Wen Xin Diao Chong 001.

# Entering the Sea and Going Ashore

Entering the sea and going ashore are a pair of interesting terms in the modern era. Before the term "going ashore" became popular, I once thought that the counterpart of "entering the sea" should be "going up the mountain." It seemed self-evident that the dragon goes into the sea and the tiger goes up the mountain. Of course, it is reasonable that "going ashore" and "entering the sea" are strictly antonyms nowadays.

Examining the etymology of the term "entering the sea," there are five possibilities. I have researched three of them that seem credible.

• "Entering the sea, the merchants return to the foreign goods store, the salt patrol army has many outposts." This is a poem by Zhang Zhihan from the Yuan Dynasty. You may not believe it, but almost all the Chinese encyclopedias and dictionaries that can be found consider this as the origin of the term "entering the sea," but none of them provide a citation.
  • With the help of my eighteen years of search skills, I found a total of about 80 poems by Zhang Zhihan, and none of them contain the line "Entering the sea, the merchants return to the foreign goods store, the salt patrol army has many outposts." I also searched for these two lines in the "Yongle Encyclopedia," but did not find the complete version of this poem. It was too difficult to navigate through a bunch of content farms, so I ultimately chose to give up. Please enlighten me, professionals.
• In Lao She's "Four Generations Under One Roof," it is mentioned in Chapter 43: "Whenever there is a new person entering the sea secretly, I bring her here first and have the section chief baptize her. How about that?" Here, it refers to becoming a sex worker.
• Referring to amateur opera actors (ticket friends) becoming professional actors. The audience is called "Chi Zi," and the stage is called "Hai Zi," so the sea in the movie poster also comes from here. The process from "Chi Zi" to "Hai Zi" is called "entering the sea." As for the origin of "Chi Zi" and "Hai Zi," I really couldn't find them. Perhaps they evolved from colloquial expressions.

The term "下海" gradually acquired the meaning of leaving government positions to engage in business only after the reform and opening up. From what I see, the current explanation for "下海" is that it refers to engaging in business due to Shanghai's association with the business world.

My intuition tells me that this is a typical case of later generations embellishing the truth.

In this ancient empire, the literati tradition includes joining the military, farming after retirement, submitting petitions, and even refusing to eat government-issued grain. However, there has never been a case of officials giving up their positions to become businessmen.

It is reasonable to speculate that the majority of businesspeople in the 1990s lacked dignity. If officials abandon their previous social status and engage in activities previously referred to as speculation and profiteering, becoming nothing more than money-minded profiteers shamelessly serving others, then they have fallen from the upper class to the lower class.

It is through this process that officials truly experience what it means to serve the people, finding common ground with the sex workers who used to exploit loopholes in the old society. They realize that serving the people is for the sake of money and give up their dignity, hence the self-deprecating or mocking term "下海" ("going to sea").

A typical example of "下海" is Bo Xicheng. He served as the director of the Beijing Tourism Bureau in 1986 and "went to sea" six years later in 1992, becoming a high-ranking official who now serves the people.

Of course, the origin of a word does not determine its usage. As more and more people "go to sea," it has become a glorious thing. The power dynamics have once again redefined the meaning of the word.

Just like how "土豪" (tu hao) originally had a negative connotation but has now evolved into a positive one, the term "下海" has undergone a similar transformation.

上岸 (shang an)

Through research using search engines, it was found that around 2017, "上岸" mainly referred to repaying debts.

According to my research, this term originated from the Tieba forum's "Quit Gambling Bar," which is similar to American Alcoholics Anonymous, where a group of gamblers encourage each other to quit gambling.

Around 2016, Yan Ge Ling's novel "Mazu is a City" sparked my interest in gamblers, so during that time, I read a lot of posts written by gamblers. For gamblers, "going ashore" means paying off all the debts. Because repaying the debts is too painful, the sea of suffering is boundless, and only when they turn back to the shore can they start repaying the debts. Gamblers have also created other terms, such as "Bu Tian," which refers to an astronomical amount of gambling debt, with "ge" meaning ten thousand (this term has now become popular among Douyin users).

It wasn't until June 2017 that Sohu and civil service exam coaching institutions popularized the meaning of "going ashore" on the internet.

The exact origin of this term cannot be verified, but it is clearly very vibrant. Once it spread, everyone recognized it.

The imagery of the shore has always been clear, such as "watching a fire from the other side of the shore" or "standing on the dry shore." The shore has always referred to a safe and stable place, compared to rivers and seas, where one can find peace of mind.

Unfortunately, who can stand on the dry shore? This world has already thrown everyone onto the same boat.

Unnecessary words.

There is a saying, "Thirty years on the east shore, thirty years on the west shore." The prerequisite for watching a fire from the other side of the shore is standing on the dry shore, correctly judging the wind direction. When the east wind blows, be on the east shore; when the west wind blows, be on the west shore. From the evolution of the pair of terms "going down to the sea" and "going ashore," you can see that the shore and the sea are relative. Abandoning the shore and boarding a boat or bringing a boat ashore is just a change of scenery. As long as you are still under this sky, you cannot escape responsibility or avoid risks; you are only exchanging one kind of risk for another.