Narrator: Imagine a young dentist in 1970s China, tasked with giving vaccinations to an entire factory of workers and then a kindergarten full of children. The problem? Resources are so scarce that the needles are reused until their tips become barbed, like tiny fishhooks. The adults grit their teeth and endure the pain in silence. But the next day, the children’s raw, unfiltered wails of agony reveal a truth the dentist had ignored: the silent suffering of the adults was just as real. That experience, of feeling the pain of others as his own, became the key to his life’s work.

That young dentist was Yu Hua, who would become one of China’s most celebrated contemporary writers. In his profound work, China in Ten Words, he uses this same empathetic lens to dissect the soul of his nation. He argues that to understand the dizzying, often contradictory reality of modern China, one must look past the headlines and skyscrapers and instead examine the shifting, loaded meanings of ten simple words that have defined the lives of millions.

Narrator: In Maoist China, the term "the people" was sacred, a concept of immense political weight. As a child during the Cultural Revolution, Yu Hua came to his own profound conclusion: "The people are Chairman Mao, and Chairman Mao is the people." This fusion of the collective and the singular leader was absolute. The word "leader" itself referred only to Mao, a figure so deified that a man from Yu Hua’s town claimed to have shaken his hand and then refused to wash his own for a year.

But these words, once so solid, have fractured. Yu Hua recounts a pivotal experience during the 1989 Tiananmen Square protests. Cycling through Beijing on a cold night, he felt a sudden wave of warmth. It was the heat radiating from a massive crowd of ordinary citizens, standing shoulder to shoulder, singing the national anthem to block the army's advance. In that moment, he saw "the people" not as a political slogan, but as a living, breathing entity with a thumping heart. In the decades since, as economic pursuits replaced political ideals, this collective identity has dissolved. Today, "the people" is a term used constantly by officials but rarely by citizens, while the word "leader" has been devalued, attached to endless corporate contests and local functionaries, a pale echo of its former power.

Narrator: The word "revolution" in China is not a relic of the past; it is a ghost that continues to shape the present. Yu Hua draws a direct, chilling line from the political fanaticism of the Mao era to the economic fanaticism of today. He compares the Great Leap Forward of the 1950s, when peasants built backyard furnaces to absurdly inflate steel production figures, to the modern frenzy of development. Just as the earlier campaign led to useless metal and devastating famine, today’s revolutionary push for growth results in ghost cities, underutilized infrastructure, and mountains of debt.

The methods of revolution also persist. Mao once defined revolution as "an act of violence," a sentiment that echoes in the brutal efficiency of contemporary urban development. Yu Hua describes how the "seizure of official seals," a tactic used by Red Guards to usurp power during the Cultural Revolution, is now mirrored in corporate takeovers and, more grimly, in the forced evictions of citizens. The revolutionary fervor to build a new China continues, but the battleground has shifted from ideology to real estate, and the casualties are often ordinary families standing in the way of progress.

Narrator: During the Cultural Revolution, "disparity" was an ideological concept. The gap was between the politically pure and the "class enemies." Today, disparity is a raw, tangible chasm measured in yuan. Yu Hua paints a picture of a society that has gone from a monochrome world of political conformity to a polychrome world of staggering economic inequality. On one side, China is the world’s fastest-growing market for luxury goods. On the other, he tells heartbreaking stories of families driven to tragedy over the inability to afford a single banana or a doctor’s visit for a sick child.

This disparity breeds a new kind of social tension. Yu Hua recalls his youth as a vigilante, confiscating oil coupons from peasants who were trying to make a few extra yuan, an act he saw as revolutionary justice. He compares this to the modern-day "City Administration" officers who violently clash with unlicensed street hawkers. In both cases, those with a sliver of authority enforce rules against the most vulnerable. The context has changed from political purity to economic order, but the dynamic of the powerful preying on the powerless remains a painful constant.

Narrator: China’s economic miracle was not just engineered from the top down; it was ignited from the bottom up by the "grassroots." This term refers to the masses of ordinary people, often from disadvantaged backgrounds, who seized the opportunity of economic reform with a fearless, sometimes reckless, spirit. Yu Hua tells of "blood chiefs" who built empires organizing blood sales and "garbage kings" who became millionaires recycling trash. These are people who, as one tycoon put it, "just did the things nobody else was willing to do."

This grassroots energy has given rise to a unique cultural phenomenon: "copycat" or shanzhai. It began with knockoff electronics but has since evolved into a full-blown cultural movement of parody and rebellion. There are copycat celebrities, copycat news programs that satirize state propaganda, and even a copycat Spring Festival Gala. Yu Hua sees this as a reflection of a society where official channels are rigid and creativity is stifled. The copycat spirit, in its best form, is a grassroots challenge to authority. In a moment of self-reflection, Yu Hua admits he was once a "copycat dentist," learning his trade by imitating a master without formal training—a perfect metaphor for a nation learning to navigate a new world through imitation and adaptation.

Narrator: If "copycat" describes the method, "bamboozle" describes the national mindset. The term, popularized by a famous comedy skit about a man who convinces a healthy person he needs crutches, has become a master key to understanding modern Chinese society. It refers to everything from harmless hype to outright fraud, and it is everywhere. Property developers bamboozle the public by planting fake news stories about Bill Gates renting their apartments. Entrepreneurs bamboozle local governments into giving them massive loans. Citizens bamboozle the system with sham divorces to claim more compensation for their land.

This culture of deception reflects a deeper moral confusion. Yu Hua recounts a personal story of trying to bamboozle his father, a doctor, by faking a stomachache to get out of trouble. The ruse backfired spectacularly when his father, genuinely concerned, rushed him to the hospital for an unnecessary appendectomy. The bamboozler became the bamboozled. This, he argues, is the state of China today: a society so saturated with deception, hype, and moral ambiguity that the lines between truth and falsehood have become dangerously blurred, leaving everyone, from the state to the individual, caught in a dizzying game of their own making.

Narrator: Through his ten words, Yu Hua reveals that modern China is not a simple story of economic triumph. It is a land of profound and often painful contradictions, where the revolutionary ghosts of the past animate the hyper-capitalist present. The language of Mao is repurposed to sell products, the collectivist spirit is fragmented by individual ambition, and the pursuit of wealth has created both miracles and moral crises.

The book’s most challenging idea is encapsulated in the final word, "bamboozle." It suggests a society where the social contract has been replaced by a pervasive, cynical game of deception. It leaves us with a powerful question: What happens to a nation when its people, in their relentless drive forward, lose their ability to trust the words they use, the leaders they follow, and even each other?