肥水不落外人田 (slang)

Recently I read an article written by Cay Marchal, a German who has been staying in Taipei since 2002 dedicated to research on the Chinese philosophy. He wrote about how his Taiwanese friend asked him why he hadn’t asked around to see if any of his friends was working at a travel agency and could help him get a plane ticket before he went to a travel agency directly. “After all, 肥水不落外人田(fei2 shui3 bu2 luo4 wai4 ren2 tian2),” said his friend.

Marchal describes how himself, a westerner, unlike the oriental way, has a different way of seeing so-called “social connection” 人際關係(ren2 ji4 guan xi4). He quotes what Kipling wrote in The Ballad of East and West, “East is East, and West is West, and never the twain shall meet.”

肥水means fertile water. A farmer will lead fertile water to his own farm instead of others’. This is the meaning of this slang. Self-profiting and selfishness is part of human nature. When handling stuff like getting a plane ticket, we do tend to go to our relatives or friends first. Besides the concept of肥水不落外人田, another motive is the potential discount.

The danger of this concept is that it could lead to nepotism, 裙帶關係(qun2 dai4 guan xi4)，literally means a connection on skirt’s string, which I have talked about in my previous writing Clothes make the man. Until 100 years ago when the Republic of China was founded and the monarchy was over, the nation had always been owned by a family. This family garnered the major precious of the whole nation--肥水不落外人田

It’s hard to totally change this concept of thousands of years with only a century. That’s why we keep making new laws to prevent this concept from hindering the progress of democracy. On the other hand, we’re glad to see more and more people are sharing their 肥水with others whose farms are not so fertile. Such an act of 雨露均霑(yu3 lu4 jun zhan),  sharing the rain and dew, i.e. the profit with people, is what we love to see.

裙帶關係=裙带关系

雨露均霑=雨露均沾