In 1934, Lu Xun wrote the essay Layman’s Talk on Writing. In it, he argued for a Latin alphabet for Chinese, partly because it could be written fast. “The Americans say that time is money. But I think time is life. To waste another person’s time for no reason is really no different from robbing and killing him.”
The next sentence turns back on Lu Xun and his friends: “But people like us, sitting here in the cool and chatting idly, are an exception.”