The Other China

不吃白不吃，吃了變白癡

 

Liu Chan 劉蟾, who also goes by the literary sobriquet Dasheng 大生, is a writer, scholar and calligrapher. Born in Shaanxi, he lives in Beijing where he edits The Chinese Study 中國書房. We have frequently featured Liu’s work in The Other China.

‘Dasheng’s Calligraphic Comments’ are an innovative use of an ancient art form. In them, Liu Chan uses quasi-poetic couplets, often parallel in structure, to encapsulate current new stories, often juxtaposing items that superficially have little in common. In the colophons that he composes — they run vertically along either side of the lines of the couplet — the calligrapher elaborates on stories that have been highlighted in poetic brevity.

Although he is still relatively young, Liu Chan often affects the style of an ‘old fogey’, a personality type that is more than familiar to China Heritage. It is a persona that allows Liu considerable latitude in commenting on, and gently satirising, the welter of current affairs in a style that gestures towards late-dynastic prose. Indeed, Liu Chan’s lapidary couplets and drole commentaries are reminiscent of literati jottings 筆記, miscellanea 掌故 and historical marginalia 稗官野史 — various forms of informal records used by later generations to help gauge the realities and absurdities of authoritarian rule.

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China Heritage is grateful to Dasheng for sharing his recent work. Explanatory material has been added to the translation. The Chinese rubric of this chapter in The Other China is 不吃白不吃，吃了變白癡, a comical expression that means: ‘If it’s free, it’s for me (but it might cost you your sanity)’. Here, 白 bái also refers to 白菜 báicài, ‘cabbage’, which features in Liu Chan’s calligraphic couplet.

— Geremie R. Barmé
Editor, China Heritage
25 August 2026

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It’s Not Okay to Give Swill to Pigs, Though It Is
Okay for People to Eat Contaminated Cabbage

 

Recently, the blogger Yu Ziqi [余子齊, aka 漁獵齊哥] exposed a story originating in Kangbao country, Zhangjiakou, Hebei province, about farmers dipping cabbages [that is, wombok or Napa cabbage] in a formaldehyde solution to keep them fresh. It’s outrageous that there are constant food safely scandals like this!

Then, there’s the story that only a few days ago a new law banning contaminated water being fed to pigs came into effect. It’s outrageous to think that they actually had to pass a law outlawing pigs from being given dirty drinking water. What have all of the agricultural supervisors been up to all this time?

— Dasheng Liu Chan, 23 August 2026

Here I’d point out that over the last few years, quite a few stories of public concern have come to light because they’ve been exposed online by concerned citizens and independent writers. As for the ‘legacy media’: to all intents and purposes it appears to be on life support.

— translated by Geremie R. Barmé

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Chapters in Dasheng’s Calligraphic Comments

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