, is like “the ripples that spread out in circles when a stone is thrown onto the water. Each person is the center of the circles pushed out by his own social influence.”
Our Own People
自己人 Our own people, those close to us.
胳膊肘往外拐 The elbow bends outward. Said of someone who helps outsiders against their own people.
肥水不流外人田 Rich water does not flow into an outsider’s field. Keep the good things within the family.