Our phrase of the week is: “fobbing off a beggar” (打发叫花子 dǎfa jiàohuāzi)
Context
Zhang Xue (张雪) is the founder of Zhang Xue Motorcycles (张雪机车), a Chongqing-based company which shot to fame in March this year after a win at the World Superbike Championship Portugal round with its 820RR-RS bike.
On October 26 Zhang, who has over 8.5 million followers on social media, gave a speech at Chongqing University (重庆大学). He started by telling the packed hall that he planned to hire around 100 graduates, offering 120,000 to 150,000 yuan a year for R&D roles, and 100,000 to 120,000 for other jobs.
But for some attendees, those salary levels were far too low. The reaction soon went online, where many agreed that graduates from such a top university deserved higher pay.
Their high expectations are partly down to the fact that in 2023 the two biggest employers of CQU mechanical engineering master’s graduates were the carmakers BYD (比亚迪), and Seres (赛力斯), a Chongqing-based electric vehicle maker. They reportedly pay 200,000 to 350,000 yuan a year.
Which led one article to explain how some students were feeling about the offer:
“By comparison, Zhang Xue Motorcycles’ offer—averaging less than 10,000 yuan a month—fell well short of what many highly educated graduates were willing to accept.
‘Are you trying to fob us off like beggars with pay like this?’”
相比之下，张雪机车拿出的这份平均到每个月不足1万元的薪资，让不少高学历学生觉得难以接受。“这点工资打发叫花子呢？”
And with that, we have our Sinica Phrase of the Week.
What it means
“Fobbing off a beggar” (打发叫花子 dǎ fa jiào huā zi) is a colloquial saying (俗语). It breaks down as: “to send away” (打发 dǎfa), “to call out” (叫 jiào), “flower” (花 huā), and a noun suffix (子 zi) on the end.
So translated directly, this combination makes no sense at all!
Let’s break down the two main parts:
The last three characters (叫花子) actually mean “beggar”, in which the “flower” (花) character was originally written a different character (化) which sounds the same, and carries the sense of “begging for alms” (叫化). This meaning is traced to Buddhist monks seeking donations, also known as “seeking alms” (化缘).
The earliest appearance of this expression is in The Tale of the Undershirt (合汗衫), a play by Zhang Guobin (张国宾). Zhang was a playwright and actor of the Yuan dynasty (1271–1368), who was famous for depicting real life scenarios in his works.
In this play, The Tale of the Undershirt, a wealthy man known for his generosity to the poor loses everything in a fire and ends up begging in the streets himself, saying:
“I wander the back lanes and streets, begging for leftover soup and scraps of food.”
我绕着他后巷的街，叫化些剩汤和这残菜。
Over time, the character in “jiaohua” (叫化) shifted to a first tone, sounding the same as “flower” (花), which eventually took its place.
Next, the phrase to “send away” (打发) in this context means handing a few coins or some leftovers to a beggar to get rid of them.
So, put the two together, and “fobbing off a beggar” (打发叫花子) describes giving someone a pitiful amount, with the dismissive attitude of someone getting rid of that beggar.
Today, the full phrase is used when an amount of something offered is so small it feels like an insult, whether that’s money, a gift, compensation or a pay rise. It’s often thrown back as an indignant question:
“Are you trying to fob me off like a beggar?”
你打发叫花子呢？
It also appears in the form “treating someone like a beggar to be fobbed off” (把……当叫花子打发), as in the headline of one of this week’s articles about Zhang Xue.
“Fobbing elite master’s graduates off like beggars: does the year’s most likeable internet-famous boss deserve the backlash?”
“把985硕士当叫花子打发”，年度最讨喜的网红老板被骂得冤吗？
The strong reaction of some to the salary levels offered by Zhang Xue is less about the actual number, or him even.
It’s more a reflection of how graduates feel today. They face a tough employment market, high education costs, and some big firms have set unrealistically high expectations, and so some graduates feel like they deserve more than many companies can afford to offer.
Andrew Methven is the author of RealTime Mandarin, a resource which helps you bridge the gap to real-world fluency in Mandarin, stay informed about China, and communicate with confidence—all through weekly immersion in real news. Subscribe for free here.
