"The real culprit" — Phrase of the Week
And the reason why mobile phone prices are going up
Our phrase of the week is: “The real culprit” (罪魁祸首 zuì kuí huò shǒu)
Context
China’s smartphone prices are rising, with increases set to be the biggest the industry has seen in five years.
All major brands have said prices will increase from this month, by anywhere from 1,000 to 3,000 RMB for mid-to-high-end models.
This sudden surge in prices is being driven by the massive investment in data centres to increase AI computing power across China. The industry-grade chips needed for these facilities are more profitable than smartphone chips. So as demand from the AI sector has exploded, the supply of chips for consumer electronics, such as for smartphones, has tightened and pushed prices up.
The AI computing arms race, it turns out, is now hitting consumers where it hurts most — in their wallets. And Chinese media has a phrase for exactly what’s to blame:
“The real culprit behind rising phone prices: skyrocketing memory chip costs.”
罪魁祸首：存储芯片疯狂上涨。
And with that, we have our Phrase of the Week.
What it means
“The real culprit” is the translation of a common four-character idiom. The individual characters mean “crime” (罪), “chief” (魁), “disaster” (祸), and “head” (首). It refers to the person or thing most responsible for a crime or disaster.
The phrase originates from a Ming Dynasty play, The Jade Ring (玉玦记), written by Zheng Ruoyong (郑若庸), a leading dramatist of his era. The Jade Ring is a chuanqi (传奇), which is a form of drama popular during the Ming Dynasty that involved elaborate singing, typically weaving together romance, tragedy, and the supernatural.
The idiom appears in a scene in which a wronged soul who was murdered returns from the dead to seek revenge, saying:
“Although it was the procuress who killed me, Juannu is the real culprit behind it all.
So I will go after her.”
“虽是虔婆杀我，娟奴是祸首罪魁，追了他去。”
The procuress (虔婆) was the brothel madam who controlled the women inside, and committed the actual murder. But the ghost's anger targets Juannu (娟奴) — the manipulative woman who set the fatal chain of events in motion. The procuress wielded the knife, but Juannu bore the deeper responsibility.
Centuries later, Lu Xun (鲁迅) — arguably modern China's most important and influential writer — used "the real culprit" (罪魁祸首) to describe those blocking the spread of new culture and modern thought in China.
In modern Chinese, it’s a common idiom when discussing the true source of a disaster or negative situation.
So with the sudden rise in mobile phone prices, it’s the memory chip market, fuelled by the AI hardware boom, that is the real culprit behind consumers paying more for smartphones.
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.
