Thursday, October 25, 2018

Chairman Xi has, shall we say, limitations

Note what happens at the very end of this clip:

Chairman Xi is shown delivering a speech at the celebration of the 90th anniversary of the founding of the Chinese People's Liberation Army. The live-action camera accidentally caught the use of Hanyu Pinyin on the teleprompter to phonetically annotate the character kuī 岿 / 巋 ("grand, stately; secure, lasting; imposing") in the expression "kuīrán bù dòng 岿然不动" ("motionless; steadfastly stand one's ground").

Kuī 岿 / 巋 ("grand, stately; secure, lasting; imposing") is not among the top 9,933 highest frequency characters. The fact that Xi's speechwriter(s) felt it was necessary to phonetically annotate the character kuī 岿 indicates that they lacked confidence in his ability to read it correctly. If so, then why did they choose such an obscure character for him to have to read in such broadly exposed circumstances? Clearly, it was to make him seem more learned than he actually is. "Kuīrán bù dòng 岿然不动" ("motionless; steadfastly stand one's ground") is a fixed phrase from the philosophically eclectic classical text known as the Huáinánzǐ 淮南子 ([Writings of] the Masters [at the Court of the Prince of] Huainan), which dates to sometime before 139 BC.

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