Relationship Network Archives - understand-culture

The Cock’s Crow and the Dog Thief

Lord Mengchang of Qi kept several thousand retainers. The Records of the Grand Historian says that he “did not choose among his guests and treated them all well.” When King Zhaoxiang of Qin held him and planned to kill him, he asked the king’s favorite concubine for help. She wanted his white fox-fur coat, which he had already given to the king.

A retainer from the lowest seat, who could steal like a dog, slipped into the palace storehouse at night and took the coat back. Freed, Lord Mengchang reached the Hangu Pass at midnight. By law the pass opened at cockcrow. A retainer from the lower seats crowed, the roosters all joined in, and the party got through shortly before the pursuers arrived.

“At first, when Lord Mengchang placed these two among his guests, the other guests were all ashamed of them.”

Leave It to Me

At the 1995 CCTV Spring Festival Gala, Guo Donglin performed the sketch Youshi nin shuohua (有事您说话), “If Anything Comes Up, Just Say the Word.” His character brags to his leaders and friends that he can get sleeper tickets for the train, and people come to him for help.

In fact he gets the tickets by standing in line. When the tickets run out, he pays a high price for two scalped tickets to keep up the story.

Close to the Official

Since February 28, 2009, China’s Criminal Law has punished a particular way of getting things done. Under Article 388-1, a close relative of an official, or “another person with a close relationship” to the official, commits a crime by using the official’s position to obtain an improper benefit for someone who asked for help, and taking money or property in return.

The same rule covers former officials and their relatives and close associates.

Note Students

In August 2014, the head of the education bureau of Changsha announced a new rule. From that year, no school in the city would accept a tiaozi, a note, from any unit, and no school would set up “airdrop classes.” Tiaozisheng, “note students,” and airdrop classes, the bureau said, “are products of unfairness in education.”

The Vocabulary of the Back Door

走后门 To go through the back door. The Handian dictionary defines it as getting things done “through improper personal relationships or channels.”

托人情 To ask someone to put in a word on one’s behalf.

说情 To plead for another person, to ask for leniency or help on someone’s behalf. In the Qing novel The Scholars, frightened people beg a local gentleman for his card so that he will plead with the magistrate for them.

Mixed With the Back Door

The campaign to criticize Lin Biao and Confucius ran from early 1974 to about June of that year. In a written comment on a speech by Jiang Qing, Mao Zedong wrote: “Now metaphysics is rampant, one-sidedness. Criticizing Lin and Confucius is mixed with going through the back door, and this may dilute the criticism of Lin and Confucius.”

Finding Connections

In 2016, the think tank of the magazine People’s Forum published a survey of public tolerance in China. It asked how people respond to several kinds of conflict. Most respondents chose to smooth things over or to talk. Faced with “judicial injustice or rough law enforcement,” 26.4 percent said they would “find connections to smooth things over.”

The Vocabulary of Connections

关系户 A relationship household. A unit or person that gains benefits or convenience through special connections.

一人得道，鸡犬升天 When one man attains the Way, even his chickens and dogs rise to heaven. When one person gains power, everyone connected with him rises too. Said with irony. The image comes from the Han dynasty Lunheng, which tells of a king whose whole household rose to heaven with him, so that dogs barked in the sky and chickens crowed in the clouds.

My Dad Is Li Gang

On the evening of October 16, 2010, a 22-year-old student, Li Qiming, drove a car into two female students on the campus of Hebei University in Baoding. One died, and the other was injured. When he was stopped, he said: “Sue me if you dare. My dad is Li Gang.” His father was a deputy director of a public security bureau in Baoding.

On January 30, 2011, a court sentenced Li Qiming to six years in prison. Wo ba shi Li Gang became a sarcastic catchphrase.

The Official’s Protective Charm

In chapter 4 of Dream of the Red Chamber, the new magistrate Jia Yucun takes up a murder case. A clerk shows him an “official’s protective charm” (护官符), a list of the four great families of the area: Jia, Shi, Wang and Xue. “These four families are all linked by kinship. If one suffers, all suffer. If one prospers, all prosper.” The killer is a Xue.

Jia Yucun closes the case without punishing him. The chapter title calls it “a muddled verdict in a muddled case.”