敢怒不敢言 To dare to be angry but not to speak.
明哲保身 Once praise for the wise man who keeps himself safe. Today a reproach for avoiding questions of principle in order to protect one’s own interests.
磨洋工 To work slowly and idly, dragging the job out.
The Four Bigs
Article 45 of the 1978 Constitution gave citizens the right to use “speaking out freely, airing views fully, holding great debates and writing big-character posters.” These “four bigs” (si da) had grown out of the rectification and Anti-Rightist campaigns of 1957 and flourished in the Cultural Revolution.
On August 30, 1980, the National People’s Congress amended the Constitution and removed them.
Harmony Is Most Precious
礼之用，和为贵: “In the practice of the rites, harmony is most precious.” The line is in the first book of the Analects. It is often quoted as Confucius, but the speaker is his disciple Youzi.
The passage continues with a limit: “To know harmony and seek harmony, without regulating it by the rites, will not work either.”
Li Wenliang’s Message
On December 30, 2019, Li Wenliang, an eye doctor at Wuhan Central Hospital, wrote in a WeChat group of his medical school classmates that seven cases of SARS had been confirmed from the Huanan seafood market. He wanted to warn colleagues to protect themselves.
On January 3, 2020, a local police station gave him a warning and a reprimand for “publishing untrue statements on the internet.” Li died of COVID-19 on February 7, at the age of 33. On March 19, an investigation team of the National Supervisory Commission recommended that the reprimand be withdrawn.
Yellow Cat, Black Cat
On July 7, 1962, speaking about how to judge household contracting in farming, Deng Xiaoping said: “Comrade Liu Bocheng often quotes a Sichuan saying: ‘Yellow cat or black cat, as long as it catches mice, it is a good cat.’ He said it about fighting. We beat Chiang Kai-shek because we did not follow the old rules and the old roads.”
The saying is popularly remembered as “white cat, black cat.” In 1976, the Party journal Red Flag attacked the “white cat, black cat” theory for erasing the difference between socialism and capitalism.
Practice Is the Sole Criterion
In February 1977, the leading Party papers set out the “two whatevers”: whatever decisions Chairman Mao made would be upheld, and whatever instructions he gave would be followed. Hu Fuming, a philosophy teacher at Nanjing University, wrote an article against this.
On May 11, 1978, Guangming Daily published it, revised by several hands and finally approved by Hu Yaobang, as “Practice Is the Sole Criterion for Testing Truth.” People’s Daily and the Liberation Army Daily followed the next day. A national debate on the criterion of truth began. Hu Fuming said later that the idea was not new: “Every philosophy teacher at every university knew it.”
Take-ism
In June 1934, Lu Xun published the essay Nalai zhuyi, “Take-ism,” in the Zhonghua Ribao. It argues that China should take from abroad what it chooses: “So we must use our brains, open our eyes, and take for ourselves!”
Nomad Dress and Mounted Archery
The armies of the Warring States wore heavy armor, even on horseback. The nomad armies of the north dressed light and moved fast. In 307 BC, King Wuling of Zhao decided: “I want to wear nomad dress.” His soldiers would take up nomad clothing and mounted archery, hufu qishe.
His court objected that he was abandoning their own dress for that of distant peoples, “changing the teaching of the ancients and going against the hearts of the people.” The king answered that it would benefit the people and strengthen the state. Zhao’s army grew strong, destroyed the state of Zhongshan and defeated the Linhu and Loufan.
Learning the Foreigners’ Strengths
In January 1843, Wei Yuan printed the first edition of his Illustrated Treatise on the Maritime Kingdoms. Its watchword was shi yi zhi changji yi zhi yi, “learn the superior techniques of the foreigners in order to control them.” The phrase became the main idea of the Self-Strengthening Movement.
In 1898, Zhang Zhidong’s Exhortation to Learning argued for adopting Western technology. Its formula is remembered as “Chinese learning as the substance, Western learning for use.” One study traces this exact wording to a memorial by Sun Jia’nai in 1896. Zhang himself wrote “old learning as the substance, new learning for use.”
Red Envelopes on the Phone
During the 2014 Spring Festival, red envelopes sent by phone and taxi-hailing apps helped mobile payment take the market fast. By the end of 2014, the China Internet Network Information Center counted 217 million mobile payment users, up 73.2 percent in a year. The share of internet users who paid by phone rose from 25.1 to 39.0 percent.