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A Gate as Deep as the Sea

In chapter 6 of Dream of the Red Chamber, the poor country woman Liu Laolao hopes for help from the great Jia household. “The gate of a noble house is as deep as the sea,” she says. “Nobody there knows me.” Her son-in-law has a plan. She should first find Zhou Rui, a servant of the lady of the house. “This Zhou Rui once did a piece of business with my father. We were on very good terms.”

At the side gate, the doormen ignore her and tell her to wait by the wall. She finds Zhou Rui’s wife instead. Years before, Gou’er had helped Zhou Rui a great deal in a dispute over buying land, so his wife finds it hard to refuse. She takes Liu Laolao first to Pinger, the trusted maid of Wang Xifeng. Only then is Liu Laolao led in.

Face and Favor

The psychologist Hwang Kwang-kuo built a model of how Chinese people decide on a request. Starting from Fei Xiaotong’s idea of ties that are closer or more distant, he divides relationships into three kinds: expressive, mixed and instrumental.

Each kind follows its own rule. For expressive ties, the rule of need applies. For instrumental ties, the rule of fairness applies. For mixed ties, the person who controls the resource follows the rule of renqing (人情). He weighs what helping would cost against the return that may come in the future.

Tian Ji’s Horse Race

Tian Ji, a general of Qi, often raced horses against the princes for high stakes. Sun Bin noticed that the horses on each side were not far apart in speed and fell into three classes. He told Tian Ji: “Race your lowest team against their best, your best against their middle, and your middle against their lowest.”

Tian Ji lost one race and won two, and he took the king’s thousand pieces of gold. Afterwards he introduced Sun Bin to the king, who made him his teacher in war. (Records of the Grand Historian)

Marking the Boat

A man of Chu was crossing a river when his sword fell from the boat into the water. He quickly cut a mark on the boat: “This is where my sword fell.” When the boat stopped, he went into the water at the mark to look for it. The boat had moved. The sword had not. (Lüshi Chunqiu)

The book draws the lesson for government: “The times have moved, but the law has not. Is it not hard to govern like this?” And: “The world changes and the times move. It is right to change the law.” (世易时移，变法宜矣)

The Han Feizi tells of a farmer who saw a hare run into a tree stump and break its neck. He put down his plow to wait by the stump for another. “To govern the people of today with the government of the former kings is all of the stump-watching kind.”

BYD’s Price-Cut Email

In November 2024, an email reported to come from BYD’s passenger car division asked suppliers to cut prices by 10 percent from January 1, 2025.

Li Yunfei, BYD’s head of brand and public relations, answered that “annual price negotiation with suppliers is an industry practice.” He said the 10 percent target was “not compulsory” and “negotiable.” The report put the industry’s usual annual cut at about 5 percent.

Price Increase Letters

Chinese suppliers announce price rises to their customers with a 涨价函, a price increase letter. When chip prices rose at the end of 2020, the chip maker Huiding (Goodix) raised its dollar prices by 30 percent from January 1, 2021. Xinjieneng (NCE Power) told customers that the new prices would also apply to unpaid orders already in its system.

A Rare Good Worth Holding

The merchant Lü Buwei was trading in Handan when he saw Zichu, a grandson of the King of Qin held there as a hostage and living in hardship. The Records of the Grand Historian says: “He pitied him and said, ‘This is a rare good worth holding.'” (此奇货可居)

Lü Buwei went to Zichu and said: “I can make your house great.” Zichu laughed. Lü answered: “My house waits for your house to become great.” He offered a thousand gold to travel west and win Zichu the position of heir. Zichu later became King Zhuangxiang of Qin.

Huawei’s Mattresses

At Huawei, the mattress became a symbol. A company text from 2006, titled Heaven Rewards Diligence, describes the origin of Huawei’s chuangdian wenhua, mattress culture. In the words of the business site Jiemian, the mattress stands for “a culture of continuous striving.” Ren Zhengfei once said: “Huawei has no money. If people do not strive, it will collapse. We cannot pay anything for those who do not strive.”

In 2008, Ren played the symbol down. “The mattress is not a culture. Culture can be passed on. A mattress is only a tool for an afternoon nap.”

The Vocabulary of Reliability

靠谱 Reliable. Said of what is sensible and makes sense. A dictionary example: “This person does things reliably.”

放鸽子 To release the pigeons. To break an appointment and lose someone’s trust.

凡事有交代，件件有着落，事事有回音 Every matter accounted for, every item settled, every message answered. A business article says that some people define being reliable by these three things, and that the three are really one: closing the loop.