On August 7, 1998, during the Yangtze floods, the embankment at Jiujiang in Jiangxi was breached. On August 9, Premier Zhu Rongji was at the breach in the flood wall, directing the work to close it.
A column in the Hong Kong paper Apple Daily attributes to Zhu these words at Jiujiang: “Human lives are at stake, and they actually built a doufuzha gongcheng like this, a tofu-dreg project, a bastard project!” The exact source of the words is unclear.
先上车，后补票: “Board first, buy the ticket later.” In 2012, the business site Qianzhan wrote that for illegal land use, this had once become “an adaptive tactic for many localities and enterprises.”
In November 2024, a commentary in The Paper criticized a light rail line in Liuzhou that had been built without approval. It called “board first, buy the ticket later” a “hidden rule of construction” that “must never be tolerated, at any time or under any circumstances.”
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.
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.”
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.”
During the Third Front construction in China’s interior, many plants were built as sanbian gongcheng, “three-side projects.” Survey, design and construction went on at the same time: bian kance, bian sheji, bian shigong.
According to the news site The Paper, the method caused serious problems of quality and safety. One plant for aircraft parts in Shaanxi was built without knowing the geology. A large landslide followed, with losses of more than 10 million yuan.
In a letter to partners published in July 2012, Tencent founder Ma Huateng summed up fourteen years of the company’s experience as a “rule of gray” (灰度法则) with seven dimensions: demand, speed, flexibility, redundancy, open collaboration, innovation and evolution.
On speed, he wrote: “My suggestion is ‘small steps, fast running, quick iteration.'” (小步快跑，快速迭代)
On January 23, 2020, the government of Wuhan announced a new hospital for coronavirus patients, modeled on Beijing’s Xiaotangshan SARS hospital. Work began on January 25. On February 2, Huoshenshan Hospital was handed over to the army, and on February 4 it took its first patients. From planning to completion took ten days.
Millions of people at home watched the building site on a livestream, and “cloud supervisor” (yun jiangong) became a popular term. By 10 p.m. on one evening, the CCTV stream had counted 86.24 million views.
Workers later said that on February 3 only the first of four zones was in operation. Zones 2 to 4 were still in their final stage of construction.
Construction of the Shenzhen International Trade Center began in April 1982. At first each floor took seven days, then six, five and four. From the 31st floor on, the builders kept to three days per floor. CCTV’s evening news and People’s Daily followed the progress, and “three days a floor” became known across the country.
The main tower was topped out on April 30, 1984, a full month early. At 160 meters, it was then the tallest building in China. Shenzhen sudu, “Shenzhen speed,” became a phrase for the pace of the whole zone.
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.