At midday on August 29, 2023, Huawei announced that its new Mate 60 Pro phone was on sale. Orders opened on its website under the name “HUAWEI Mate 60 Pro Pioneer Program.” There was no launch event. That week, the US Commerce Secretary Gina Raimondo was in China for talks.
Sayings on Talk and Practice
光说不练假把式，光练不说真把式，连说带练全把式 Talk without practice is a fake act. Practice without talk is the real thing. Talk with practice is the complete master.
口说无凭，事实为证 Spoken words are no proof. Facts are the evidence.
是骡子是马，拉出来遛遛 Mule or horse, lead it out for a walk.
Bottles and Bridges
守口如瓶 To keep the mouth closed like a bottle. To keep a secret strictly. In the novel Romance of the Sui and Tang, a character says to the emperor: “I hope Your Majesty will keep it closed like a bottle and never mention it.”
过河拆桥 To tear down the bridge after crossing the river. To turn away from the person who helped once the goal is reached.
Guan Yu, God of Wealth
Guan Yu, the general of the Three Kingdoms known for his loyalty, is worshipped as a wu caishen, a martial god of wealth. “Merchants chose Guan Gong as their god of wealth because they value his loyal and righteous image,” China News Service wrote in 2011. The Paper put it this way: “Merchants revere Guan Gong’s loyal and trustworthy heart, and most of them worship him.”
A business daily explained the choice: “For merchants, for whom mutual trust is the most important standard, yi should be placed at the center of their values.”
Sesame Credit
On January 28, 2015, Ant Financial began a public test of Sesame Credit, a personal credit score, among some of its users. Scores run from 350 to 950. A report at the launch said that a high enough score would let a user rent a car or stay at a hotel without paying a deposit.
Su Wu Herds Sheep
The Han envoy Su Wu was held captive by the Xiongnu and made to herd sheep. The Book of Han says: “He herded the sheep leaning on the staff of the Han envoy. Sleeping and rising, he held it, until all its tassels had fallen off.” He was held for nineteen years before he came home.
Su Wu Herds Sheep is also the name of a traditional melody, generally played on a Chinese flute.
The Social Credit Outline
On June 14, 2014, the State Council issued its Outline of the Plan for Building the Social Credit System, 2014 to 2020. It calls rewards for keeping faith and penalties for breaking it “the core mechanism of the social credit system.” The aim, it says, is that “those who keep faith benefit everywhere, and those who break faith can hardly take a single step.”
The Vocabulary of Endurance
吃苦耐劳 To eat bitterness and endure toil. To bear a hard life and stand up to heavy work.
任劳任怨 To take on toil and take on complaints. The Handian dictionary explains: to work without shirking hardship and without fearing the complaints of others. The phrase goes back to Han dynasty texts.
On One Leg to the Finish
At the Beijing Olympics in 2008, the hurdler Liu Xiang withdrew injured from the first heat. On August 7, 2012, at the London Olympics, he fell at the first hurdle of his 110 meters heat. He hopped on one foot to the end of the track and kissed the last hurdle.
Sina wrote that television viewers around the world saw “the moving scene of him hopping the whole track on one leg and kissing the hurdle goodbye.”
Ordinary World
Lu Yao spent six years on his novel Ordinary World. While writing, he sat at his desk fifteen or sixteen hours a day. In 1991, the novel won the Mao Dun Literature Prize. On November 17, 1992, Lu Yao died in Xi’an at the age of 42.
One tribute to him reads: “He fought stubbornly against illness and wrote without sparing his life.”