In the first half of 2011, according to the Wenzhou branch of the central bank, the city’s informal lending market had reached 110 billion yuan. Nearly nine in ten families or individuals and nearly six in ten companies took part.
In 2011 the chain broke. Zhou Dewen, head of a Wenzhou association of small and medium firms, said that in August and September alone, more than 100 bosses fled. A commentary in October 2011 called it “a defeat of the business model of the acquaintance society.”
In 1069, Wang Anshi became assistant chief minister of the Song dynasty and began his New Laws. Asked by Emperor Shenzong what came first, he answered: “To change customs and establish laws is the most urgent task today.”
Wang is famous for three sentences: “Changes in heaven are not enough to fear. The ancestors are not enough to follow. What people say is not enough to heed.” Scholars long accepted them as his. In 1986, the historian Gu Jichen argued that Wang never said them. The earliest record of them is in the Veritable Records of Shenzong.
In 1823, the Rishengchang draft bank opened in Pingyao, Shanxi. It was the first of the Shanxi piaohao, houses that moved money across the empire on paper drafts. A Qing writer described them: “Their methods are most precise, their people most honest and simple, and their credit the best known.”
The Pingyao houses had a saying: 宁可赔折腰，不让客吃亏. “Better to lose until our backs break than let a customer suffer a loss.”
When the Hundred Days’ Reform failed in 1898, Liang Qichao took refuge in the Japanese legation and urged Tan Sitong to escape with him. Tan refused. “In every country, reform has come through bloodshed. In China, no one has yet been heard to shed blood for reform, and that is why the country does not prosper. If someone must, let it begin with me.”
While awaiting execution, he is said to have written a poem with the line “I draw my sword and laugh toward heaven.” The diary of Tang Xuan, an official of the Board of Punishments at the time, records slightly different wording.
In January 2013, the Institute of Sociology of the Chinese Academy of Social Sciences released its Blue Book of Social Mentality. Its survey of city residents found that fewer than half believed that most people in society can be trusted. Only 20 to 30 percent trusted strangers. More than 70 percent said they did not dare to trust strangers.
In March 1981, Yuan Geng, head of the Shekou Industrial Zone in Shenzhen, wrote the slogan “Time is money, efficiency is life.” It brought him heavy criticism. Critics called him “a capitalist who wants money and lives” and spoke of “the restoration of capitalism.” The giant billboard was put up in Shekou and taken down several times.
In January 1984, Deng Xiaoping endorsed the slogan on his first visit to Shenzhen. On October 1, 1984, it rode past Tiananmen on the Shekou float in the National Day parade.
熟人 An acquaintance, a person one knows well. Its opposite is 生人, a stranger, literally a “raw person.”
靠谱 Reliable, trustworthy. Said of a person who does things in a sensible way.
拉关系 To pull connections. To make friends with someone one barely knows, for a purpose.
走后门 To go through the back door. To get things done through improper private connections.
在家靠父母，出门靠朋友 At home, rely on parents. Away from home, rely on friends.
苟日新，日日新，又日新 If new for one day, then new day after day, and new again. The inscription on the bathing basin of King Tang, quoted in the Great Learning.
穷则变，变则通，通则久 When things reach their limit, they change. Change opens a way through, and a way through lasts. From the Book of Changes.
与时俱进 To advance with the times. Reports on the 16th Party Congress in November 2002 said that its revision of the Party Constitution carried the spirit of advancing with the times.
Article 533 of China’s Civil Code covers a contract whose basic conditions change in a major way that the parties could not foresee and that is not a commercial risk. If continued performance would be clearly unfair to one party, “the party adversely affected may renegotiate with the other party.” Only if they fail to agree within a reasonable time may either party ask a court or an arbitration body to change or end the contract.
In one reported case, a court refused a request for higher rent based on rising prices.
On February 10, 1900, Liang Qichao published “On Young China” in the journal Qingyi Bao. “Today’s responsibility lies not with others but entirely with our youth,” he wrote. “If the youth are wise, the nation is wise. If the youth are rich, the nation is rich. If the youth are strong, the nation is strong.”