In 99 BCE, Sima Qian, the Han historian who wrote the Records of the Grand Historian, was arrested on a charge of deceiving the emperor. He was sentenced to castration.
Afterwards, in his Letter to Ren An, he explained why he stayed alive: “That I bear it in silence and cling to life, sunk in filth without refusing it, is because I regret that my private purpose is not fulfilled. I would be ashamed to leave the world with my writing unknown to later ages.”
Yu Hua’s novel Huozhe, To Live, first appeared in 1992 in the literary magazine Shouhuo. In the first version, Fugui watches seven relatives across four generations die one after another, until he is left alone. In 1994, Zhang Yimou’s film of the novel won the Grand Prize of the Jury and the award for Best Actor at the 47th Cannes Film Festival.
In the preface to the Korean edition, Yu Hua wrote: “People live for the sake of living itself, and not for anything beyond living.”
On June 29, 2014, Jack Ma, chairman of the Alibaba Group, spoke at the graduation ceremony of the School of Economics and Management at Tsinghua University. He shared his motto: “Today is cruel, tomorrow is crueler, and the day after tomorrow is beautiful. But most people ‘die’ tomorrow night.”
韬光养晦 To hide one’s abilities and keep them out of view. The Handian dictionary cites a Qing novel: “You must hide your light, and then watch the timing of heaven.”
In Chinese foreign policy, the phrase is linked to Deng Xiaoping’s guidance around 1990. Sources differ on the exact wording of his formula and on when he first used it. The Selected Works of Deng Xiaoping record a related line: “We must never take the lead. This is a basic state policy.”
From May 26 to June 3, 1938, Mao Zedong gave a series of lectures in Yan’an titled On Protracted War (论持久战). He rejected two views of the war against Japan: that China would win quickly, and that China would be conquered. The war would be protracted, he argued, and the final victory would be China’s.
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.
A young butcher in Huaiyin insulted Han Xin in the market. “You are tall and like to carry a sword, but inside you are a coward.” In front of a crowd he said: “If you are not afraid to die, stab me. If you are, crawl between my legs.” Han Xin looked at him for a long time. Then he bent down and crawled between his legs. The whole market laughed at him as a coward.
Years later, as King of Chu, Han Xin sent for the young man and made him an officer. He told his generals: “This is a brave man. When he insulted me, could I not have killed him? Killing him would have brought me no name. So I endured it, and came to where I am.”
小不忍，则乱大谋 Lack of patience in small things ruins great plans. (Analects)
宰相肚里好撑船 A boat can be poled in a prime minister’s belly. A person of standing can tolerate a great deal. Also 宰相肚里能撑船.
忍让 To bear something and give way.
忍辱负重 To bear humiliation in order to carry a heavy task. From the Records of the Three Kingdoms.
礼让 To observe courtesy and yield. The Analects asks: “Can a state be governed by courtesy and yielding? What difficulty would there be?”
After his defeat by Wu, King Goujian of Yue returned to his state. “He toiled in body and burned in thought. He set a gall bladder by his seat. Sitting or lying down, he looked up at it, and when he ate or drank, he tasted it.” (Records of the Grand Historian)
The Records say nothing about sleeping on brushwood. The two first appear together as wo xin chang dan, sleeping on brushwood and tasting gall, in a piece by the Song writer Su Shi. The idiom describes driving oneself through hardship to grow strong, without forgetting a humiliation.
On October 25, 1978, at a press conference in Tokyo, a Japanese reporter asked Deng Xiaoping about the Diaoyu Islands. Deng said that the two sides had set the question aside when they normalized relations. “It does not matter if such a question is set aside for a while, even for ten years.”
He added: “Our generation is not wise enough. Our next generation will surely be wiser than us. They will always find a good way, acceptable to all, to solve this question.”