Bie zhuang bi is Mandarin. Bie means stop and zhung bi, telling a lie, so bie zhuang bi means "Stop telling a lie!" or "Don't pretend otherwise!" One day of the fall of 2015, I repeatedly heard a group of Chinese students, most of whom have been in Canada less than two years, say, "Bie zhuang bi!" in their conversations. At night, I searched for the expression by Google and to my surprise discovered a huge number of sarcastic images about the expression on the Internet. The popularity of the expression nudged me, who, born and raised to speak Mandarin, have been away from China quite long, "The expression may be telling something about today`s China." 

The expression "zhuang bi" is new to my knowledge, but the history of "zhuang bi" is not. In 1949, my grandpa was forced to abandon service to Chiang Kai-shek Administration and accept a communist republic. The republic promised him that it was the liberation of people from Chaing Kai-shek`s dictatorship and  they would forgive him for his service to the "the reactionary, corrupt bourgeois government." When it entered the 1950s, the poor old man as well as his family were politically persecuted. Unlike grandpa, father spent his teenage and youth in revolutionary years, during which the republic educated him the Communist Party was always great, the revolution against the bourgeoisie would be victorious, and to be well educated and wealthy is to be bourgeoisie. In the 1980s, the great republic changed its mind, "Alright, guys! Lets construct our economy and forget the revolution!" Finally, society marginalized father for his poor school education. Unlike father, I lived at a gilded time. I grew up in the atmosphere of the republic advocating that the young should work hard to "construct motherland's economy!" During the years when I studied hard at school, the republic saw economic growth, and the greediness of the politically privileged class and the enslavement of workers and peasants were buried by communist press. Having graduated from university, I found that when the republic was being proud of economic development either at the television screens or in the newspapers, it ignored me for lower income and heretical thoughts. I immigrated to Canada in 2010 and it was the small piece of immigration visa issued by Canadian government that allowed me another adventure for better life, which the communist republic defined as treason in grandpa's and father's times. In short, who will deny the fact that it makes people fidget to live with a chameleon? 

I feel compensated hearing Chinese say, "Bie zhuang bi!" In the morning of September 11, 2001, as usual, I got up early and flicked TV set on. When I was watching TV and enjoying my breakfast at table, I was shocked by the picture at the television screen: two airplanes crashed into the body of the World Trade Center. One of the two buildings of the World Trade Center was cut in the middle and the top part collapsed like toy blocks. Next came the sound of sirens, people's shriek of fear on the streets in the Lower Manhattan, and some helpless lives' jumping out of the windows emitting heavy smoke about 400 meters above the ground. Being a high school kid in China, I knew nothing about such big issues as national security or terrorism or human rights then, but I tried my best to imagine how terrible the situation had to be so that people had to make a quick decision on whether to be burnt to die or fall to die. I asked myself, "Do the victims have families? How their families would feel if they are told that their sons or daughters or husbands or wives were burnt to die or fell to die?" History has already carved such disaster not only on my memory but also the world's. However, in the next days and even the next weeks and even the next months, I did not find out a trace of the sympathy for the victims and condemnation of international terrorism, but only the theories implying this event is what the United States deserves for its so-called international hegemony which is a typical communist refrain used to propaganda and I was fed up with, in the press and on television in communist China. Again, a volley of questions burst out form my mind - "Are you talking about international hegemony even when the Pope is praying for the world peace?" "Are you talking about international hegemony even when hundreds or thousands of families are grieving for the death of who they love?" "Are you talking about international hegemony even when the world is mourning for the tragedy?" Today, Chinese began to say, "Bie zhuang bi." I can realize they are tired of the lies or propaganda pervading their surroundings. I can sense their awakening the previous generations of Chinese never had. 

However, such awakening is expensive. Saying, "Bie zhuang bi!", today's Chinese isolate themselves. Isolation by itself does not necessarily lead to pessimistic things because isolation may be where the progress of communication is disrupted while the desire for communication is glowing. This is just like two persons' scratching and hitting a wall to communicate information, when the two are confined in separate rooms. However, long victimized by propaganda and then confined in their own world, today's Chinese are hostile to the outside world not to intend to hit and scratch the wall to explore the other side - the decency to agree to disagree has shrunk and the gallantry to accept the truth has withered. When I was traveling in China in the summer of 2015, I could see the urban landscape scarred by noisy 24-hour karaoke and unhygienic restaurants without a museum or a gallery or even a bathroom visible, pedestrians arguing out in the street as they, and even policemen, were adapted to, and TV programs interrupted by the innumerable commercials of medicine, some kinds of which were even antibiotics. All of these tugged at my sleeve, "They do not care about the past and the future." Indeed, the people were already tired of conducting a dialog between self and the outside. 

I do not know whether my stories are boring for my Chinese friends to read because a long list of stories may erase a reader's curiosity and concentration. However, to speak out is to communicate, which is a right humans are born with. Otherwise, such double life, being sick of zhuang bi and indifferent to zhuang bi, will be manufacturing more slaves. Slaves did not, do not, and will not make decisions by themselves