Finding a Way Archives - understand-culture

Seven Water Vats

In the search for a malaria drug, the pharmaceutical chemist Tu Youyou noticed a recipe in the Eastern Jin medical book Zhouhou beiji fang: “Take a handful of qinghao, soak it in two sheng of water, wring out the juice and drink all of it.” Tu then redesigned the research. Her group extracted the plant at low temperature, below 60 degrees Celsius, with water, alcohol, ether and other solvents.

To speed up the work, the group went ahead with homemade methods, tufa shangma. According to Xinhua, they used seven large water vats in place of the usual laboratory vessels. In 1971, in the 191st low-boiling-point experiment, they found a qinghao extract that was 100 percent effective against malaria.

Shanzhai Phones

From 2003, small firms in mainland China made cheap mobile phones known as shanzhai ji. Chinese Wikipedia says the name came from their low cost, their good value and their failure to follow the rules of the industry. Before October 15, 2007, when the State Council announced the end of the approval system for phone production, such phones rarely had brands of their own.

One common type was made by a small firm that rented a production license from a licensed maker.

According to the same article, a MediaTek chip of 2006 combined the main board and the software and lowered the barrier to making a phone. Shenzhen’s Huaqiangbei became the largest wholesale market for these phones. Typical features were very loud speakers, two SIM cards in one phone, and phones for the elderly with large characters and large keys.

Mr. More-or-Less

On June 28, 1924, Hu Shi published a short satire, Chabuduo xiansheng zhuan, “The Biography of Mr. More-or-Less.” Its hero’s motto is: “In everything, more or less is good enough. Why be so sharp?” He brings home white sugar instead of brown. He misses a train by two minutes and finds the railway company “too serious.” When he falls ill, his family fetches a cattle doctor instead of the physician. Within the hour he is dead.

After his death, people praise him and give him the posthumous name Master Yuantong, “the all-accommodating.” The essay ends: “But from then on, China became a nation of lazy people.”

The Vocabulary of Making Do

办法总比困难多 There are always more ways than difficulties. A People’s Daily commentary introduces it as a common saying: “We often say, there are always more ways than difficulties.”

将就 To accept something reluctantly, or to get by with what is there. The Handian dictionary cites a Ming novel in which a poor family cannot afford a proper coffin and “can only make do hastily.”

凑合 To put something together on the spot, or to make do. A dictionary example reads: “Just make do with it.”

Create the Conditions

“If there are conditions, go ahead. If there are none, create the conditions and go ahead.” People’s Daily attributes the line to Wang Jinxi, the “Iron Man” of the Daqing oilfield.

In 1960, Wang led Drilling Team 1205 from Yumen in Gansu to Daqing. There was no housing. Some slept in cattle sheds, others on canvas on the ground. Grain was short, and people picked up frozen cabbage leaves. “The drilling rig has arrived. What if there is no crane? Pull it by hand and carry it on our shoulders!”

Red-Hat Enterprises

A private firm in China that registered as a collective or state enterprise was said to wear a hong maozi, a “red hat.” In a common form, the owner attached the firm to some unit or enterprise, took out a collective business license and paid a management fee. That unit did not touch the money or the running of the business.

In 2005, Dai Yuanchen wrote in the journal Southern Economy that the red hat was a countermeasure “forced by discrimination by ownership.” With it, a firm had political protection, found it easier to get things done and could enjoy certain advantages.

The Sina Model

In 2000, the internet portal Sina listed its shares in the United States. Its control over the business in China rested on contracts, not on ownership. Chinese lawyers call such a structure xieyi kongzhi, “control by agreement,” or the “Sina model.” The other name, VIE, for variable interest entity, comes from American accounting rules.

The law firm Zhonglun explains why it spread. China restricted or banned foreign investment in fields such as the internet, the news media and education. The American SEC and the Hong Kong exchange accepted the structure, so it became an important route for Chinese companies to list abroad.

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.

The Vocabulary of Flexibility

变通 To adapt. To act according to the actual situation, not bound by convention. The word is old. The Book of Changes says: “Nothing changes and gets through more than the four seasons.”

通融 To make an exception for someone. To stretch the rules as a favor.

合情合理 To accord with feeling and with reason. The everyday word for “reasonable.”

The Xiaogang Pact

On a winter night in 1978, dated by Chinese Wikipedia to November 24, eighteen farmers in Xiaogang village, Anhui, signed a pact at great risk to contract the collective land to households. Each pressed a red fingerprint on a worn, creased sheet of paper. The members also promised to raise the leaders’ children until the age of 18.

In 1979 Xiaogang had a record harvest of 66,000 kilograms of grain, equal to its total from 1966 to 1970.