Constant Reachability Archives - understand-culture

Three Times Past His Door

Mencius says of Yu and Ji: “Yu and Ji lived in an age of peace, yet three times they passed their own door without going in. Confucius regarded them as worthy.” (禹、稷当平世，三过其门而不入，孔子贤之)

In March 2023, the business paper IT Times reported on the rules for customer service on Taobao. Taobao, it wrote, assesses its merchants’ customer service by a reply time of three minutes. A merchant that misses it loses points in the year-end review. The paper added that Taobao has not published an official response time for its own customer service.

The agents call customers qin (亲) or qinqin, “dear.” A typical line quoted in the report is: “Dear, we will handle it as soon as possible.”

Notices Before the Holiday

On June 30, 2026, People’s Daily published a commentary by Pan Jiangping of Huangping County in Guizhou. “Every holiday,” it said, citing media reports, “some grassroots officials fall into helplessness. Higher units send out notices in a rush before the holiday and require all kinds of materials to be reported on the first day after it ends.”

The author warned that rushed tasks before holidays, and orders forcing all staff to work overtime at their posts during them, wear down officials and drain their will to work.

Handled on Receipt

Since 2019, Beijing has handled residents’ complaints under a system called jie su ji ban, handle a complaint as soon as it is received. Its main channel is the 12345 citizen service hotline, which answers 365 days a year, 24 hours a day.

On September 24, 2021, the city adopted Regulations on Handling Complaints Upon Receipt, which then took effect. Each work order now states the deadline by which the complaint must be handled.

The Shop Boy

In March 2018, during the annual session of the national legislature, Xinhua reported the words of a member of the national political advisory body. “The ‘shop boy’ spirit is a new requirement put forward by Shanghai,” he said. It asks for a stronger sense of service, “to be good ‘shop boys’ serving enterprises, to respond to every request and not to disturb them otherwise.”

The dianxiao’er, the shop boy, is the old word for an attendant in an inn or a tavern.

Hidden Overtime

Ms. Li joined a technology company in April 2019 and was dismissed in December 2020. She claimed pay for more than 500 hours of overtime. Her evidence included chat records, screenshots from the DingTalk app and a duty roster for the company’s social media accounts on weekends and holidays. The court of first instance rejected her claim.

On appeal, the Beijing No. 3 Intermediate People’s Court ordered the company to pay her 30,000 yuan. According to the reports, the court held that the idea of a workplace should be weakened. What counts is whether the employee provided substantive work. The Beijing News called it the first case in China to address yinxing jiaban, hidden overtime, in a judgment.

In 2024, the Supreme People’s Court wrote the test for hidden overtime online into its annual work report: “substantive work” and “obvious use of time.”