In early 199, Cao Cao captured the general Lü Bu at Xiapi. Lü Bu had served Ding Yuan and killed him, then served Dong Zhuo, who had sworn to be his father, and killed him too. Bound before Cao Cao, he offered to lead Cao Cao’s cavalry. Cao Cao considered keeping him. Liu Bei, who was present, asked whether Cao Cao had forgotten what happened to Ding Yuan and Dong Zhuo. Lü Bu was strangled.
The historian Chen Shou judged him “fickle and cunning, looking only to profit.”
In the Strategies of the Warring States, the retainer Feng Xuan tells Lord Mengchang: “A cunning hare has three burrows, and even so it only just escapes death. Now my lord has one burrow and cannot yet sleep on a high pillow. Let me dig two more for my lord.”
The Handian dictionary explains 狡兔三窟: the cunning hare builds three connected burrows. It is a metaphor for planning thoroughly to escape future disaster.
In the main reception hall of the Kang Baiwan Manor in Gongyi, Henan, hangs a plaque known as the 留余 plaque, Leave a Surplus. It quotes the Southern Song scholar Wang Boda: “Leave a surplus. Leave skill unexhausted, to return to creation. Leave a surplus. Leave salary unexhausted, to return to the court. Leave wealth unexhausted, to return to the people. Leave blessings unexhausted, to return to the descendants.”
The plaque adds: “The creator dislikes fullness. When matters are pushed to the end, regret always follows.” It is dated to the first day of the first lunar month of 1871.
In August 2022, the State Council published the white paper The Taiwan Question and China’s Reunification in the New Era. It states: “We do not promise to renounce the use of force, and we reserve the option of taking all necessary measures.” The same sentence adds that this is directed at outside interference and at “a very small number of Taiwan independence separatists,” not at the people of Taiwan, and that non-peaceful means would be “a last resort.”
留有余地 To leave some room. In 1958 and again in 1960, Mao Zedong told his colleagues to leave room. On April 11, 1958, he said: “Even in drawing up plans and raising slogans, leave some room. Speak a little flexibly about time and space.” On June 14, 1960: “Not leaving room on paper and in words, but really leaving room in practice.”
In Wei, Zheng An’ping hid the fugitive Fan Ju under a new name. When the Qin envoy Wang Ji asked whether Wei had a worthy man to take west, Zheng An’ping brought Fan Ju to him at night. Wang Ji carried Fan Ju into Qin, where he rose to chief minister. At Fan Ju’s urging, the king made Wang Ji governor of Hedong and also took on Zheng An’ping, as a general.
Later, Zheng An’ping was surrounded by Zhao and surrendered with 20,000 men. Fan Ju sat on straw and asked to be punished. The Records of the Grand Historian explains: “Under the law of Qin, when a man recommends someone and the one recommended proves bad, each is punished for that crime.” Fan Ju’s crime called for the seizure of three sets of his kin.
King Zhaoxiang, afraid of hurting his chief minister’s feelings, ordered that anyone who spoke of Zheng An’ping would be punished for the same crime.
Under Article 10 of China’s Securities Law, as revised in 2019, a company that offers shares to the public through underwriters must engage a securities firm as its baojianren (保荐人), its sponsor. The word joins bao, to guarantee, and jian, to recommend. The sponsor must carefully check the issuer’s application documents and disclosures “and supervise the issuer’s proper operation.”
Article 182 sets the penalty for a sponsor letter with false records, misleading statements or major omissions. The sponsor is warned, its business income is confiscated, and it is fined one to ten times that income. The sponsor system took effect on February 1, 2004.
On August 31, 2018, the Ministry of Ecology and Environment issued a guiding opinion that said: “Resolutely oppose ‘one size fits all.'” It prohibited responses such as “shut everything down” and “stop first, then see.” Xinhua, reporting on the opinion, called these “perfunctory responses” and wrote that firms meeting environmental requirements were not to be subjected to collective halts of production.
The online fashion seller Shein works with a model called xiaodan kuaifan, small orders and fast returns. Beijing News reported that a new style is first made in a batch of usually 100 to 200 pieces. If it sells well, more are ordered at once.
The news site Jiemian reports that a first order takes only half a month to produce.
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.”