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January 1

Ancient Chinese idiom "留中不發 (trad) / 留中不发 (simp)"

What does it rally mean? Million thanks! --YURi (talk) 09:42, 1 January 2016 (UTC)[reply]

"Be kept at the imperial palace without an answer; be shelved (of a memorial)" apparently. It looks like the sort of thing Heo Mok famously^{[citation needed]} complained about: a long wait of Fail. Guesswork only, but looks like it contrasts 留中 being inside someplace with 不發 lacking success. (I've never really understood what 發 means - it seems to have about a bazillion different uses.) Hopefully the people that know the real answer will be along soon. --Shirt58 (talk) 02:06, 2 January 2016 (UTC)[reply]

Sounds like they might be talking about the tendency of bureaucrats to keep people waiting for long periods of time. This can be done to demonstrate their power, to force a bribe to get them to act, or merely because they are overloaded with work. StuRat (talk) 07:48, 2 January 2016 (UTC)[reply]

"發" does not mean "to make lots of money" here, it is used in the literal verbal sense of "sent forth" (issued, dispatched, etc). The four characters mean, individually and literally, "keep", "in the centre", "not", "sent forth". It means a memorial has been sent by a minister to the emperor, but contrary to normal procedures the emperor has simply kept it in the palace (i.e. in his private office), and has neither countersigned his approval nor sent it down for discussion during an audience. Generally, if the emperor does this to one's memorial, one should know that the emperor does not even want to discuss the matter, and hassling the emperor further about the issue might really make him angry.--PalaceGuard008 (Talk) 13:44, 4 January 2016 (UTC)[reply]

Chinese Wikipedia has a curious article (zh:口袋否決) drawing parallels between "留中不發" and the American pocket veto. --PalaceGuard008 (Talk) 18:45, 4 January 2016 (UTC)[reply]

謝謝, PalaceGuard008, first of all for providing a proper answer to YURi's question, and also for enlightening me about what 發 means.

OP, if you are wondering why I said my response was "guesswork": I studied Japanese, so I can read the individual Chinese characters used in Japanese, but I can only guess about the meaning of the combinations of Chinese characters used in Chinese.--Shirt58 (talk) 09:35, 7 January 2016 (UTC)[reply]