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The Vocabulary of Linshi

临时 (linshi) Just at the moment, at the last minute. Also temporary. The Guoyu dictionary gives the example: “It was agreed, and then at the last minute she changed her mind.”

临时抱佛脚 To clasp the Buddha’s feet at the last minute. To make no preparations and scramble when the matter arrives. The Handian dictionary cites an early example from the Tang poet Meng Jiao: “In old age he clasps the Buddha’s feet.”

特事特办，急事急办 Special matters handled specially, urgent matters handled urgently. In 2022, the news magazine Banyuetan called this “always an important means of grassroots governance.”

随机应变 To change according to the situation.

Temporary Trains

The Spring Festival travel season of 2026 ran from February 2 to March 13. In January, the Yangzi Evening News reported that railways in Jiangsu would run 247 pairs of chunyun linke, temporary passenger trains for the festival rush. Of these, 116 pairs ran within the Yangtze River Delta and 131 pairs ran farther.

According to the report, 168 pairs of the extra trains used overnight time slots on the tracks.

Forty Inspections a Semester

In October 2019, Xinhua reported on the burden of inspections on schools. A school in Chongqing had received nearly forty inspection visits in one semester. A principal said that after a state assessment of balanced school development began in 2017, preparing for inspections had become the school’s central task. Another principal spoke of “endless inspections from above, endless summaries to write and endless forms to fill in.”

Xinhua wrote that inspections and activities unrelated to teaching had entered the schools and “overloaded the teachers and even affected teaching.”

One Cry to Startle Everyone

In his first three years on the throne, King Zhuang of Chu issued no orders and spent his days and nights in pleasure. His minister Wu Ju came to him with a riddle. “There is a bird on the hill. For three years it has neither flown nor sung. What bird is it?” The king answered: “For three years it has not flown, but when it flies it will soar to the sky. For three years it has not sung, but when it sings it will startle everyone.”

Months passed, and his pleasures grew worse. Only after a second warning, from the minister Su Cong, did he end them and take up government. The Records of the Grand Historian says that he then executed several hundred men and promoted several hundred.

The Long March Map

In January 2013, Cao Zhiwei, a member of the Guangzhou political advisory body, showed the mayor a chart of the approvals needed for an investment project. The project had to pass through 20 departments and collect 108 official seals. From approval of the project to the end of the approvals took 799 working days. Investors called the chart the “Long March map.”

According to the report, streamlining could cut the process to 232 working days, a reduction of 71 percent.

Thirty-Two Days

On December 7, 2022, the State Council’s joint prevention and control mechanism announced ten new measures. They ended most checks of negative test results and health codes in public places, and testing on arrival.

From January 8, 2023, COVID-19 was managed as a Class B disease. Mass testing ended. Infected people were no longer isolated, and close contacts were no longer traced. The two steps were thirty-two days apart.

Seven and a Half Hours

At 2:30 a.m. on January 23, 2020, the Wuhan epidemic prevention and control headquarters issued its Notice No. 1. From 10 a.m. that day, the outbound routes from Wuhan were to be closed.

The notice came seven and a half hours before the city was closed.

Sayings on Time

一寸光阴一寸金 An inch of time is an inch of gold. The line comes from the Tang poet Wang Zhenbai: “Reading, I did not notice that spring was already deep. An inch of time is an inch of gold.”

少壮不努力，老大徒伤悲 If one does not strive when young, one grieves in vain when old. The lines end the anonymous Han poem Long Song. “A hundred rivers flow east to the sea. When will they return west?”

Not by Zhu Xi

少年易老学难成，一寸光阴不可轻 “Youth grows old easily, and learning is hard to achieve. Not an inch of time may be taken lightly.” For a long time the poem was believed to be the work of the Song philosopher Zhu Xi.

It does not appear in Zhu Xi’s collected works. The attribution goes back to Japanese school textbooks of classical Chinese from the Meiji era. Japanese scholars have traced the poem to a monk of the Gozan Zen monasteries of the Muromachi period, Kanchu Chutei, whose collection Seihoshu is its oldest known source. A study from Hiroshima University says it can be stated with confidence that Kanchu wrote the poem. Many Chinese sources still credit Zhu Xi.

By the River

The Analects records: “The Master stood by a river and said: ‘It passes on like this, never ceasing day or night.'” (子在川上曰：逝者如斯夫！不舍昼夜。)

The passage is known as chuan shang tan, the sigh by the river.