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The answer to that question, according to Yuan dynasty play-write, Yáng Wénkuí 杨文奎 is:
人无千日好，花无百日红 rén wú qiān rì hǎo, huā wú bǎi rì hóng
- A man is never happy for a thousand days, and a flower never blooms for a hundred.
In other words, no, things can’t be this good all the time.
This week we look into stories of two companies that have been successful over the years in China, but aren’t doing so well at the moment.
Conversations worth consuming: Netizen conversations mocking Pīn duōduō 拼多多 discounting strategy.
Words of the week: the latest failed investment of Bǎidù 百度, which recently culled jobs in its live-streaming and gaming businesses.
For Baidu and Pinduoduo, things really can’t stay as good as they were indefinitely.
Read more below!
1. CONVERSATIONS WORTH CONSUMING
Pin Duoduo - the discount king?
Pīn duōduō 拼多多 is known as China’s king of the second- and third-tier markets (下沉之王 xiàchén zhī wáng).
This is from the phrase, xià chén shìchǎng 下沉市场, which is often mistranslated as ‘sinking market’. It means anywhere outside of Tier-1 cities.
Pinduoduo first dominated as the go-to e-commerce platform in the poorer parts of China and gradually became a serious player in the first-tier markets.
One of their strategies to gain new customers is to gamify discounting. Consumers can get huge discounts (sometimes 100%). They have to invite others to help them cut prices (砍价 kǎn jià), with new customers able to kǎn 砍 more than old ones.
In a lively discussion on Weibo this week, under the tag #拼多多回应砍价99.9%称小数点后有6位# (Pinduo says that there’s another 6 decimals on the 99.9% discount), Netizens mocked the company for its aggressive but unreliable discounting strategy.
So much so, that they have invented a number of different names for the brand. None of them are complementary:
拼夕夕 pīn xī xī (the character 多 is made up of two 夕s)
坑夕夕 kēng xī xī (坑 means to trick someone)
拼刀刀 pīn dāo dāo (刀 refers to discounts, here in a mocking way)
骗爹爹 piàn diē diē (my favourite! A combination of 骗子 and 坑爹)
Try translating those! The bottom line: there is low trust in Pinduoduo as a brand.
Useful words
坐实 zuò shí - to be proven (a theory or a crime)
好嘛，坑爹爹这是要坐实了 - Right, so this proves that Pinduoduo is out to deceive consumers.
死活 sǐ huó - ‘life or death’ - will not at any cost
永远砍不完，最后那一分，无论找多少人也没用，就是死活不给 - The prices will never get down to zero. That last bit, no matter how many people you ask to join you, Pinduoduo will absolutely not give it to you.
砍一刀 kǎn yīdāo - give a discount
最深的套路，就是拼多多砍一刀 - The biggest scam is Pinduoduo’s discounting strategy.
当猴耍 dāng hóushuǎ - treat as a monkey; treat someone like an idiot
把用户当猴耍。让你感觉每次只差一点，其实差了好多 - Pinduoduo are treating customers like idiots. Every time you feel like you’re nearly there [getting to zero discount]. But there’s actually still a long way to go.
Idioms
大开眼界 dàkāi yǎnjiè - an eye opener (usually positive, but used negatively here - like ‘shocking’)
拼夕夕是目前唯一一个让我大开眼界的 - Pinduoduo is the only one that I am truly shocked by.
天荒地老 tiānhuāng dìlǎo - old age
砍到天荒地老，都砍不完 - It takes ages to get a discount on Pinduoduo. It’s impossible to get to the bottom [zero price].
大张旗鼓 dàzhāng qígǔ - making a fanfare
一直不明白，为什么拼多多可以大张旗鼓骗消费者? - I really am confused as to how Pinduoduo has managed to so blatantly deceived their customers?
Phrases
小刀捅屁股，开了眼了 xiǎodāo tǒng pìgu, kāile yǎnle - poked in the ass by a knife, opened a hole; very surprising - ‘holy moly’
真是小刀划屁股，开眼了 - This really is shocking!
This is a Chinese pun, a 歇后语 xiēhòuyǔ
民不举官不究 mín bù jǔ guān bù jiū - the people don’t report problems, and officials don’t investigate them; turn a blind eye to something
希望官方支棱起来，千万不要民不举官不究 - I really hope that the regulators have a look at this. It can’t be ignored anymore.
