The great escape from Foxconn
Foxconn employees vote with their feet
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Hundreds of workers fled a Foxconn (富士康 fù shì kāng) factory in Zhèngzhōu 郑州 this week, after a COVID outbreak and lockdown which began earlier in October.
Some employees at the factory, which is Apple’s largest iPhone manufacturing site in China, say the company failed to provide enough food and a safe working environment under its ‘closed loop management’ (闭环管理 bì huán guǎn lǐ) rules.
Images and stories were shared online of people leaving on foot, walking tens of kilometres to get home, in what some described as The Great Escape:
开始有专车把员工定点接回家了，我们员工开玩笑说这就是大逃亡
They started to have dedicated cars to take employees home. People joked that this is The Great Escape.
Foxconn tried to calm anxieties and persuade people to stay. A statement from the company used an idiom which readers of this newsletter will know:
富士康给员工发出通知，称将“全力以赴确保富士康员工顺利安全返乡”
Foxconn issued a statement to employees saying: ‘We will go all in to ensure the safe passage of employees to return home’.
Note: When a company or government department uses the idiom, ‘go all in’, (全力以赴 quán lì yǐ fù) it normally means they’ve made a total mess, like officials did in Xi’An’s chaotic lockdowns in January this year.
Entertaining idioms aside, COVID vocab in Chinese is the gift that keeps giving if you’re after confusing new words and phrases.
Reading into this story, you will find ‘point to point management’, or P2P (点对点 diǎn duì diǎn), which is similar to ‘closed loop management’ (闭环管理 bì huán guǎn lǐ). And there are ‘close contacts’ (密接 mì jiē), and my new favourite: ‘close contacts of close contacts’ (次密接 cì mì jiē)!
So in this week’s newsletter we explore online conversations about the escape from Foxconn.
What you’re missing in this week’s podcast:
Today’s podcast episode is 50 minutes in total, with 30 minutes of native audio content to get stuck into. In this week’s episode our editor, Zoe Qian, discusses her favourite three phrases (all connected with feet and running), recites the full word list and example sentences, and reads one of the articles we refer to in full.
Favourite Five
1. 润 rùn
run
哦，冯小刚已经润了 - Oh - Feng Xiaogang has already legged it.
Related: 润学 rùn xué - 'runology'. The character 润 rùn sounds like the English 'run'. The word has become online slang for wanting to leave or run away from China during COVID. It came into use during the Shanghai lockdowns in April this year. Other ways to use it, which Zoe discusses in the podcast, include:
润离 rùn lí - ‘running away’ (also 润去 rùn qù)
华润万家 huá rùn wàn jiā - ‘Chinese people escape to many diifferent countries’
2. 洗地 xǐ dì
trying to justify mistakes
媒体不发声本身就是可耻的行为，没想到现在还反过来洗地 - The fact the media have not reported on it is shameful. Even worse, they are now trying to cover this up.
Note: ‘wash the floor’ is Internet slang, similar to ‘whitewashing’ in English. We first discussed this in January this year.
3. 狗洞 gǒu dòng
‘dog hole’; dodgy workmanship
钻出“狗洞”，往外走出厂区，我就不那么害怕了 - As soon as a I escaped through the hole in the fence, I felt much safer.
Note: a ‘dog hole’ normally describes the shoddy building work of badly built tower blocks in China. Here the writer refers to an ‘actual hole’ in the fence, which is there because of bad workmanship.
4. 用脚投票 yòng jiǎo tóu piào
vote with your feet
富士康作为制造业的代表，员工用脚投票表明自己的态度，不要清零 - Employees of Foxconn, the symbol of China's manufacturing industry, have voted with their feet: They don't accept the Zero COVID policy of the company.
More: Read more in The China Project phrase of the week about this American idiom which has been absorbed into Chinese.
5. 背井离乡 bèi jǐng lí xiāng
leave one’s native place
如果说中国人背井离乡是为了生活，那么千里返乡还是为了生活 - If the Chinese people left home in order to make a living, they are now returning home to survive.
