Talk:tofu-dregs
Latest comment: 2 years ago by -sche
This is used in isolation and in a number of phrases referencing shoddy construction in China, see tofu-dreg project and the RFV which will be archived to its talk page. I will centrally store quotations here for lack of a better place:
- 2011, Ai Weiwei, Ai Weiwei's Blog: Writings, Interviews, and Digital Rants, 2006-2009, MIT Press (→ISBN), page 177:
- No one asks about the shoddy “tofu-dregs engineering”; instead, we blindly accuse “running teacher Fan.” Nationalism is only a fig leaf for the feeble-minded, a tricky maneuver that prevents everyone from seeing the complete picture.
- 2012, John David Ebert, The Age of Catastrophe: Disaster and Humanity in Modern Times, McFarland (→ISBN), page 150:
- Many of these buildings were of shoddy construction and have been dubbed by the locals “tofu dregs schoolhouses,” as though to imply that they had been merely stacks of bricks held together by tofu.
- 2013, John Osburg, Anxious Wealth: Money and Morality Among China's New Rich, Stanford University Press (→ISBN), page 36:
- The practices of accumulation engaged in by elite networks generate tragic consequences for the public good—shoddy construction (referred to as “tofu dregs construction”), contaminated food, and stark material inequalities, ...
- 2014, Catie Snow Bailard, Democracy's Double-Edged Sword: How Internet Use Changes Citizens' Views of Their Government, Johns Hopkins University Press+ORM (→ISBN)
- In the 2008 Sichuan earthquake several thousand school buildings collapsed, killing thousands of children and bringing the world's attention to the shoddy “tofu-dregs” buildings and rampant corruption that had skimmed the public funds ...
- 2014, Yi Kang, Disaster Management in China in a Changing Era, Springer (→ISBN), page 56:
- Tan Zuoron, a writer who tried to document “shoddy tofu-dregs construction” that might have caused massive school-building collapses, was sentenced to prison.
- 2015, John C. Mutter, The Disaster Profiteers: How Natural Disasters Make the Rich Richer and the Poor Even Poorer, Macmillan (→ISBN), page 95:
- […] teachers, teaching assistants, and school nurses would have died in the Sichuan earthquake in 2008 had the buildings not been made of tofu dregs.
- 2016, Han Han, The Problem with Me: And Other Essays About Making Trouble in China Today, Simon and Schuster (→ISBN), page 20:
- Tofu dregs, which crumble at the slightest touch, have become the go-to image for referring to building and infrastructure projects that use substandard materials and shoddy design to cut costs during construction.
- 2017, Paul Midler, What's Wrong with China, John Wiley & Sons (→ISBN):
- The poor condition of tofu dregs schoolhouses was used to explain the high casualty rate, but the statistic did not fly. The ratio of young to old among the dead—roughly one to ten—ought to have been less stark.
- 2017, Yvonne Sherwood, Anna Fisk, The Bible and Feminism: Remapping the Field, Oxford University Press (→ISBN), page 384:
- Chinese citizens have since called these poorly constructed schools 'shoddy tofu-dregs construction' (豆腐渣工程) and strong resentment arose from thousands of parents who […]
- 2021, Ai Weiwei, 1000 Years of Joys and Sorrows: A Memoir, Crown (→ISBN)
- Corruption is not to be discussed, “tofu-dregs construction” [a metaphor for shoddy work, using flimsy materials] is off limits, unpleasant evidence is suppressed. In the name of “stability maintenance,” they threaten, detain, ...
- 2016, Jacques deLisle, Avery Goldstein, Guobin Yang, The Internet, Social Media, and a Changing China, University of Pennsylvania Press (→ISBN), page 36:
- Between 2008 and 2009, he investigated student casualties due to the collapse of “tofu-dreg” (shoddy) school buildings in the aftermath of the Sichuan earthquake. A list of 5,385 names was collected, for which he was severely beaten.