Hu’s slip into slang has nation floundering for its meaning
An odd word choice by the president gets people talking
Vivian Wu 29 March 2009
People say it all the time, but it’s not the type of phrase you’d expect to hear in a speech by a major world leader. Yet, there it was. President Hu Jintao, speaking on December 18 about China’s future political path in a speech commemorating the 30th anniversary of the reform and opening-up policy, used the slang phrase bu zheteng.
Maybe he did it to show he’s just a regular Joe - or Zhou, or Hu. But whatever his reason, the phrase caught fire across the mainland as both a political term and a way to summarise opinions in all kinds of social situations.
At first, it baffled translators worldwide and triggered a kind of competition for an accurate interpretation because of its complex implications in a political and historical context.
After proposing two major goals for the future, Mr. Hu said: “As long as we don’t waver, don’t slack off and don’t zheteng, and as long as we firmly push forward reform and opening up ... we will surely make this grand blueprint a reality and achieve the goals we are striving for.”
Bu means “no” or “not” in Chinese, and zheteng is a verb with several meanings - to flip-flop, to perform futile actions, to fix unbroken things, to repeatedly turn over, to create trouble or to flounder.
Never before had such an informal Chinese phrase appeared in a speech by a state leader, and Mr. Hu didn’t delve into the spirit of bu zheteng, which threw the whole nation into a guessing game over his real meaning.
China News Service reported that the sudden appearance of the phrase bewildered the interpreter, who couldn’t find a proper English equivalent and ended up spelling it out in pinyin instead. The agency used “not to get sidetracked” as its translation.
Not surprisingly, Mr. Hu’s use of the phrase made headlines on the mainland and suddenly became hot news on the internet, in the media and in people’s everyday conversations.
State Council Information Office spokesman Wang Chen, in answering a media inquiry on the subject, said Mr. Hu’s vow to bu zheteng meant that “China needs to keep going forward on the path to build a socialist country with Chinese characteristics, and to continue the current reform policy without going back to three decades ago, or go too far to give up faith in socialism for other ideologies”. That’s the official interpretation.
In an article on the Foreign Affairs Ministry’s website, ambassador to Namibia Ren Xiaoping suggested a translation of “avoiding self-inflicted setbacks” to emphasise that China shouldn’t create problems for itself through political campaigns, but rather should focus on domestic economic development.
In that great democracy with Chinese characteristics known as the internet, “don’t flip flop”, “don’t get sidetracked”, “don’t sway back and forth” and “no dithering” popped up the most often.
State media, hailing the use of this lifestyle word by the Communist Party secretary, reported that linguists had begun a competition for the best translation. Sinologist Ji Xianlin of Peking University offered that it could be best summed up as “not trouble-making”.
Some argued that proper interpretation of the phrase required insight into Chinese political history. “Zheteng has too broad a meaning considering the turbulence that the nation encountered from 1949 to 1978, a period when the country and its people were ruled by political movements and campaign slogans,” translator Da Ding said on his blog on Sina.com.
Some of the more vocal critics argue that the social turbulence brought on by ineffective campaigns, frequently changing slogans and the draining of huge human resources, time and energy for the sake of rapid economic development is, in itself, the biggest zheteng.
Central authorities, on the other hand, are determined that bu zheteng means maintaining course, especially in a year that will see a number of anniversaries of politically sensitive events.
Wu Si, a liberal historian and editor of the magazine Yanhuang Chunqiu, said: “Zheteng can be understood as actions taken for change, so in this sense the pro-democracy movement in 1989 and other campaigns espousing democracy, transparent government, rule of law and human rights are to be regarded as changes.
“Basically, Hu is placing his signature on the idea that the authorities prefer to maintain the current political status without any changes. One of the most unusual interpretations of the phrase, according to mainland media reports, came from Mao Xiaoqing, Mao Zedong’s niece. A delegate to the Hunan People’s Political Consultative Conference, she interpreted the bu zheteng spirit as “a harmonious communist country where people enjoy stable and selfless lives in communist fashion”. She proposed that “Mao Zedong Towns” should be established in the cities of Changsha, Xiangtan and Zhuzhou as models for a return to just such a society.
One less nostalgic netizen reacted to the idea as “shameless ... to show how bureaucratic officials have managed to harm people with unnecessary projects under empty slogans”.
To some people the phrase even has a sports context. One soccer fan, a Mr. Zong, said he hoped Chinese soccer officials would bu zheteng, or stop the senseless changing of the coach so often for the mediocre national team and begin to outline a stable training programme.
But to reporter Li Yong, bu zheteng is nothing but an excuse for authorities to silence people who complain that their rights are being violated. “Zheteng is the privilege of officials to abuse their power to inflict hardship on people, and by using bu zheteng, the government is telling the public that to achieve a harmonious society, we should shut up,” he said. “It’s disgusting.”
