For those unfamiliar, the phrase “crossing the river by feeling the stones” (摸着石头过河) is attributed to Deng Xiaoping. It was the method by which the “Reform and Opening” program was meant to take China, ever so cautiously, step by step, from its failed centrally planned experiment into a socialist mixed economy.
I love this phrase and I borrow it from Deng repeatedly. It captures a desire to press forward toward progress with a spirit of moderation and humility. Idioms are helpful, in so many words, to capture a complex sentiment. It is much more pleasing to say “lets cross the river by feeling the stones” than to say “let’s try to achieve success through incremental measures so as not to overreach.”
I doubt this is what Deng had in mind, but I like to imagine his idiom was a subtle dig at Mao, who had his own slogans and clever political branding. Contrast crossing the river by feeling the stones with taking a Great Leap Forward into the river. What metaphors might that result in? Swimming against the current, being in over your head, being swept away...
Every culture has idioms, but to me, Chinese really leans into them. I am not a linguist and I don’t speak Mandarin, but I am confident through translation that the metaphorical text is being captured, even if some of the spirit is lost.
We can put a name to it: Chengyu (成语). These idioms – there are thousands of them apparently – capture the collective wisdom of an ancient and enduring civilization. A benign interpretation would be that Deng and other CCP leaders have brought the spirit of chengyu into the communication of the modern Chinese state; putting the “PR” in PRC (sorry, had to!). A cynical westerner might say authoritarianism by metaphor is Orwellian “double speak.” Is there some dialectical synthesis here? I have yet to come across any writing about how a cultural tradition of aphorisms can interact with a dictatorial desire for pithy propaganda slogans. I certainly hope to one day.
Recently, some poor low level social media apparatchik at the Chinese embassy in Ireland tweeted this, since deleted:
I love this phrase and I borrow it from Deng repeatedly. It captures a desire to press forward toward progress with a spirit of moderation and humility. Idioms are helpful, in so many words, to capture a complex sentiment. It is much more pleasing to say “lets cross the river by feeling the stones” than to say “let’s try to achieve success through incremental measures so as not to overreach.”
I doubt this is what Deng had in mind, but I like to imagine his idiom was a subtle dig at Mao, who had his own slogans and clever political branding. Contrast crossing the river by feeling the stones with taking a Great Leap Forward into the river. What metaphors might that result in? Swimming against the current, being in over your head, being swept away...
Every culture has idioms, but to me, Chinese really leans into them. I am not a linguist and I don’t speak Mandarin, but I am confident through translation that the metaphorical text is being captured, even if some of the spirit is lost.
We can put a name to it: Chengyu (成语). These idioms – there are thousands of them apparently – capture the collective wisdom of an ancient and enduring civilization. A benign interpretation would be that Deng and other CCP leaders have brought the spirit of chengyu into the communication of the modern Chinese state; putting the “PR” in PRC (sorry, had to!). A cynical westerner might say authoritarianism by metaphor is Orwellian “double speak.” Is there some dialectical synthesis here? I have yet to come across any writing about how a cultural tradition of aphorisms can interact with a dictatorial desire for pithy propaganda slogans. I certainly hope to one day.
Recently, some poor low level social media apparatchik at the Chinese embassy in Ireland tweeted this, since deleted:
Who is the wolf?
Some people accused China for so-called “wolf warrior diplomacy”. In his well-known fable, Aesop described how the Wolf accused the Lamb of committing offences.
The wolf is the wolf, not the lamb. BTW, China is not a lamb.
A truly baffling, failed attempt to turn western fable against its cultural heirs. Apparently some rivers are too wide to be forded.
I’ve recently had some cause to consider whether I fully understand and appreciate the crossing the river metaphor.
The idea of crossing a river - what does it really imply about your objective? This feels like “why did the chicken cross the road,” but maybe there is a nuance that I wasn’t appreciating. Here are the possibilities:
The idea of crossing a river - what does it really imply about your objective? This feels like “why did the chicken cross the road,” but maybe there is a nuance that I wasn’t appreciating. Here are the possibilities:
- The goal is to take the next step. Yes, you are navigating by feeling, but you need to look down to keep your footing. In a vague sense, you want to reach “the other side,” but you don’t actually know where up- or down-stream you are going to arrive. It’s up to the stones.
- The goal is to reach the other side. The stones themselves have instrumental value in helping you get to that opposite bank. They are a means to an end.
Both of these feel a little flawed. A similar idiom to the first interpretation, “it’s the journey – not the destination – that matters” is the kind of sentiment that (deservedly IMHO) gets an eye roll. A random walk is for atoms and stock prices – not so much for people.
And yet, you really don’t know the other side. Maybe I have a vision of what utopia would look like, but it’s just that. Crossing is clarifying. And if you’re lucky, there is more than one divergent path from which to choose. Cue Robert Frost...
As I think about it, the spirit of “crossing the river by feeling the stones” is a dictum to be good Bayesians. But again, isn’t it much nicer to say “lets cross the river by feeling the stones” than to say “let’s employ Bayesian inference and proceed cautiously?”
Back to the power of metaphor. There is a Star Trek: Next Generation episode where the Enterprise encounters a civilization that speaks solely in metaphors. The ship’s universal translator can’t possibly understand the syntax of this language, and it appears that conflict may ensue. Just at the last minute, Picard understands that every sentence is a simulacrum. Now he’s speaking their language. Peace reigns.
- Cameron Parker