“Pilfered in passing” — Phrase of the Week
The fall of a writer for plagiarism
Our phrase of the week is: “pilfered in passing” (顺手牵羊 shùn shǒu qiān yáng)
Context
One of the biggest stories being discussed in the Chinese media this week is a high profile plagiarism case involving the academic and writer, Jiang Fangzhou (蒋方舟).
Jiang is known as the “genius girl” (天才少女). She published her first book at the age of nine, and by the age of 12 was writing columns for Southern Metropolis Daily (南方都市报).
She was admitted to Tsinghua University in 2008 for her under graduate degree with a 60-point concession on her gaokao score. After a stint as deputy editor of Neweekly (新周刊), a respected current affairs magazine, Jiang went on to take a master’s degree in creative writing at Renmin University which she completed in 2019.
Since then she’s become one of the more recognisable literary personalities in China, especially among people born in the 1990s and 2000s.
But this has all come crashing down this month following accusations of plagiarism which resulted in her master’s being revoked by Renmin University.
The accusations were first raised by a retired Tsinghua University professor in August last year, who made a formal complaint to Remin University in April this year which triggered an investigation.
More recently, two “online sleuths” identified passages in her master’s thesis, and one of her books, which they alleged had been lifted directly from publications outside of China, asking the question:
“This makes me wonder:
how much of it did she write herself, and did she casually lift it from somewhere else?”
这让我不禁怀疑，多少东西是她自己写的，多少东西是顺手牵羊的。
And with that, we have our Sinica Phrase of the Week.
What it means
“Casually lift from somewhere else” is our translation of the classical Chinese idiom which literally means to “leading the goat away in passing” (顺手牵羊 shùn shǒu qiān yáng). Although in the end we landed on a different translation which I’ll come to at the end.
But first, the long and winding history of this old idiom.
The earliest reference of the image of “leading a goat” is believed to be in The Book of Rites (礼记), the Confucian classic on ritual and etiquette compiled during the Han Dynasty (206 BCE-220 CE). The text instructs that when presenting a horse or a goat as a gift, it should be led in a certain way:
“When presenting a horse or a goat, lead it with the right hand.”
效马效羊者右牵之。
The first recorded use of the idiom in its modern form comes over a millennia later, in Single Whip Seizes the Lance (单鞭夺槊), a play by Shang Zhongxian (尚仲贤) who was a playwright of the Yuan Dynasty (1271-1368).
In one scene, a warrior boasts of capturing an enemy rider:
“I gripped his horse with my right hand, seized his eyelashes with my left, and led him back as easily as leading away a goat.”
是我把右手带住马，左手揪着他眼扎毛，顺手牵羊一般牵他回来了。
A century later, “as easily as leading away a goat” was immortalised in the Thirty-Six Stratagems (三十六计), a famous collection of military tactics, likely compiled in the late Ming Dynasty (1368-1644), althgough the writer is unknown.
“As easily as leading a goat” (顺手牵羊) is the twelfth stratagem. It teaches that when a large army is on the move it will inevitably expose weaknesses. A clever opponent takes advantage of every one of them, no matter how small, accumulating minor gains into major ones.
The idiom’s meaning has evolved over the centuries. Now in modern Chinese it describes casually or opportunistically pocketing something that doesn’t belong to you. It always carries a negative tone, which is exactly how it was used to describe Jiang Fangzhou’s writing.
According to the allegations against her, the work of other writers was conveniently within her reach, and helpfully written outside China making it harder to track.
So, according to her accusers, she casually lifted, translated, adjusted and dropped them into her own work. Which is why we landed on “pilfered in passing” for the translation of this ancient and storied idiom.
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.
