Editorial

There was a well-known phrase banded around in business circles by those wishing to impart their supposed great wisdom into the ears of would-be investors in the Middle Kingdom around 20 years ago. It went, “In China, ‘yes’ means ‘maybe’ and ‘maybe’ means ‘no’”. Back then, when I first came to China, I had a local colleague who took a fancy to saying, “You are so very interesting”, whenever he witnessed any of my eccentric “foreignness”. In reality, what he meant was, “I think you’re an utter lunatic”. Here in Nanjing, people are fond of using the expression “25” (二五) to refer to someone who’s done something stupid, idiotic or deranged. We therefore begin this month with a question; why is the telephone code for Nanjing “025”? Alert readers will have noticed that a new piece of lexicon has entered the Chinese language. Who has not heard these words of late; “今天核算” (have a NAT today)? And where does the expression “马上” (very soon) come from? Well, it actually derives from the ancient saying, "倚马可待", as a reference to a timeframe so short that you only need “lean on the horse”, and hey presto, it would be here! Welcome to “Vernacular” from The Nanjinger.

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