Welcome to RealTime Mandarin—a multimedia resource to immerse you in the latest Chinese language trends, inspire you to practice and improve your Mandarin every week, and empower you to communicate with confidence.
Subscribe now to get the next issue straight to your inbox!
Last week an employee at Tencent became an Internet sensation after standing up to his bosses for their glorifying of the brutal work practices at the tech company.
His name is Zhāng Yìfēi 张义飞, a 25-year-old programmer, who was given a ‘business breakthrough award’ (业务突破奖) after working 20-hour days as part of a team rolling out a new feature for a productivity app.
If 20-hour days is what the company wants, he wrote, ‘I’ll resign tomorrow’:
明天我会提离职，请各方不要卡我审批，免得妨碍我安心过个好年 - I’m handing my notice in tomorrow. Please don’t try to stop it; I want just to be able to enjoy the Chinese New Year holiday.
Screenshots of the message quickly circulated online. He became an instant hero for speaking up against his superiors about the overtime culture at one of China’s biggest companies.
This week we discuss two things:
Words of the week: lingo from Zhang’s original message and how it’s being discussed in the media
Conversations worth consuming: how the story is being discussed on social media.
1. WORDS OF THE WEEK
How to sack your company in style
The full text of Zhang’s complaint against Tencent is worth a read (163.com).
He paints a bleak picture of life as a graduate employee as a ‘working person’ 打工人, at Tencent.
Words for death and suffering describe his life as a young and mistreated employee in the company.
Useful words
死活 sǐ huó - life and death, health, wellbeing
是不是非得让开发人员加这20多个小时的班，才能让这个版本满你们的意？ 你们做任务排期的时候到底有没有考虑过手下人的死活？- Is it really necessary to ask your programmers to work more than 20 hours straight just to satisfy your needs? When arranging the work of your team did you even consider their wellbeing?
Note: life and death can also mean ‘not at any cost’ - listen to last week’s newsletter for more.
More: nice colloquial use of 满意 mǎnyì here.
慢性杀人 mànxìng shārén - slow killing
把慢性杀人当作荣誉激励 - Consider the slow killing of your team as some kind of honour for them.
Note: mànxìng is normally translated as ‘chronic’ but here it’s better translated as ‘slow’.
撒手人寰 sāshǒu rénhuán - ‘casting hands, people cycle’ - pass away
我的一个高中同学突发脑出的血，他的室友发现后马上拨打120把他送进加护病房，但他仍在三天后撒手人寰 - One of my high school classmates suffered a brain hemorrhage. His roommate immediately called an ambulance and sent him to the intensive care unit, but he died three days later.
Media coverage
The tone of media coverage is relatively neutral. Zhang is praised for his courage in taking on his bosses, but Tencent also come out of it fairly well as the company reacted quickly and sympathetically, according to media coverage. The slick work of Tencent’s comms team oozes from the press commentary.
There’s some useful words, though:
棱角 léng jiǎo - ‘edges and corners’ - have courage, be assertive
一些本来有棱角的年轻人在这种职场多次碰壁后，也渐渐变得圆滑和麻木 - Some young people who initially were quite assertive, have gradually lost their edge and become numb after coming up against challenges in the work place.
碰壁 pèng bì - hit a stone wall, come up against insurmountable challenges
叩问 kòu wèn - question, call into question
叩问“用健康换表彰奖金”到底值不值得 - Call into question whether or not exchanging your own health for the sake of a bonus is really worth it.
沉疴 chén kē - a serious and protracted illness; a perennial problem
过度加班问题，也确实是让很多职场人诟病的沉疴 - The overtime issue is a perennial problem that lots of people in the work place complain about.
More: 诟病 gòu bìng - criticise
螺丝钉 luó sī dīng - a tiny screw in a machine
下属员工似乎只是岗位中的“螺丝钉”，服从并执行领导的意志即可 - Lower level employees are merely a tiny screw in a huge system. They only need to obey and implement the instructions of their bosses.
不安分 bù'ān fèn - discontented, difficult
有太多自己的想法和意见反而是“不安分” - If you have too many of your own ideas and opinions you are considered to be difficult, and will not blindly follow what you’re told to do.
到头来 dào tóulái - ‘to the head’, in the end
如果纵许这种加班风气蔓延增长，到头来只会加剧“内卷”和员工的健康损耗 - If this kind of overtime culture is allowed to spread, in the end this will only exacerbate the problems of ‘involution’ in the work place, and the impact on people’s health.
Note: A more colloquial way to say ‘in the end’ 最终 zuì zhōng.
炒公司鱿鱼 chǎo gōngsī yóuyú - fried-company-squid - sacking your employer
「炒公司鱿鱼」在互联网打工人群体中实属罕见，以至于上述宣言一度登上微博热搜榜 - It’s very rare for employees to ‘sack their company’ in China’s Internet sector. So as soon as his statement was made public it hit the top social media rankings.
Related: 炒鱿鱼 chǎo yóu yú - get sacked (see newsletter from last April for more).
