A sack of rice fell over in China
The phrase " a sack of rice (or bicycle) fell over in China (or Beijing) " is a slang metaphor for an unimportant event . With this derogatory-jokingly used phrase, the speaker expresses his disinterest or signals the perceived insignificance of a topic.
Quotes
- "Whether you want to work with HSV or a sack of rice falls over in China ..." (1980)
- National soccer coach Franz Beckenbauer found a variant for the "sack of rice that burst in China" by saying (1986): "What you journalists write interests me as much as if a bike falls over in Beijing." (The phrase comes from Times when the Chinese had less access to cars than they do today and therefore private transport in Beijing consisted predominantly of cyclists.)
- Matthias Platzeck in an interview in 2008: "Whether we close our two power plants Jänschwalde and Schwarze Pump in Brandenburg will have about as much impact on the global climate as if a sack of rice fell over in China."
Book title
- Wiglaf Droste : Doesn't any sack of rice want to fall over in China? Reclam, Stuttgart 2009, ISBN 978-3-15-020177-0 (supplemented new edition).
See also
Web links
Wiktionary: something is as important as when a sack of rice falls over in China - explanations of meanings, word origins, synonyms, translations
Individual evidence
- ^ Günther Drosdowski: Duden idioms and proverbial idioms. Bibliogr. Inst. (1992), p. 139 books.google (first mentioned in the Redensarten-Duden).
- ^ In Ulrich Pramann: That bit of freedom . Stern-Buch Gruner + Jahr 1980, p. 148, books.google.
- ^ Neue Osnabrücker Zeitung, December 5, 1986.
- ↑ www.super-illu.de, ( Memento from May 12, 2008 in the Internet Archive ) accessed April 15, 2018.