China Archives - Page 18 of 112 - understand-culture

The Plaque of Surplus

In the main reception hall of the Kang Baiwan Manor in Gongyi, Henan, hangs a plaque known as the 留余 plaque, Leave a Surplus. It quotes the Southern Song scholar Wang Boda: “Leave a surplus. Leave skill unexhausted, to return to creation. Leave a surplus. Leave salary unexhausted, to return to the court. Leave wealth unexhausted, to return to the people. Leave blessings unexhausted, to return to the descendants.”

The plaque adds: “The creator dislikes fullness. When matters are pushed to the end, regret always follows.” It is dated to the first day of the first lunar month of 1871.

The Burden of Gift Money

In October 2023, the social survey center of the China Youth Daily reported a survey of 1,000 young people on suifenzi (随份子), the gift money given at weddings and other occasions. 93.2 percent said that giving it was a burden. 50.2 percent said people should dare to say no to high sums. 45.7 percent said closeness should no longer be measured by the size of the gift.

46.1 percent said the custom had gone sour and should be abolished. 33.6 percent said it was a blessing and should be kept.

An Option Kept

In August 2022, the State Council published the white paper The Taiwan Question and China’s Reunification in the New Era. It states: “We do not promise to renounce the use of force, and we reserve the option of taking all necessary measures.” The same sentence adds that this is directed at outside interference and at “a very small number of Taiwan independence separatists,” not at the people of Taiwan, and that non-peaceful means would be “a last resort.”

A Rolls-Royce for New Year

In February 2024, The Paper reported on luxury car rentals before the Spring Festival. A Rolls-Royce Phantom rented for 8,000 yuan a day, with a minimum of seven days. On Ctrip, the Beijing holiday rate for the same model was 9,600 yuan a day. Ctrip reported that its Spring Festival car rental bookings had grown more than threefold over the year before.

A partner in a Beijing rental firm said that the early renters did it “only to prop up the front of the house” (撑门面). Now their reasons vary. Some rent sports cars to drive home for matchmaking dates.

Leave Some Room

留有余地 To leave some room. In 1958 and again in 1960, Mao Zedong told his colleagues to leave room. On April 11, 1958, he said: “Even in drawing up plans and raising slogans, leave some room. Speak a little flexibly about time and space.” On June 14, 1960: “Not leaving room on paper and in words, but really leaving room in practice.”

The Recommender’s Liability

In Wei, Zheng An’ping hid the fugitive Fan Ju under a new name. When the Qin envoy Wang Ji asked whether Wei had a worthy man to take west, Zheng An’ping brought Fan Ju to him at night. Wang Ji carried Fan Ju into Qin, where he rose to chief minister. At Fan Ju’s urging, the king made Wang Ji governor of Hedong and also took on Zheng An’ping, as a general.

Later, Zheng An’ping was surrounded by Zhao and surrendered with 20,000 men. Fan Ju sat on straw and asked to be punished. The Records of the Grand Historian explains: “Under the law of Qin, when a man recommends someone and the one recommended proves bad, each is punished for that crime.” Fan Ju’s crime called for the seizure of three sets of his kin.

King Zhaoxiang, afraid of hurting his chief minister’s feelings, ordered that anyone who spoke of Zheng An’ping would be punished for the same crime.

Through the Matchmaker

In the Mencius, a man asks why it was so hard for the gentlemen of old to take office. Mencius answers with marriage. “If, without waiting for the command of their parents and the words of a matchmaker, they bore holes to peep at each other and climb over walls to meet, then their parents and everyone in the state despise them.” (不待父母之命、媒妁之言，钻穴隙相窥，逾墙相从，则父母、国人皆贱之。)

“The men of old always wanted office,” Mencius goes on. “But they hated to go there by an improper way. Going by an improper way is like boring holes in the wall.”

Lin Ruhai’s Letter

In chapter 3 of Dream of the Red Chamber, the dismissed official Jia Yucun learns that former officials may be reappointed. On the advice of a friend, he asks Lin Ruhai to approach Lin’s brother-in-law Jia Zheng in the capital. Lin Ruhai says that he has not yet repaid Jia Yucun’s kindness in teaching his daughter. “I have written a letter of recommendation and asked my brother-in-law to do everything to help.”

In the capital, Jia Yucun presents his card at the Jia mansion. Jia Zheng has read the letter and receives him at once. Because the request comes from his brother-in-law, he treats Jia Yucun with special favor. Jia Yucun is restored to office, and within two months he fills a vacancy at the prefecture of Yingtian in Jinling.

The Sponsor’s Liability

Under Article 10 of China’s Securities Law, as revised in 2019, a company that offers shares to the public through underwriters must engage a securities firm as its baojianren (保荐人), its sponsor. The word joins bao, to guarantee, and jian, to recommend. The sponsor must carefully check the issuer’s application documents and disclosures “and supervise the issuer’s proper operation.”

Article 182 sets the penalty for a sponsor letter with false records, misleading statements or major omissions. The sponsor is warned, its business income is confiscated, and it is fined one to ten times that income. The sponsor system took effect on February 1, 2004.

The Whampoa Alumni Association

On June 16, 1984, the Whampoa Military Academy Alumni Association was founded with the approval of the Communist Party’s Central Committee. It is an association of the academy’s graduates. Its aims are “to carry forward the Whampoa spirit, to link the feelings of the classmates, to promote the reunification of the motherland and to work for the revival of China.”

In 2024, the year of the academy’s centenary and the association’s fortieth anniversary, Xi Jinping sent the association a letter of congratulations. He called the academy a product of the first cooperation between the Nationalists and the Communists. He described the association as a patriotic group that links Whampoa graduates and their relatives at home and abroad.