Risk Archives - understand-culture

Sayings on Losing

留得青山在，不怕没柴烧 As long as the green hills remain, there is no fear of running out of firewood. An early form, with 哪怕 in place of 不怕, appears in chapter 22 of Ling Mengchu’s Ming story collection Slapping the Table in Amazement: “Although we have met this great disaster, my son still holds his office. Once he reaches his post, all will be well.”

胜败乃兵家常事 Victory and defeat are common matters for a soldier. An idiom dictionary explains that even when something fails, there is no need to lose heart, because with renewed effort success may come next time. It cites an older form from the Old Book of Tang: “Victory and defeat are the constant condition of war. One should not give up a plan because one general has suffered a setback.”

Rolling Back the Dust

“Victory and defeat in war cannot be foreseen. To bear shame and swallow disgrace is what makes a man. Among the young men east of the river were many of talent. Whether he could have rolled back the dust and returned, nobody can know.”

The Tang poet Du Mu wrote these lines while prefect of Chizhou, at the place where Xiang Yu, defeated in 202 BCE, had refused to cross the Wu River and had taken his own life. The last line gave Chinese the idiom 卷土重来, to roll back the dust and come again.

Start Again From the Beginning

In the late 1990s, the reform of state enterprises cost large numbers of workers their jobs. The singer Liu Huan recorded Cong tou zai lai, Start Again From the Beginning, with words by Chen Tao and music by Wang Xiaofeng. The song spread with public service advertisements on the re-employment of laid-off workers.

Into the Sea

下海 To go down into the sea. To leave a secure post and go into business. After Deng Xiaoping’s Southern Tour in early 1992, a wave of officials did so. Figures differ. People’s Daily’s magazine Global People cited the China Business Times: at least 100,000 Party and government cadres went into business that year. China Economic Weekly put the number who resigned at 120,000, and those who went into business without resigning at more than ten million.

Some kept a way back. 停薪留职 means to stop the pay and keep the post. Global People, citing Liaoning figures, reported that about 35,000 officials in the province resigned around 1992 to go into business, and that another 700 took leave on these terms to start companies.

The Vocabulary of Fallbacks

后路 The road behind. A line of retreat, and also room to maneuver. The Handian dictionary gives the example: “He is a careful person and leaves himself a road behind in everything.”

骑驴找马 To ride the donkey while looking for a horse. To stay in an unsatisfactory job, or relationship, while actively looking for a better one.

东方不亮西方亮 If the east is not bright, the west is bright. If something does not work in one place, it may work in another.

Breaking the Pots, Sinking the Boats

Xiang Yu led his whole army across the river. Then, according to the Records of the Grand Historian, he “sank all the boats, broke the cooking pots, burned the huts and carried three days’ rations, to show the soldiers that they must die and that not one of them should think of returning.” The idiom 破釜沉舟, to break the pots and sink the boats, means to resolve to fight to the end.

The way back was destroyed on purpose, as an act of command.

Bottom-Line Thinking

底线思维 Bottom-line thinking. In early 2013, according to essays on the Aisixiang site, Xi Jinping told an important meeting: “We must be good at the method of bottom-line thinking. In all matters, prepare for the worst and strive for the best result, so that we are prepared and have no worries, are not flustered when something happens, and keep the initiative firmly in hand.”

One False Step

一失足成千古恨，再回头是百年人 One false step brings regret for a thousand ages. When one turns back, one is a man of a hundred years. The line is linked to the Ming painter Tang Yin, whose career was ruined by an examination scandal.

Yang Yi’s Ming collection Ming Liang Ji records the line in this form. The original wording is disputed. Another account says Tang Yin wrote “a laughingstock for a thousand ages,” and that the Qing writer Wei Zi’an changed it to “regret.” Today the line usually ends in 百年身.

Chu Oranges

In 1999, Chu Shijian, the former head of the Hongta tobacco group in Yunnan, was sentenced to life imprisonment. The sentence was later reduced to 17 years. He was released on medical parole, in 2001 or 2002, as sources differ. He then leased about 2,400 mu of barren hillside in the Ailao Mountains and planted oranges. He was 74 or 75 when he began.

In October 2012, his oranges went on sale in Beijing through the newly founded online grocer Benlai Shenghuo, under the name Chu cheng, Chu oranges.

Security Merchants

From 1745, according to Chinese and English accounts, every foreign ship that came to trade at Guangzhou needed a baoshang, a security merchant, from among the licensed hong merchants. He was fully responsible for the foreign merchants’ duties and conduct. If foreigners left taxes unpaid, the hong merchants had to pay them.

In 1754, the hong merchants were made jointly liable for one another, without limit.