The ayi from downstairs came to my room to call my landlord about paying for the apartment management fee and garbage fee, and they had an argument. The ayi defended herself by saying that she was just 实事求是.

"Seeking truth from facts", a famous saying by Deng Xiaoping, Communist Party chairman who guided China into economic reform during the 1980s and 90s. When was the last time you claimed that by volunteering your time at the local library you were "asking what you could do for your country, not what your country could do for you" or that the day your neighbor lost your favorite hacksaw was a day that would "live on in infamy"?

Now that's what I call a totalitarian government.