four-character

Updated: May 26, 2025

The small talk of the tea-shops now even says that officials having a few sticks of European furniture in their houses are san mao-tzu. People in the old days of last month heeded this four-character warning, for a bambooing at the nearest police-station, ting erh, was always a possibility. Now everyone can do as he likes.

- Indiscreet Letters From Peking : Being the Notes of an Eye-Witness, Which Set Forth in Some Detail, from Day to Day, the Real Story of the Siege and Sack of a Distressed Capital in 1900—The Year of Great Tribulation