三十年河东，三十年河西 Thirty years east of the river, thirty years west of the river. In chapter 46 of Wu Jingzi’s novel The Scholars, a character says: “Thirty years east of the river, thirty years west. Thirty years ago, how grand your two households were. I saw it with my own eyes.”
胜不骄，败不馁 Not proud in victory, not disheartened in defeat. The Handian dictionary traces it to the Book of Lord Shang: “The army of a true king is not proud when it wins and not resentful when it loses.”
After Zhuge Liang laid out his plan for the realm, Liu Bei “grew closer to him day by day.” The Records of the Three Kingdoms continues: “Guan Yu, Zhang Fei and the others were displeased.” Liu Bei explained: “For me to have Kongming is like a fish having water. I ask you gentlemen not to speak of it again.” (孤之有孔明，犹鱼之有水也。愿诸君勿复言。) Guan Yu and Zhang Fei stopped.
In the Jiangxi soviet, the Party’s leftist leadership removed Deng Xiaoping from his posts for supporting Mao Zedong’s line. After the Cultural Revolution began in 1966, he lost all his leading posts. He was restored as vice premier in March 1973. In April 1976, he was again removed from all posts. In July 1977, the Third Plenum of the Tenth Central Committee restored his former posts in the Party, the state and the army.
In 1985, according to The Paper, he described himself as “a man who has gone down three times and come up three times.”
In 1999, Yang Yiyan published a case study of how trust is built, titled Zijiren (自己人), “One of Us,” in the journal Sociological Studies (社会学研究). Yang argued that Chinese people include others within the boundary of their own self, the family, and that this forms a boundary of trust.
Yang wrote that the boundary can move. “Through interaction, an outsider can be accepted as one of us.” Turning an outsider into one of us generally means a process “from strangeness or surface contact to intimacy, trust and a sense of obligation, or deep interaction.”
藏器待时 To keep one’s tools hidden and wait for the time. To build one’s abilities and wait for the moment to use them. The phrase comes from the Book of Changes: “The gentleman keeps his tools on his person and waits for the time to act.” (君子藏器于身，待时而动)
The Taiwanese scholar Cheng Bor-Shiuan was among the first to apply Fei Xiaotong’s differential mode of association to Chinese organizations. He proposed the concept of chaxu shi lingdao (差序式领导), differential leadership. In a study published in 1995, he named a typical sign of favoritism among Chinese leaders. They are “generous and understanding toward insiders, strict and demanding toward outsiders.”
A 2018 review in the journal Foreign Economics and Management sums up the concept. Such a leader divides subordinates into “insiders” and “outsiders” by how close the relationship is, how loyal they are and how capable they are.
In early 199, Cao Cao captured the general Lü Bu at Xiapi. Lü Bu had served Ding Yuan and killed him, then served Dong Zhuo, who had sworn to be his father, and killed him too. Bound before Cao Cao, he offered to lead Cao Cao’s cavalry. Cao Cao considered keeping him. Liu Bei, who was present, asked whether Cao Cao had forgotten what happened to Ding Yuan and Dong Zhuo. Lü Bu was strangled.
The historian Chen Shou judged him “fickle and cunning, looking only to profit.”
In chapter 39 of Dream of the Red Chamber, the poor country woman Liu Laolao comes back to the Jia mansion, where she was once given twenty taels of silver. She brings dates, squash and wild greens. “This year we harvested two more shi of grain, and the melons and vegetables did well. These are the first ones picked. We did not dare sell them. We kept the best for the ladies to taste.”
In chapter 119 of the 120-chapter edition, the family has fallen. Wang Xifeng’s daughter Qiaojie is about to be promised to a foreign vassal. Liu Laolao, her godmother, is announced at the back gate. She offers to take the girl to her village and hide her there.
In the Strategies of the Warring States, the retainer Feng Xuan tells Lord Mengchang: “A cunning hare has three burrows, and even so it only just escapes death. Now my lord has one burrow and cannot yet sleep on a high pillow. Let me dig two more for my lord.”
The Handian dictionary explains 狡兔三窟: the cunning hare builds three connected burrows. It is a metaphor for planning thoroughly to escape future disaster.
In 1996, the scholar Shang Huipeng described wedding gifts in eastern Henan in the journal Sociological Studies. “Every family holding a wedding also has a detailed account book. It records the names of the givers and the kind and amount of the gifts, so that they can be repaid later.” The ledger, he wrote, “ensures that this savings will not be forgotten.”
Writing about gifts in Dream of the Red Chamber, the scholar Deng Yunxiang described a similar record, the lizhang (礼账). One of its purposes was “for checking when returning gifts. How much the other side sent, and how much to send when the other side has an occasion.”