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Hu’s slip into slang has nation floundering for its meaning
An odd word choice by the president gets people talking
Vivian Wu
29 March 2009
People say it all the time, but it’s not the type of phrase you’d expect to hear in a speech by a major world leader. Yet, there it was. President Hu Jintao, speaking on December 18 about China’s future political path in a speech commemorating the 30th anniversary of the reform and opening-up policy, used the slang phrase bu zheteng.
Maybe he did it to show he’s just a regular Joe - or Zhou, or Hu. But whatever his reason, the phrase caught fire across the mainland as both a political term and a way to summarise opinions in all kinds of social situations.
At first, it baffled translators worldwide and triggered a kind of competition for an accurate interpretation because of its complex implications in a political and historical context.
After proposing two major goals for the future, Mr. Hu said: “As long as we don’t waver, don’t slack off and don’t zheteng, and as long as we firmly push forward reform and opening up ... we will surely make this grand blueprint a reality and achieve the goals we are striving for.”
Bu means “no” or “not” in Chinese, and zheteng is a verb with several meanings - to flip-flop, to perform futile actions, to fix unbroken things, to repeatedly turn over, to create trouble or to flounder.
Never before had such an informal Chinese phrase appeared in a speech by a state leader, and Mr. Hu didn’t delve into the spirit of bu zheteng, which threw the whole nation into a guessing game over his real meaning.
China News Service reported that the sudden appearance of the phrase bewildered the interpreter, who couldn’t find a proper English equivalent and ended up spelling it out in pinyin instead. The agency used “not to get sidetracked” as its translation.
Not surprisingly, Mr. Hu’s use of the phrase made headlines on the mainland and suddenly became hot news on the internet, in the media and in people’s everyday conversations.
State Council Information Office spokesman Wang Chen, in answering a media inquiry on the subject, said Mr. Hu’s vow to bu zheteng meant that “China needs to keep going forward on the path to build a socialist country with Chinese characteristics, and to continue the current reform policy without going back to three decades ago, or go too far to give up faith in socialism for other ideologies”. That’s the official interpretation.
In an article on the Foreign Affairs Ministry’s website, ambassador to Namibia Ren Xiaoping suggested a translation of “avoiding self-inflicted setbacks” to emphasise that China shouldn’t create problems for itself through political campaigns, but rather should focus on domestic economic development.
In that great democracy with Chinese characteristics known as the internet, “don’t flip flop”, “don’t get sidetracked”, “don’t sway back and forth” and “no dithering” popped up the most often.
State media, hailing the use of this lifestyle word by the Communist Party secretary, reported that linguists had begun a competition for the best translation. Sinologist Ji Xianlin of Peking University offered that it could be best summed up as “not trouble-making”.
Some argued that proper interpretation of the phrase required insight into Chinese political history. “Zheteng has too broad a meaning considering the turbulence that the nation encountered from 1949 to 1978, a period when the country and its people were ruled by political movements and campaign slogans,” translator Da Ding said on his blog on Sina.com.
Some of the more vocal critics argue that the social turbulence brought on by ineffective campaigns, frequently changing slogans and the draining of huge human resources, time and energy for the sake of rapid economic development is, in itself, the biggest zheteng.
Central authorities, on the other hand, are determined that bu zheteng means maintaining course, especially in a year that will see a number of anniversaries of politically sensitive events.
Wu Si, a liberal historian and editor of the magazine Yanhuang Chunqiu, said: “Zheteng can be understood as actions taken for change, so in this sense the pro-democracy movement in 1989 and other campaigns espousing democracy, transparent government, rule of law and human rights are to be regarded as changes.
“Basically, Hu is placing his signature on the idea that the authorities prefer to maintain the current political status without any changes. One of the most unusual interpretations of the phrase, according to mainland media reports, came from Mao Xiaoqing, Mao Zedong’s niece. A delegate to the Hunan People’s Political Consultative Conference, she interpreted the bu zheteng spirit as “a harmonious communist country where people enjoy stable and selfless lives in communist fashion”. She proposed that “Mao Zedong Towns” should be established in the cities of Changsha, Xiangtan and Zhuzhou as models for a return to just such a society.
One less nostalgic netizen reacted to the idea as “shameless ... to show how bureaucratic officials have managed to harm people with unnecessary projects under empty slogans”.
To some people the phrase even has a sports context. One soccer fan, a Mr. Zong, said he hoped Chinese soccer officials would bu zheteng, or stop the senseless changing of the coach so often for the mediocre national team and begin to outline a stable training programme.
But to reporter Li Yong, bu zheteng is nothing but an excuse for authorities to silence people who complain that their rights are being violated. “Zheteng is the privilege of officials to abuse their power to inflict hardship on people, and by using bu zheteng, the government is telling the public that to achieve a harmonious society, we should shut up,” he said. “It’s disgusting.”
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