Word: proverb
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Dates: during 1980-1989
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...dramatic political changes elsewhere in the bloc. The obdurate rulers in Czechoslovakia, Bulgaria and Rumania refuse to imitate their reformist neighbors but can't help looking anxiously over their shoulder. "They are all worried about the fallout from change elsewhere," said a Western diplomat in the region. A Bulgarian proverb captures the fears: "When the Gypsy's bear is dancing in your neighbor's yard, you know it will soon come to yours...
Everywhere I go in China, most of the people I encounter, including those aware of what happened in Tiananmen Square, express perfectly understandable human sentiments grounded in fatalism. "As the old proverb goes," says a middle-level government official in Guangdong who holds a master's in political science from an American college, 'Happiness and sorrow flow along the same river.' Do we deplore what the army did in Tiananmen? Of course. Do we wish the government were different, more democratic, more humane? Of course. But what would you have us do? Take to the streets? For what? We have...
...reason I was surprised that the demonstrators rubbed the leaders' noses in it," says a professor of Chinese literature in Guangzhou, "is that their actions were so uncharacteristic of the way in which most smart Chinese operate. The emperors and their policies change rapidly in China. As the old proverb says, 'In the morning, welcomed as the guest of a high official; in the evening, held as a prisoner under the steps.' To survive in China, you must keep your head down and be ready to change your allegiances and enthusiasms quickly -- or at least appear to. The elements...
Sitting in his spacious, wood-paneled office in the Estonian capital of Tallinn, Communist Party leader Vaino Valjas, 58, wryly sums up the situation in his tiny Baltic republic with a peasant proverb: Better to see once than to hear a hundred times. The former Soviet Ambassador to Nicaragua was called home only a year ago to take up his new post, but what Valjas has already witnessed in those tumultuous twelve months is nothing less than a revolution, from the birth of unofficial political movements like the Estonian Popular Front to the bruising constitutional crisis with Moscow over...
...There's an old Italian proverb--`before speaking, listen.' And that's what I intend...