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Comment by coldtea | Hacker News Reader

I wish people wouldn't take offense on behalf of other cultures they don't know much about.

Nobody much considers "let a hundrend flowers bloom" (as a phrase) equivalent to the "final solution", not even in China. This includes people who know all about Mao, the cultural revolution, the power plays and the executions that happened at the time.

It's actually a stock phrase in journalism and writing in general in lots of European countries (I know that's the case of its use in at least 4 countries/languages).

This looks more like someone in the US, several times removed from the events (by ethnicity, nation, time, etc), delivering a paternalistic lecture on foreign history.

Examples of casual use in both US and UK:

http://www.economist.com/news/britain/21581984-inner-city-sc...

http://www.washingtonpost.com/archive/politics/1986/11/03/we...

http://www.theguardian.com/politics/2015/sep/16/national-ant...

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Pointing out that this phrase might carry extra meaning beyond its literal interpretation != taking offense.

But in any case, "Let a thousand flowers bloom, then rip 999 of them out" is much more evocative of those events than the casual uses you cite.

"and not use such dumb and insensitive titles for their blog posts."

It's reasonable to infer offense from that statement.

>Pointing out that this phrase might carry extra meaning beyond its literal interpretation != taking offense.

That's correct, and I wouldn't mind if it was just that.

But OP's "I wish people would stop" etc and calling it "dumb and insensitive titles" goes a few steps beyond "pointing out that this phrase might carry extra meaning".

Good point. I do think the "then rip them out" part moves the title into dumb and insensitive territory, but we may just have to agree to disagree about that.

Pointing out possible offense is almost as disruptive to conversation as announcing actual offense, so it should usually be reserved for very clear-cut cases.

I notice use of the phrase since I'm aware of the origins and the the fact that oppression under Mao has affected people close to me.

I don't take offence, but may suffer injuries related to involuntary eye rolling. It's an overused phrase and I'll assume the author is a hack and stop reading. Sort of like anything with "cyber" in the title published after 1993.

I don't think its as stock as "a modest proposal", and yet, there will be people who have no idea about the origins of the phrase.

Likewise, I think it's disingenuous for readers to begin their indignation at every corner they find someone who is ignorant of the baggage a phrase or word might have with other people. I sometimes wonder if these kinds of oversensitive people don't go about putting a list together of all the inventions and things furthered by disgraced people because partaking in such things would give such detestable things their imprimatur.

So and so was a philanderer, this other one was an opportunist, that one was a bigot, this one was sexist, that one a hedonist, an atheist, a Christian, short, stinky, tall, too cultured, not my type, too much my type...

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