{"id":140500,"date":"2012-07-25T12:00:40","date_gmt":"2012-07-25T19:00:40","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/chinadigitaltimes.net\/?p=140500"},"modified":"2012-07-25T12:48:49","modified_gmt":"2012-07-25T19:48:49","slug":"word-week-believe-it-not-i-do","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/chinadigitaltimes.net\/2012\/07\/word-week-believe-it-not-i-do\/","title":{"rendered":"Word of the Week: Believe It or Not, I Do"},"content":{"rendered":"
Editor\u2019s Note: The\u00a0Word of the Week\u00a0comes from China Digital Space\u2019s\u00a0Grass-Mud Horse Lexicon, a glossary of terms created by Chinese netizens and frequently encountered in online political discussions. These are the words of China\u2019s online \u201cresistance discourse,\u201d used to mock and subvert the official language around censorship and political correctness.<\/em><\/p>\n If you are interested in participating in this project by submitting and\/or translating terms, please contact the CDT editors at CDT [at] chinadigitaltimes [dot] net.<\/em><\/p>\n \u81f3\u4e8e\u4f60\u4eec\u4fe1\u4e0d\u4fe1\uff0c\u7531\u4f60\uff0c\u6211\u53cd\u6b63\u662f\u4fe1\u4e86 (Zh\u00ecy\u00fa n\u01d0 x\u00ecn b\u00fa x\u00ecn, y\u00f3u n\u01d0, w\u01d2 f\u01cenzh\u00e8ng sh\u00ec x\u00ecn le): Whether you believe it or not, it\u2019s up to you, but I do anyway. <\/a><\/p>\n <\/a>During a press conference held by the Railway Ministry on July 24, 2011, a reporter asked why the government had attempted to bury portions of the high-speed train that crashed in Wenzhou<\/a> the day before. Ministry spokesman Wang Yongping gave the following response (as translated by ChinaGeeks<\/a><\/strong>):<\/p>\n Why was the train car buried? Actually, when I got off the plane today, the comrade who picked me up from the airport said that he already saw this kind of news online. I was on the plane so I didn\u2019t have a good handle on things. I wanted to ask him, \u201cWhy would there be such a foolish question? Can an event that the whole world knows about really be buried?\u201d He told me, \u201cIt\u2019s not being buried. Truthfully, this news cannot be buried.\u201d We have already tried though countless ways to broadcast this information to society.<\/p>\n But about burying [the train car], [the people who picked me up from the airport] gave this explanation. Because the scene of the rescue was very complicated. Below was a quagmire. It was very hard to perform rescue operations. So they buried the head of the car underneath, covered it with dirt, mainly to facilitate rescue efforts. Right now, this is his explanation. Whether or not you believe it; either way, I believe it.<\/p><\/blockquote>\n Watch Wang make the statement that cost him his job<\/a> here<\/a><\/strong>.<\/p>\n What is remarkable is Wang\u2019s eagerness to engage in self-deception and accept such an absurd explanation. Whether the rest of us allow ourselves to be similarly fooled, Wang suggests, is our own problem.<\/p>\n \u201cWhether you believe it or not, it\u2019s up to you, but I do anyway\u201d has become Chinternet meme. This statement has been translated literally from Chinese to English as \u201cI negative positive believe,\u201d implying that Chinese citizens have no choice but to believe what the authorities claim\u2014even if it makes no sense.<\/p>\n Some online parodies of Wang\u2019s remarks:<\/p>\n