China - understand-culture

Criticism Through Poetry

The Great Preface to the Book of Songs explains one of its kinds of poem, feng (风). “Those above use it to transform those below. Those below use it to criticize those above. It leads with art and remonstrates indirectly. The one who speaks is not guilty, and the one who hears is warned enough.” (上以风化下，下以风刺上，主文而谲谏，言之者无罪，闻之者足以戒)

The last line lives on as the saying 言者无罪，闻者足戒. Dictionaries define it this way: the person who raises an opinion is not at fault, and the person who hears it should take it as a warning.

The Vocabulary of Passing Word

吹风 To blow wind. To let information out or to make an opinion known.

捎话 To carry words. To pass on a message for someone. A dictionary gives the example: “Your superior asked me to pass on word to you to go back quickly.”

传话 To pass on talk. To carry the words of one side to the other.

通气 To let air through. To keep each other informed.

Hu Shi’s Mother

In his memoir Self-Account at Forty (四十自述), the scholar Hu Shi wrote that his mother never scolded him with a single word or struck him once in front of others. When he did wrong, she only looked at him, and her stern look was enough to frighten him. For a small fault, she waited until the next morning, when he woke, to teach him.

For a serious fault, she waited until night, when all was quiet, and closed the door. She first reproached him and then punished him. He had to kneel, or she pinched him. However heavy the punishment, he was never allowed to cry aloud. “She did not teach her son in order to vent her anger for others to hear.”

The Vocabulary of Public Shame

下不来台 Unable to get down from the stage. To be embarrassed in front of others, with no way out.

出丑 To show one’s ugliness. To disgrace oneself, to lose face.

家丑不可外扬 Family shame must not be spread outside. Unflattering matters inside a family should not be told to outsiders.

社死 Social death, short for 社会性死亡. An internet word for being so embarrassed in public that one has no face left to show and wants to sink into the ground.

Flogged at the Zuoshun Gate

In 1524, more than two hundred officials knelt and wept at the Zuoshun Gate of the palace in Beijing. They opposed the Jiajing Emperor’s plan to give his birth parents imperial titles. The emperor had 134 officials of the fifth rank and below arrested and flogged at court (廷杖). Sources differ on the number who died of the beating. Some give sixteen, others seventeen.

Officials of the fourth rank and above were not flogged. Their salaries were stopped.

Praise the Advanced, Criticize the Backward

The CCTV program Focus Report (焦点访谈) went on air on April 1, 1994. It exposed problems such as poisonous milk powder, a fake qigong master and officials who traveled abroad at public expense. On December 29, 1997, Premier Li Peng visited CCTV and wrote an inscription for the program: “Praise the advanced, criticize the backward, uphold justice.” (表扬先进，批评落后，伸张正义)

On October 7, 1998, Premier Zhu Rongji wrote: “Supervision by public opinion, voice of the masses, mirror for the government, vanguard of reform.”

Jia Yi on Punishing High Officials

In a memorial to Emperor Wen of Han, the statesman Jia Yi complained that kings, dukes and the highest ministers now faced the same punishments as ordinary people, from tattooing and mutilation to flogging and public execution. In the past, he wrote, “a sense of shame and the rites governed the gentleman. So there was death by imperial order, but no execution with disgrace.” (廉耻节礼以治君子，故有赐死而亡戮辱)

He quoted a village saying: “One wants to throw something at the rat, but fears breaking the dish.” A rat close to a dish is spared. High ministers, he argued, are close to the ruler.

Not in the Parent Group

In October 2018, China Education Daily reported on new local rules for teachers in WeChat groups with parents. The education bureau of Hengshui said that teachers may not post students’ rankings or “negative information” about students in the group. Weifang ruled out naming or criticizing students, and publishing scores or rankings. A middle school in Hangzhou stated: “Teachers may not criticize anyone by name in the group.” (教师不得在群内点名批评)

Wang Xifeng Takes Charge

In chapter 14 of Dream of the Red Chamber, Wang Xifeng takes over the running of the Ning household. The chief steward warns the servants that she is “famously fierce, sour-faced and hard-hearted.” When one servant comes late, she says that if she is lenient the first time, the others will be hard to manage. She orders him taken out and given twenty strokes with a board, and stops his month’s pay and rice.

He is beaten and must come back in to thank her. Before the assembled servants she adds: “Tomorrow, whoever is late gets forty. The day after, sixty.”