Consuming the Conversation
Useful words
顺势 shùn shì
go with the flow
趁这个机会顺势摆烂，不好好组织物资保障，不科普解惑安抚，放任恐慌蔓延，又故意放人走 - Foxconn is taking the opportunity to intentionally let things rot. They are not offering logistical support, not communicating clearly to dispel anxieties, letting some fear build, and now they are intentionally letting people go.
Note: 摆烂 bǎi làn - let things rot or get to their worst. Last discussed in March newsletter.
寒心 hán xīn
cold - heart; to disappoint or be bitterly disappointed
官方介入总是好事，希望吸取教训，不要寒了打工人的心 - It’s a good thing that the government is stepping in. I hope they can learn from their mistakes and not let their employees down.
惨淡 cǎn dàn
dismal
不论媒体怎么宣传惨淡，不论提出多少个案，工人阶级的选择，已经很明显了 - No matter how badly the media portrays the situation, or how many cases are cited to prove it, the choice of workers is now clear.
反噬 fǎn shì
backlash
这显然是一种中国式的宣传反噬，刻意妖魔化地宣扬病毒的严重后果 - This is clearly a Chinese-style media backlash, caused by the authorities deliberately demonizing the serious consequences of the virus.
戾气 lì qì
hostile
每个人心中都有很多疑问，也有很多戾气 - Everyone had a lot of questions and was very angry.
发毛 fā máo
scared
我绕路走进了一片乱坟岗，田间地头，凸起一个个土坟包，我心里有点发毛 - I took a detour and walked into a graveyard. I could see burial mounds in the fields. I was a bit apprehensive.
Three-character phrases
洗白文 xǐ bái wén
whitewashing
洗白文这不就来了吗 - So here they are now covering up this mess.
踢皮球 tī pí qiú
kick football; pass the buck
他们联系热线电话、物业、领导，不是踢皮球，就是让他们等 - When they tried to call the hotline, the residential block management team, or government officials, they were either fobbed off or told to wait.
Note: Zoe discusses this more in the podcast. It describes the experience of being ‘passed from pillar to post’ by government departments.
是个头 shì ge tóu
the end of a situation
不知道郑州的情况什么时候才是个头 - I’m not sure when the situation in Zhengzhou will end.
Note: 头 tóu here means 尽头 jìn tóu - the end
Idioms
五味杂陈 wǔ wèi zá chén
mixed feelings
自己看到网上员工“逃离”的内容后，内心也是五味杂陈，心里很难受 - I had mixed feelings when I saw online posts about employees ‘escaping’. It was painful to see.
无言之至 wú yán zhī zhì
speechless
郑州可以不怕天灾，但今年各种人祸让人无言之至 - Zhengzhou can be fearless in the face of any natural disaster, but the man-made disasters this year have left me speechless.
心惊胆战 xīn jīng dǎn zhàn
frightened
天天听朋友和父母说郑州的情况，我每天听的心惊胆战的 - Every day I hear friends and my parents talking about Zhengzhou. It’s scary.
功可补过 gōng kě bǔ guò
achievements can make up for mistakes
所以表达了有钱就可以为所欲为，功可补过吗 - So does this mean if you have money you can do whatever you want and get away with your mistakes?
More: 为所欲为 wéi suǒ yù wéi - do as you wish.
顺水推舟 shùn shuǐ tuī zhōu
push the boat with the water; go with the flow
感觉企业也有点顺水推舟的意思 - It seems the company is going with the flow a little bit [for its own benefit].
More: This idiom goes all the way back to the Yuan dynasty, from the play Snow in Midsummer (窦娥冤 dòu é yuān), written by Guān Hànqīng 关汉卿 (see classics below).
Phrases
报喜不报忧 bào xǐ bù bào yōu
only talk about the good news and not the bad
现在的政府也是报喜不报忧 - Now the government is also not addressing the real issue.
一个萝卜一个坑 yī ge luó bo yī ge kēng
one radish, one hole; each has their own task, and there is nobody to spare
一个员工感染，肯定要休息，工厂不存在家里办公，一个萝卜一个坑，少一个人有些机器都开不起来 - If one employee gets sick they must rest. In manufacturing you can’t work from home. Everyone plays a role on a production line. If one person is missing, some machines can’t be operated.
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