To hear the sound of this word, see the New Words section above. Since the opening-up policy that began in the early 1980s, economic development in mainland China has advanced at ferocious pace. In movies from the 1950s, capitalists are always depicted as the bad guys - fat, sinister looking and all that. But now, numerous TV dramas portray merchants positively - hard working, creating job opportunities, helping the less fortunate and so on. This new image of the money-maker truthfully reveals what the Chinese nowadays aspire to be.
Language is most sensitive to and reflective of social changes.
Here we provide a few examples of lexical changes to further illustrate this shift in contemporary Chinese societies. Nowadays, it seems more likely that the ocean refers to the sea of economic opportunities. Before TV became a household item in the late 1980s, the major form of entertainment for mainland Chinese was reading. In those days, literature and its creators enjoyed unprecedented respect and attention from their enormous audience. But now, TV shows, movies, and Karaoke singing have taken away the once devoted followers of literature.